A Startup Turns to Saffron to Help Afghanistan Regrow | Hacker News Reader

A Startup Turns to Saffron to Help Afghanistan Regrow

nytimes.com

71 pointsmiraj28 comments

A few ponderings:

- Using saffron as a means to transform poppy fields is a 12-year-old+ idea[0] that doesn't seem to have made a dent in opimium production, which has skyrocketed since 2004.[1] What makes this iteration different?

- In 2011, saffron prices dropped 60% to due to an oversupply.[2] Given that the market for saffron is relatively established, isn't there concern that Rumi's growth might outpace demand and cause a similar price drop?

- What makes Rumi different than current companies run by locals such as the Afghan Saffron Company?[3]

[0]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/1...

[1]: https://publicintelligence.net/unodc-afghan-opium-survey-201...

[2]: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-13848820

[3]: http://www.afghansaffron.com/

These are some of my best friends and fellow veterans. We couldn't be prouder of what they are doing. They are part of YC's fellowship as well if that wasn't already known.

What you all here might be interested in that isn't discussed is how they are opening up and transforming logistics and supply chain into previously closed markets. That is the huge opportunity here that few have the skills or background to properly navigate. These are still hard to win supply lines, but there are openings there.

Congrats Kim and Emily!

This is a great idea and hopefully offers another opportunity for some of the farmers there and helps grow their economy one step at a time.

Hi friends, I'm Kim, the CEO of Rumi. We're so excited to be one of the YC fellows, and we would love to answer any questions if you have any. Shoot! And buy saffron please- makes excellent gifts.

Hi, I recently tryed to help export saffron to Spain to an Afghan. He was introduced to me by an Afghan doctor who is volunteer at the same NGO as me.

I contacted several Spanish saffron distributors. I think that this guy was afraid of the value of the shipments and was unable to make his mind around the conditions the distributor was setting (they seemed quite logical to me)

It was a pitty cause I thought, as you do, that it could be a good way to help Afghanistan.

One think that I learned talking to the spanish distributor (Spain is a mayor exporter of saffron but unable to keep the production up with the international demand, so it's importing from Morocco and Iran in large quantities) is that it's very easy to get scammed with the quality by the producers if they get greedy.

Analisys take time and must be done on all batches. So this distributor delays the payment till the results confirm the quality of the shipment.

How do you deal with quality control and scams in Afghanistan?

Best of luck for your project!

I thought that you would be shipping internationally. Appears to be limited to the US.

Great question. We do ship internationally for B2B orders but must contact us directly. Info@rumispice.com. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense for us to service customers directly to other countries unless we can find a distributor

Your startup warms my heart. Kudos.

Pretty bizarre we haven't genetically modified a saffron yet to have more than three little threads of spice produced per flower. Heck, considering the variety our race managed to breed dogs into and the amount of change we created in corn and other projects, you'd think we could have done that with selective breeding alone.

I come from an Iranian background and saffron is a staple in Iranian cuisine. I'm not sure how much demand it would have in western cuisines, although according to the article it's used in some spanish and french dishes. It would be interesting to see where this goes.

I'm half French and half Iranian. I love saffron. It would be nice if the local Mediterranean/Indian/Iranian restaurants had access to more saffron, instead of diluting it with orange coloring.

Yes, I use saffron to cook paella, a spanish dish. Saffron is quite valuable, so it should make a good cash crop!

It is used (mostly for pasta and rice) in Italian cuisine, too.

Example: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/saffron-risotto...

Saffron is used a lot in Indian food. I'd look east for both markets and competitors.

It's surely not in many houses in the west but it's at every supermarket.

Please pardon my question if it's inappropriate, but isn't saffron prized for psychoactive potential in the black market? I'm ignorant about the scale to make it worthwhile considering this memory is based on some illegal logging elsewhere in the world. I'm simply curious because rebuilding in Afghanistan - or really any place that the world tends to ignore - is an absolutely human, noble cause and I hope for positive outcomes!

I think you might be confusing saffron with poppies. Saffron is sufficiently expensive and widely used in cuisine it's hard to see it being popular for any psychoactive properties it might have compared to, say, nutmeg.

He is confusing it with sassafras, as I did upon first glance.

Ah! Thanks! Good to know there's a strong market for a spice without the baggage. Appreciate the clarification for sure.

Yes, agreed!

I worked at a telecom company in Afghanistan a few years ago when the country was relatively safe. I'd like to leave HNer's with some statistics that are not included in the NYTimes article that might explain why it is so vital to move any part of the agricultural crop away from opium:

Afghanistan's opium production currently goes into more than 90% of heroin worldwide.

According to a UN doc cited on wikipedia, production reached a peak in 1999 with a bumper crop of 4,500 metric tons. [1] Shortly afterwards in 2000, 99% of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was wiped out by the Taliban, who controlled Afghanistan with an iron fist and declared the cultivation of poppy "un-islamic". This amounted to a 75% reduction in the world supply of opium. So total world production was ~6,000 metric tons in 1999.

According to this 2014 UN report [2] the total area of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was estimated at 224,000 hectares with an average yield of 28.7kg/hectare. Converting this to metric tons: 224,000 * 28.7 / 1,000 = 6,429 metric tons of opium produced. Report cites a possible range from 5,100-7,800 metric tons produced.

So not only is Afghanistan back to pre-Taliban production levels, it is producing more than the entire world production of opium in 1999. This is just 15 years after a 99% eradication of the crop in the region. Ironically, opium production has ramped up massively since 2002, under US/Karzai governance.

The farm gate value of this opium is only $850m. Using an average of the conversion ratios cited in the report (18.5:1 for pure heroin, 9.6:1 for export-grade heroin) and a price of $60,000USD/kg of heroin [3] we get a total processed value of $27.4bn. That's a crazy amount of value locked into processing and distribution.

Any amount of possible change towards other crops will be hugely beneficial for smaller-scale farmers who do not wish (or do not have the connections) to sell into the drug trade, and who only see 1/30th of the processed value of their crop. Not to mention it will be putting a dent in the world supply of heroin.

This is an ambitious and well-intentioned project. I'm glad to see HN sponsoring these types of ventures, especially as it falls outside the scope of the tech world and does not have the TAM/SAM/SOM projections that I'm sure VCs dream about. Good luck to the founding team, and stay safe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_production_in_Afghanista... [2] https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/... [3] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-drug-dealers-next-door-how-n...

Did the Taliban's crackdown on opium have any impact on heroin use? I'm going to guess no.

If the global supply of heroin fell 75% the price would have increased dramatically, reducing use.

If the global supply of heroin fell 75% the price would have increased dramatically, increasing crime by drug users and keeping demand around the same level.

Nobody says "I love heroin, but I'm going to stop because it's too expensive".

You'd be surprised.

Narcotics are remarkably fungible, much to the disappointment of drug enforcement agencies and social workers.

I spend a few hours a week at a transitional house for folks who've been down on their luck (homeless or no fixed address) and are trying to get into the support system. Most are dealing with addiction.

When you ask what they're taking, they often have a long equation of how much they take of X when they can't get Y, and how much of Z takes the edge off Y when their dealer is unavailable or they can't afford it, etc. Many have managed to get into a long cycle of a number of different substances, each being a transitional drug off the last. Since this is a behavior pattern they're used to, we're getting a lot of mileage using (now legal) marijuana as a bridge to sobriety whey they're not willing to submit to detox.

I'm 100% confident that if heroin doubled in price tomorrow usage would drop through the floor, but unfortunately addiction would be pretty stable.

Considering the price of heroin has been pretty steady since the early 2000's I'm questioning the 75% of the supply number. Then again, maybe other countries made up for it?

From what I understand, the price of heroin has dropped dramatically, to the point where I remember a news story saying It was cheaper than weed. In the US, there is definitely a heroin epidemic, with a lot of use and attention in New England.

Are you sure about that? I'm not sure heroin addiction has much price elasticity...

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