JURUM (Reuters) -- They are already sowing next year's poppy crop in the fields of Afghanistan's remote and mountainous North, openly farming the opium that will one day end up as heroin on the streets of Europe.

But it is impossible not to sympathize with the farmers of Badakshan, a rustic and achingly beautiful land of snow-capped peaks and grinding poverty that is also one of Afghanistan's main opium-producing regions.

"During the civil war people lost everything, and it is only through poppy farming that they are able to provide for their families and build a decent home," said Haq Abdur Rahim, standing among his fields as his workers plowed and sowed. Rahim says he earns $3,000 for the 22 pounds of opium he can produce from a single, tiny field, compared with just $10 for growing the 132 pounds of wheat the same plot would yield "which isn't even enough to pay the wages of the workers."

"Unless the government provides us jobs and solves our problems, they should let us continue growing poppies. But when they fulfill their promises, we ourselves will stop," he said.

The United Nations said in a survey on Wednesday that opium cultivation is spreading like a cancer in Afghanistan and risks transforming the world's leading supplier into a state of narco-terrorists and drug cartels. It showed a small rise in 2003 production in a country already accounting for 75 percent of global supply.

Worryingly, the UN survey shows poppy cultivation expanding to regions it has never been seen in before.