Baran Shahabad Poppy Sesame Hadoti Plateau Rajasthan

Baran district in the Hadoti region of southeastern Rajasthan is one of India's few licensed opium (afeem) poppy growing districts under the Narcotics Control Bureau's poppy cultivation licence system — farmers grow Papaver somniferum on licenced plots and sell the latex to the government for medicinal alkaloid production. Baran also grows sesame (til) and mustard as winter oilseed crops on its black soil, and the district's Shahabad wildlife sanctuary protects dry deciduous forest with leopard and sloth bear. The Shahabad fort on a hillock above the Parvan river valley is a Hadoti heritage site, and the district's Sahariya tribal community (PVTG) practises subsistence paddy-maize farming in the district's forested eastern hills.