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Jerash is a highly pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tural region about 35 kilo­me­ters north of Amman, the cap­i­tal of Jordan. Its ancient groves are renowned for pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity olive oil.

However, high pro­duc­tion costs, demand for land from the tourism indus­try and recur­rent drought have increased the eco­nomic pres­sure grow­ers face and are threat­en­ing the groves, putting the country’s olive oil pro­duc­tion at risk.

Due to the lack of rain­fall and scorch­ing tem­per­a­tures, olive farms reported a 20-per­cent decrease in the amount of fruit har­vested this year com­pared to last.

According to the International Olive Council data, Jordan pro­duced 25,000 tons of olive oil in the 2020/21 crop year, which is slightly above the rolling five-year aver­age, but far less than the record-high 34,500 tons recorded in 2019/20.

Rateb Silwan is among the remain­ing farm­ers in Jerash who antic­i­pate a poorer har­vest this year due to drought.

Last year, he pro­duced 1,200 liters of olive oil on his two-hectare piece of land. This year, he expects half of that. Two decades ago, he pro­duced 2,000 liters of olive oil each year.

“Droughts were almost unheard of then,” he told The National. ​“Now they hap­pen every four years or so.”

Since the 1950s, most of the farm­ers in north­ern Jordan have watered their crops from the East Ghor Canal, which is fed by the Yarmouk and Jordan rivers and rain­fall.

However, rapid pop­u­la­tion growth in Amman, the Israeli occu­pa­tion of the West Bank since 1967 and a dam con­structed by Syria on the Yarmouk have heav­ily depleted the amount of water avail­able for agri­cul­ture in Jordan.

In Najada, a vil­lage in Jerash that was once famous for pro­duc­ing olive oil, most inhab­i­tants have aban­doned tra­di­tional farm­ing and moved to urban areas in search of new sources of income.

The village’s prox­im­ity to the Debin Forest Reserve also puts its agri­cul­tural land under intense pres­sure from investors seek­ing to build tourist resorts.

A few years ago, some of the remain­ing farm­ers imported genet­i­cally-mod­i­fied cul­ti­vars in a last-ditch effort to sal­vage the sit­u­a­tion.

However, their efforts were ulti­mately in vain as the trees could not deal with the emer­gence of new pests and dis­eases that were highly resis­tant to con­ven­tional meth­ods of con­trol­ling them.

Among the most per­ni­cious of the pests plagu­ing olive grow­ers in the region are var­i­ous insect species, vipers, moles and wild boar.

The heavy appli­ca­tion of pes­ti­cides also has unbal­anced the local ecosys­tem, which neg­a­tively impacted pro­duc­tiv­ity in the region.

However, efforts are under­way to help restore some of the region’s degraded land by return­ing to tra­di­tional farm­ing meth­ods and sus­tain­able land man­age­ment meth­ods.

BirdLife, the NGO that strives to con­serve birds and their habi­tats, has part­nered with the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and the Jordanian-firm Enviromatics to encour­age farm­ers in Najda, specif­i­cally women, to take up tra­di­tional prac­tices.

The three orga­ni­za­tions have agreed to send experts to help 10 local farm­ers improve yields and more effec­tively con­trol pests in an envi­ron­men­tally friendly way.

“This will be a great oppor­tu­nity to learn from other women and pro­duce high-qual­ity prod­ucts,” Abeer Freihat said about the triumvirate’s efforts.

• The National
• BirdLife