AMMAN —
According to Director-General of the
National Agricultural Research Center Nizar Haddad, farmers should start using modern agricultural methods and begin
growing new and unconventional types of vegetables and fruits in order to
improve the sector and their welfare.
اضافة اعلان
Farmers have been
complaining about challenges they face habitually – lack of water, shrinkage of
agricultural land, high prices of production input and, this winter, frost that
damage crops.
According to
Haddad, however, the current year is “an excellent agricultural season” due to
the loans granted by the
Agricultural Credit Fund, “in addition to the great
Royal interest in the sector” and the government’s allocation of “significant
sums of money” to agriculture.
While admitting
that the sector faces challenges, he instated that the credit fund helps
farmers, “who are going through good conditions”, so “we have to shed light on
both positive and negative” aspects.
“The Agricultural
Credit Fund is always ready to support farmers, and any new ideas aimed at
improving the agricultural sector are supported by the fund,” he added.
Farmers say they cannot afford credit, equipment under present situation
He also suggested
taking measures to counter some of the external factors that impede the
sector’s development.
“There are global
negative factors that may hinder farmers, most notably the high prices of
production inputs, but why do we not go toward producing fertilizers locally,”
he asked.
Head of the
Jordan Farmers Association Ibrahim Al-Sharif told
Jordan News that “the use of
modern equipment for agriculture does not work, especially since there are
certain things in agriculture that must be done by hand, and equipment cannot
be used to accomplish them”.
Moreover, “such
equipment is very expensive and farmers cannot incur more costs”, he said,
stressing that many farmers go through difficult conditions, “and a
large number may end up bankrupt and in prison”.
Sharif pointed out
that the winter frost “reduced production and inflicted great losses on
farmers. The quantity of production from now until June is moderate, and there
is no surplus production like in previous years due to the impact of frost
waves, which is reflected on products until now”.
Farmer Bassel Ramadneh told
Jordan News that “farmers face great challenges, and the
situation is going from bad to worse”, adding that “global conditions, starting
with the consequences of the
COVID-19 pandemic and passing through the
Russian-Ukrainian crisis, greatly affected farmers”.
According to him,
“the government should develop a medium- and long-term plan to help
agriculture, which is an indispensable sector”.
“Alternative
solutions are not possible at the present time due to the lack of liquidity
among farmers and because of the high production costs,” he said in response to
Haddad suggestion.
“Taking a loan from the
Agricultural Credit Fund is useless since farmers cannot pay their financial
obligations under these difficult circumstances and in the absence of
production,” he said.
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