AMMAN —
The
Ministry of Agriculture has completed 17 initiatives out of 31 for the
current year within the national plan for sustainable agriculture for the years
2022–2025.
اضافة اعلان
The initiatives raised some eyebrows among experts
in the agricultural sector, with some stressing that these initiatives are
important, and others demanding more realistic solutions.
Of the 31 initiatives, eight were completed in the
first quarter of this year, seven others, of which five were completed, were
slated for the second quarter of this year, and eight were scheduled for the
third quarter; of these, three were completed. The remaining eight are to be
finished in the last quarter of this year; seven are still in progress.
The initiatives aim at sustaining agriculture
through a long-term plan whose goals include liberalizing the markets for
agricultural production requirements and poultry feed.
That could be attained through providing
agricultural loans to raise the efficiency of the agricultural and rural
sectors, launching the agro-industrial complex, as well as entering into
partnerships with the private sector to invest in plant stations.
Other goals include supporting
women empowerment
projects, and developing an agricultural innovation incubator.
The head of the plant-production division at the
Directorate of Agriculture in Irbid Governorate, Hashem Al-Omari, told
Jordan
News that “all initiatives benefit the agricultural sector as a whole,
farmers, as well as citizens”.
He added that “they are all part of a chain, and
when one is affected in a positive way it will affect the others in the same
way, including the government, which will reap the benefit from these
initiatives”.
Omari said that “these initiatives work to produce
crops and ensure high quality, in addition to strengthening the partnership
between the public and private sectors, and boosting self-sufficiency”.
“The importance of this plan lies in the fact that
it is long term, meaning that we will notice its impact over some years, and
thus it will achieve the desired sustainability in the agricultural sector,”
Omari pointed out.
Head of the
Jordanian Farmers Union Mahmoud Al-Oran
told
Jordan News he had “some observations” concerning the plan, most
notable the absence of meteorologists in it.
“We are currently witnessing climate change, and
many agricultural crops have been destroyed due to the harsh cold and extreme
heat.
Climate change and its impact on agricultural crops cannot be excluded
from the challenges that stand in the way of sustainable agriculture,” Oran
said.
Oran said that “farmers are going through difficult
circumstances, and facing new sets of challenges, most prominent of which are
financial, especially after two years of measures to deal with the pandemic,
and they need radical and immediate solutions to enable them to overcome these
challenges”.
“You cannot give them JD5,000 for example, when they
have to spend hundreds of thousands of dinars to rehabilitate their farms,
which incurred thousands of dinars in losses, and ask them to fix their
situation with this little amount,” he concluded.
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