Opium Poppy Cultivation License Policy Released for 2025–26

13-Sep-2025 10:53 AM

New Delhi. The Central Government has announced the annual license policy for the 2025-26 season for opium poppy cultivation in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

This time about 1.21 lakh farmers are being considered eligible to obtain this license. This number is 23.5 percent more than last year. This time 15000 additional farmers are likely to be given licenses in these three provinces.

A notification has been issued by the Revenue Department of the Union Finance Ministry announcing the issuance of conditional licenses to opium growers for the period from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. Opium is mainly cultivated in the above three states.

The government has proposed to give incentives to such better performing producers who have achieved a yield rate of 900 kg per hectare or higher of non-lanced poppy brown. Such producers will be given the option to adopt the traditional method for cultivating opium gum.

The purpose of this change is to encourage farmers to achieve a higher yield rate of opium in their fields. Along with this, the risk of sending opium from the fields to somewhere else will also be reduced.

On the other hand, the government will suspend the license for farmers in the 2025-26 season under the CPS farming method.

This license suspension will apply to those farmers who did not achieve the prescribed minimum eligibility yield rate of 800 kg per hectare during the crop year 2024-25. Farmers will be required to follow some other terms and conditions to obtain the license.

A detailed description has been given in the notification of the Revenue Department, clearly mentioning this. Earlier it was feared that this time there could be a decrease in the area of ​​​​opium, but now its possibility has diminished. Every licensed farmer will be allowed to cultivate opium in a maximum of 0.05 hectares.