Agricultural Survey in Jordan

In Jordan, we prepared a short survey for different agricultural sectors. We found cereal and field crops were not very affected by the government lockdown because this is a mid season crop and most activities were already done. On the other hand, we found that tree, vegetable and irrigation crops were very impacted in their marketing and services activities as they couldn’t bring the labor and input to the farm. Nurseries, for instance, couldn’t deliver the plants. Some of the main affected products include cucumber, snake cucumber, tomato, pepper, okra, and thyme.

The results of the survey show that small farms were more impacted by the lockdown. Most of the big farms were saved by people who stayed at farm for the whole period of the lockdown. In addition, we found that only the big farms obtained the government’s permission to bring additional labor to the farm and collect the products to bring them to the markets. 

Crop diversity and farmer’s seeds (like rain-fed vegetable crops) at farm within the community has been very important for communities far away from the city where access to food was more difficult. Crop production system like Ba’al, a rain-fed crop of the rural areas, less popular on the city market, has been an important source of income and food testifying the important contribution of diversity on the field which was further showed by this crisis.

Author Information

Nawal Al Hajaj

National Agriculture Research Center, Jordan

For more information please contact: nawal_alhajaj@hotmail.com