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Analysis of the agricultural situation in Azraq Basin
German-Jordanian Programme “Management of Water Resources”
35
Ownership
Often, owners are also the managers on the farm, living on the farm or in
the city of Azraq, or spending at least some days of the week on the farm.
They are the most professional of the farmer types in Azraq, and have
good technical knowledge. They also follow closely the marketing of their
products.
Most of them originate from the area and come from families who have
always practiced farming.
Type of crops
Legal status
Use of water
Fruit trees or grapes are planted as plots, no co-planting is observed.
Grapes and pomegranates are more intensively grown than olive trees are.
Most of these farms have a legal well, but surprisingly 51 , not all farms
have legal land.
Irrigation systems and practices:
It is in these farms that examples of water-saving initiative can be seen.
For olives, sub-surface irrigation systems are installed, saving up to 2/3 of
water compared to traditional localised irrigated olives. Mainlines are
buried, and the trees are irrigated by open tube or virojet. In the case of
grapes, GR is often used.
The average water consumption is 390 m 3 /du/yr. This is most probably
underestimated, as it is less than the theoretical water requirement of
olive trees 52 .
Awareness and water bill:
Farmers are aware of the water resource limitation.
60% of farmers pay their water bill.
Source of energy
Equipments
and inputs
Workers
Repartition of
production costs
Profitability
Remarks
Representativeness
of our sample
40% are still working with diesel pumps (energy accounts for 47% of production
costs when using diesel, 22% when using electricity), but are trying to
get connection to electricity. The rest are connected to electricity.
These farms are well equipped with farm machinery and equipment
(tractors, sprayers...); some even have refrigerated trucks to send produce
(grapes) to the Amman Central Market. As there is good technical
management, the price of agro-inputs is limited to 12% of total production
costs on average.
2 to 3 permanent employees or family members work on the farm.
The harvest of olives is done by seasonal workers hired and supervised
by the manager (not dhaman).
Average costs
= 145 JD/du
Average for all farms
%
water cost
%
energy cost
%
labour cost
%
input cost
11% 34% 49% 12%
With good management, profit can be relatively high when farms are fully
productive (130 JD/du/yr on average).
Some farms have developed strategies (through projects) to get a higher
added value from their production. One farms was Global Gap certified, and
another was organic farming certified.
On our sample, 60% of owners have another income apart from the farm.
Some farms changed the crop varieties or abandoned part of their fruit
trees as it needs too much water.
14% of the surveyed farms in Azraq belong to this type (5 out of the 36),
which would mean that 84 farms in Azraq belong to this category. We think
it is representative of the reality. In total, it would represent 20000 du,
namely 23% of irrigated agricultural land in Azraq.
51 Having a legal land is a legal condition to legalise the farm’s well.
52 Water requirements for olive trees are estimated to be around 700m 3/dunum/year according to Irrigated agriculture,
water pricing and water savings in lower Jordan River Basin, JP Venot, 2007.