AMMAN — The
Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation signed an agreement with the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), through which the Dutch
government will grant Jordan an additional 4.14 million euros to finance parts
of the “Rural Economic Growth and Employment Project” implemented by the
Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO).اضافة اعلان
JEDCO has been
implementing the project over the past five years and will continue working on
the project in 2022.
The grant will
benefit women and Jordanian youth, according to Minister of Planning and
International Cooperation Nasser Shraideh, as well as smallholder farmers in
several governorates.
The minister said
that the grant aims to “increase the use of more modern agricultural methods,
and aims to start modernizing aspects of irrigation and water harvesting for
farmers, in order to increase the number of crops as well as enhance the
quality of such crops. These measures are done in response to the impact of
climate change”.
Under the
agreement, financial grants will be provided for projects in the Kingdom’s
governorates to harvest rainwater, reduce waste and use efficient irrigation
systems, which is a top priority for all stakeholders. The agreement was signed
by Shraideh and Regional Director of the Near East, North Africa, and Europe
Division in IFAD Dina Saleh.
Chairman of the
Jordan Environmental Union Omar Shoshan told
Jordan News that “this project is
not new by any means ... and has been ongoing since 2014”.
“While this new agreement seems promising, I
believe that some questions need to be asked. Primarily, I believe that the
appropriate stakeholders need to ensure that a sizable amount of the 4 million
euros provided by the Dutch government actually ends up being spent on the
agriculture sector, as opposed to being spent mostly on administrative fees at
IFAD, like wages, for example,” Shoshan said. “A 4.14 million euro grant to
Jordan can be good from an economic standpoint, but we need to ensure that the
agriculture sector will actually reap any benefits,” he added.
The projects
tied to the Rural Economic Growth and Employment Project used to lack
sustainability, Shoshan said.
“They would work
on small-scale short-term projects, but these projects did not present any kind
of long-term environmental stability for Jordan. Nearly 90 percent of past
projects were not sustainable. I hope this will change in the coming weeks,” he
added.
He stressed that
the agricultural sector is the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change,
and as such, any negative impact on it will negatively reflect on the food and
economic security of Jordan.
According to
agricultural engineer Motasem Abu Qamar, “the news of an additional grant which
will be spent on the agricultural sector strikes me as a positive step forward
for rural farmers. There are encouraging stipulations in this agreement, but
rural farmers continue to struggle with some issues, and I am not entirely sure
if this project will address these problems”.
“Mainly, rural farmers
struggle with the pricing system imposed on agricultural goods, which are often
too low for them to benefit in any serious way from their hard work. The lion’s
share of the profits goes to the entrepreneurs and the businessmen involved in
the agriculture sector, which often leaves farmers struggling. Hopefully, more
attention will be paid to this issue in the future through increased government
monitoring of market prices,” Abu Qamar added.
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