Jordan Times
Thursday, August 31, 2000
High tech may water Jordan Valley, but dry up
family farming
By Dana Charkasi
DEIR ALLA — With a nostalgic look, Walid Gazul lets his eyes wander across his 60 dunums of farmland in Kreimeh near Deir Alla, which he and his brother lease to a large-scale local farmer for JD3,000 per year.
Farming, Gazul said, became unprofitable for him with prices for tomatoes and cucumbers — his main crops — steadily falling and with soaring bills for water and pesticides aggravating his financial situation. He said he was compelled to abandon the farming business when wealthy, industrialised farmers began to outpace him. He attributes their success to their ability to bring in modern technology that streamlines operations and enables them to meet market requirements.
“Renting my land to another farmer is much more profitable for me. Now we get JD3,000 every year and this supports our whole family,” Gazul said.
His neighbours in the Jordan Valley are likely to encounter the same experience as the Kingdom gears up to enter the new world economic order.
The Economic Consultative Council's irrigated agriculture committee has been working on a proposal to overhaul the sector, which promises to change the course of Jordanian farming forever if it is accepted and endorsed. The final report of the committee, containing suggestions for reforms, will be presented to His Majesty King Abdullah soon.
As with agricultural reforms around the world, the committee does not expect the proposal to win any popularity contest.
“We are very serious about change. Things in this country need to change — many habits [and] things that we take for granted,” said Anwar Battikhi, head of the committee and dean of the Hashemiyeh University, during a recent interview with the Jordan Times. “Courageous decisions have to be made.”
Although the proposal has not been made public, citizens can take for granted that reform in irrigated agriculture will be based on two pillars: The harnessing of private sector capital and technology, and more efficient use of precious water.
“The government has really carried a heavy burden in this country. It raised people to depend on the state for [things] like subsidies and job opportunities,” said Battikhi.
The disparity between water exploitation and agriculture's contribution to GDP is straightforward. Agriculture consumes the highest amount of the Kingdom's water resources — 650 million cubic metres (mcm) out of an available 900mcm — but contributes only 4.5 per cent to Jordan's JD2.2 billion GDP. Only half of that is generated by irrigated agriculture.
The difference becomes even more glaring when the country's chronic water shortage and rapid population growth rate are brought into play: Population grows at 3.4 per cent a year, while the water deficit of 220mcm is expected to grow to 250mcm within a decade.
“Nine hundred mcm a year, is a very small resource, and we use 650 mcm a year for agriculture,” said Battikhi. “So what prompted us [were discussions] about importing drinking water from the Disi [aquifer], and how much it will cost us. We started thinking more seriously and contemplating whether we are using this water efficiently or not,” Battikhi explained.
The gulf between agricultural consumption and contribution to the GDP has led economists and agriculture experts to advocate reducing agriculture's water allocation, not only in Jordan, but worldwide. Instead, the municipal and industrial sectors, should be the top beneficiaries of water distribution.
“We know that the water for irrigation will decline, by at least 15 per cent within the next 10 years. But [it] will be replaced by low-quality water, treated wastewater,” contended Abdul Nabbi Fardos, director of the National Centre for Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer and a member of the committee.
In order to purify low-quality water, it would be necessary to improve the efficiency of Jordan's largest wastewater treatment plant, Khirbet Al Samra, and to increasingly introduce crops that can withstand such water. Fodder crops, roses, carnations were some of the alternative plants that still yield high profits, Fardos added.
Israel, facing similar water scarcity problems, plans a 50 per cent reduction of water to irrigated agriculture in 2001.
Jordan, whose water scarcity problem is even worse than that of Israel, has avoided harsh water reductions so far, favouring a “smooth” reduction of water distribution in tandem with the gradual application of modern irrigation technologies and the planting of crops consuming less water.
“We want to optimise water use, not cut down on agriculture. We want farmers to use water more efficiently, and we want to try to advise [farmers] about management of water use and maximising [water efficiency], Battikhi said.
But others believe the reduction of water to the sector will be a natural consequence of increased industrial activity in the future.
“Let market forces work and they will create the balance...when there is an increase in industry, it will automatically take water away from agriculture, because the labour force will be redirected in the economy,” proffered Fawaz Zo'bi, director of the Arab Drip Irrigation Systems Manufacturing Company (ADRITEC) and a member of the committee.
Opponents of reducing water for agriculture have urged the government to bear in mind the socio-economic importance of the sector. They contend that reducing water allocated to agriculture would destroy the livelihood of many families and increase the already high unemployment rate, which is officially estimated at 14 per cent, and unofficially at 27 per cent.
Six per cent of the labour force is directly employed in agriculture, either as farmers or farm workers, while the agriculture-related service sector constitutes 28 per cent.
And for 20 per cent of the 5 million population, agriculture is the main source of income.
Others remind of the importance of strategic “food security” referring to the fact that Jordan is still a country situated in an area of constant crisis.
Yet another school of theory contends that diverting water away from agriculture in favour of industry is only reasonable when there is a parallel growth in industry.
“We cannot take water from agriculture and give it to industry, [because] there is no industrial growth,” Mohammad Shatanawi, dean of the University of Jordan department of agriculture, told the Jordan Times.
That argument also seems to be supported by the Ministry of Agriculture. In its 1999 `Agricultural Policy Impact Monitoring Project' document, the ministry argued that municipal and water needs consume only 26 per cent of the Kingdom's water.
“The remaining water can be used in activities with lower marginal returns, e.g., in agriculture. In fact, not using the remaining water is costly because we can produce wheat with it,” the document states.
The role of
technology and
private sector
The application of state-of-the-art technology is seen as the only way to keep Jordan's export-oriented agriculture competitive on the global market. Its use would bring about an immediate reduction in the volume of water used for irrigation, but many small farmers, many of whom are heavily indebted, do not have capital at the ready for such investments.
The ECC committee intends to propose encouraging cooperatives, within which small farmers organise to jointly share modern technologies and come up with a joint marketing strategy.
“Small farmers, if they do not go into cooperatives, will not survive...They will be out of business,” said Mohammad Awamleh, head of marketing extension and training at the Agricultural Marketing Organisation and a farmer himself.
But the ECC's most favoured concept is “contract farming.”
Under this scheme, large private investors would provide capital intensive technology and farmers would produce for these investors under their know-how and under their supervision.
“[The idea is to] open up the investment to the larger [farming operations] to come in, to take over, build the infrastructure, put in the money and the investment, and hire smaller farmers,” Zo'bi, who was named to the cabinet in June, told the Jordan Times.
The ECC's irrigated agriculture committee's calculation is that private sector will look for more profitable ways to produce agricultural crops by optimising water use and by planting crops that yield the highest return.
“The private sector role is what we anticipate, this is what we think is best. The private sector is running the project, you would need less people, you can run it more efficiently and at less costs. It is working in most developing countries,” said Battikhi.
End of small-size farms evident in
Jordan Valley
The rest of the equation is that “industrial farming,” as it is referred to bitterly in the West, is likely to bring about the sale of land by small-scale farmers to large investors, who need massive swathes of land to create economies of scale. Eighty per cent of Jordan Valley farms are no bigger than 30 dunums.
“We were not interested in the Jordan Valley because, the lands are small plots, and it is like a vegetable garden. We brought modern equipment that nobody has [here]...big tractors, ploughs, planners, cultivators, modern sprayers. [They can only be] used on wide land. We are not working on 30-40 dunums like in the Ghor,” said Yacov Ben Ari, an Israeli investor who leases 700 dunums of farmland in the Mafraq area to plant and supply an Israeli food processing industry with vegetables.
The current Jordan Valley law does not allow the sale of land there, but this is likely to change soon. Two weeks ago, the government submitted to Parliament draft amendments to the Jordan Valley Development Law with a clause permitting the sale of land.
“By this, you will end up with larger farms, which are definitely more economical to run if you want to use modern technology,” Battikhi said.
But the threat of a new form of “natural selection” is waved like a red flag by all. Only the strongest and fittest will be able to compete in the new economic competition and international rivalries, where global economy sets the selective criteria.
“They [the big investors] have the power or facilities to export outside the country, but those poor farmers do not. They will mainly produce for local markets, [but] will get lower prices,” Fardos said.
These facts give rise to concerns about what to do with farmers once they give up their farms to prevent the new “agricultural order” from upsetting an already delicate socio-economic balance.
Or, there is the even less palatable “master to slave” scenario.
Former landowners could, after selling their land, work as farmworkers on farms of large-scale investors, World Bank advisor John Briscoe told the Jordan Times on the sidelines of the Second World Water Forum in The Hague in March. Jordanian experts also are convinced that this is inevitable. “These people should either work with the private companies as small partners or as labourers. Or the government should provide job opportunities in other sectors, like industry or fields related to agriculture. People will be needed for packaging [or] producing paste in factories,” Battikhi said.
“This is the main subject, people need to work and to live and therefore whenever you want to deal with a subject this sensitive, you have to think of job opportunities,” he said.
The committee also pins high hopes on the private sector in other areas, to manage other activities in which the government has failed: In introducing cropping patterns to reduce the amount of water for irrigation, in matching the preconditions of the various soil structures and guiding production to meet market demands.
“We are recommending some cropping patterns. We do not want to enforce it, we don't want to repeat the problem that we had 10 years ago, when we enforced the cropping pattern. We do not know how to enforce it. We had to go back and let farmers do whatever they wanted, because we couldn't control it. It needs an army to control a certain pattern,” Battikhi said.
He believes market forces will be a more persuasive factor in convincing farmers to apply a cropping pattern.
“We are recommending better ways to enforce such patterns by encouraging companies to think of marketing and do contracts on marketing first, then go back to the farmers and buy their produce before they plant.
[And] sign contracts with them on what to plant. In other words, we want the private sector to market first and produce second. This will also solve the marketing problem, which is the most serious problem in Jordan regarding products,” Battikhi added.
Ending water subsidy and privatise water management in JV
The World Bank and IMF have pushed for an end to water subsidies to irrigated agriculture; a measure that the government has avoided for political and social reasons, but the ECC committee envisages as ending.
Currently, Jordan Valley farmers pay only 15 fils per cubic metre of water on average. The real cost of providing water to farmers amounts to a multiple of that amount.
“We are now advising the maintenance and operation of a water distribution process [in the Jordan Valley] be privatised...because the government is losing lots of money on Jordan Valley water management,” said Battikhi. “If we produce for export, we should not produce conventional crops, because the government is subsidising water, and therefore it is subsidising the international economy.”
“The major thing we want to stress in our report is that water really costs us more than what we charge farmers, and that therefore, we should look for production considering the actual price of water and not only the maintenance and operation costs,” he added.
Battikhi believes that an increase in water prices will not be substantial, because more efficient maintenance and operations will reduce operation costs.
And if water management is privatised in the Jordan Valley, the committee believes it is likely that the area will be planted with crops that consume much less water. A consistent complaint of water conservationists has been that farmers plant high water consuming plants, such as bananas.
“If you plant bananas, the farmer is gaining some money, but the country is losing a lot,” Battikhi said.
This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow's edition will explore the ECC irrigated agriculture committee's vision of irrigated farming in the highlands.