The general manager at The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature, Mariam Al Jaajaa spoke about the reality of food sovereignty in Jordan and the challenges it faces, in a webinar, held by Institute Francais Proche Orient (IFPO) entitled “The Food Sovereignty in the Middle East” on Wednesday, September 29, 2021.

 

Al Jaajaa made a comparison between the reality of food in Jordan during the mid-20th century to the 1980s, and the current situation. Where Jordan was an important source of wheat exports between the 1930s and 1960s. the 1980s also witnessed a remarkable rise in gross domestic product (GDP) and a decrease in poverty rates, despite the high rates of population growth.

 

And with the implementation of the economic transformations brought about by international financial institutions in 1989; such as, privatization policies, liberalization of the agricultural sector, reduction of public investment and others, the Jordanian agricultural sector has been significantly negatively affected. Therefore, infrastructure weakened, and resources drained rather than productivity boosted, which led to a decrease in GDP to percentages lower than the percentages achieved in the booming eighties. The direct contribution of the agricultural sector to GDP fell from 40 % to 4 %.

 

Al Jaajaa presented some of the statistics on the reality of the agricultural sector in Jordan. She mentioned that the total area of arable land in Jordan reaches 28%, of which only 11% is currently used, and 0.7% of major landowners control 41% of these areas, while the agricultural sector is the main source of income for 75% of rural communities.

 

Al Jaajaa also stressed that the issues of the drought of agricultural areas, salinity of water, the Israeli water strategy, and the project to transfer water from Lake Tiberias to the Negev in 1964 have put Jordan at risk of collapse of the agricultural sector, due to the lack of water sources, while there is no effective management to solve the problem of water shortages and pollution.

 

At the end of her speech, Al Jaajaa presented the APN’s achievements the Green Caravan program. APN contributed to the planting of 122,000 fruit-bearing trees, on an area of approximately 3,000 dunams, from which more than 14,000 Jordanian farmers and their families benefited. These achievements give sort of hope among all these challenges.