Amman — As Jordan’s agricultural land continues to shrink due to the fragmentation and multiplication of individual holdings, sales, urban expansion and changes in land use, experts are calling for measures to protect farmland and preserve its economic viability.
They propose establishing a legally binding classification for high-value agricultural land, prohibiting changes in its designated use except through an exceptional, justified and publicly disclosed decision, setting minimum subdivision limits, and allowing heirs to divide ownership shares within a single agricultural entity, such as a family company or cooperative. They also recommend directing population growth toward vertical development within cities.
Remote-sensing studies indicate that the built-up area in Irbid Governorate increased from around 2% in 1985 to approximately 11% in 2015. Agricultural land in Greater Irbid Municipality declined by about 10% between 2003 and 2015, while urban expansion increased by around 12%. During the second half of the last century, the built-up area around Irbid more than tripled 30 times.
These are not marginal lands. They include the fertile clay soils of the Hauran Plain, considered among the most productive rain-fed agricultural areas.
Specialists estimate that achieving self-sufficiency in wheat and barley would require around four million dunums, while the area actually cultivated does not exceed approximately one million dunums. Jordan’s self-sufficiency rate in wheat is estimated at only around 3%.
Experts say the agricultural census offers a rare opportunity to accurately measure the extent of land fragmentation and identify farmland that can still be protected. If its findings are not transformed into a binding protection map, they warn, Jordan will continue paying the price for growing wheat on land that becomes smaller every year. Every construction permit issued in the Hauran Plain, they argue, is effectively a food-security decision whose consequences will extend across generations.
The Rationality of Jordanian Farmers
Food security expert Dr. Fadel Al-Zoubi said the common mistake is to place responsibility on individual landowners.
“Farmers behave entirely rationally within a system that pushes them in one direction,” he said. A rain-fed dunum generates very little income that fluctuates with rainfall, while the same plot near an urban zoning boundary can be worth a fortune.
Inheritance then divides the land among heirs into small plots that are unsuitable for mechanized farming and generate little income, making selling the land for construction the only viable option.
Al-Zoubi added that when municipal boundaries were expanded following mergers at the beginning of the millennium, large agricultural areas were brought into urban zoning without adequately considering their productive value.
He said the influx of Syrian refugees after 2011 further intensified the pressure. Land-use studies in the Irbid Qasabah District showed that rising demand for housing accelerated construction at an unprecedented pace.
More seriously, however, the loss of agricultural land does not appear in any budget or annual report, he said. There is no official indicator measuring the number of fertile dunums removed from production each year, nor is there a body specifically responsible for tracking them.
“What is not measured cannot be managed, and what is not managed disappears silently — one dunum after another, and one construction permit after another,” he said.
Al-Zoubi stressed that the problem lies in legislation and planning rather than morality. Supporting wheat prices alone is not enough because it rewards the crop without protecting the land. An incentive price for a ton of wheat will not persuade someone to retain a two-dunum plot when its market value is equivalent to decades of agricultural income.
He proposed three clear steps.
First, Jordan should establish a legally binding classification for high-value agricultural land based on soil quality, slope and rainfall, with changes in land use prohibited except through exceptional, justified and publicly disclosed decisions.
Second, a minimum subdivision size should be established for such land, with mechanisms allowing heirs to divide ownership through shares in a single agricultural entity, such as a family company or cooperative, rather than physically dividing the land.
Third, population growth should be directed toward vertical construction inside cities and onto land with low agricultural value, supported by incentives related to the number of floors and licensing fees.
Al-Zoubi again emphasized that the agricultural census presents a rare opportunity to accurately measure the scale of fragmentation and identify land that can still be saved. If its results are not turned into a binding protection map, Jordan will continue paying the price for growing wheat on increasingly shrinking farmland.
Agriculture as a Strategic Resource
Dr. Nael Al-Dhaher, an expert in rural development and food security, said agricultural land in Jordan represents a strategic national resource that cannot easily be replaced, particularly given the country’s limited arable land, water scarcity, climate change and rapid urban expansion.
Protecting agricultural land from fragmentation is therefore no longer merely a planning or real-estate issue, he said, but an economic and development priority directly linked to food security, sustainable agricultural production and the protection of rural household incomes, as well as the rights of future generations.
Al-Dhaher said the danger of agricultural fragmentation lies in dividing land into small, scattered plots as a result of inheritance, multiple ownership, sales, urban expansion and changes in land use.
This weakens the economic viability of agricultural activities. As economically viable agricultural areas become smaller, production costs per unit rise, opportunities to use agricultural machinery and modern technology decline, and water management and agricultural infrastructure become more difficult and expensive.
Fragmentation also limits farmers’ ability to make long-term investments, weakens the competitiveness of agricultural products and may encourage some owners to abandon farming in favor of non-agricultural uses that provide faster financial returns.
In Jordan, Al-Dhaher said, the impact of fragmentation extends beyond individual farms to affect the national economy and rural development. The loss or fragmentation of fertile land in ways that prevent economically viable use reduces domestic productive capacity, increases pressure on natural resources and weakens employment and investment opportunities in rural areas.
He stressed, however, the need to distinguish between small agricultural holdings and economically damaging fragmentation. Small farms can be productive and profitable when they have access to appropriate technology, services and markets.
“The goal is not to eliminate small landholdings, but to prevent fragmentation that strips land of its productive capacity and to encourage joint economic management of holdings,” he said.
Al-Dhaher said the agricultural census offers an important national opportunity to move from estimating the scale of the problem to actually measuring it and developing policies to address it.
This can be achieved by identifying the number and size of holdings, their geographic distribution, production characteristics and patterns of agricultural management and use.
He called for census data to be linked with land records, geographic maps and satellite imagery to create a national map showing levels of fragmentation, identifying fertile land threatened by urban conversion and areas that can still be protected or where agricultural use can be reorganized.
Such an approach would turn statistical data into an effective tool for guiding public decisions and investments.
Required Measures
Al-Dhaher said the priority should be to develop an integrated system for protecting agricultural land based on legislation, spatial planning and economic incentives.
This should include clear controls on the subdivision of agricultural land according to its nature and productivity, while preventing the conversion of highly fertile land to urban uses except in cases of extreme necessity and under strict technical criteria.
He also called for encouraging the consolidation of holdings for joint production and management through agricultural cooperatives, long-term lease agreements and voluntary production partnerships.
Such arrangements could generate economies of scale and allow farmers to benefit from shared agricultural and marketing services without undermining property rights.
He stressed the need to design financial, financing and tax incentives that encourage landowners to continue using their land for agriculture and support young people’s investments in value-added agricultural projects.
He also called for stronger oversight of unplanned urban expansion and greater coordination between the ministries of agriculture and local administration, the Department of Lands and Survey, municipalities and research institutions.
Al-Dhaher said the implementation of the 2026 Land-Use Regulation System is particularly important in this regard, as it provides a framework for protecting agricultural land and limiting unplanned urban expansion onto it.
Protecting agricultural land from fragmentation should become a proactive national priority rather than a response to damage after it occurs, he said.
Agricultural land is not merely a real-estate asset that can be sold and divided, but a productive and strategic resource linked to food security, economic sovereignty and the sustainability of rural communities.
The fundamental message, he added, is that the cost of protecting agricultural land today is far lower than the economic and social cost of losing it in the future. Fertile land that is lost may never be recoverable, regardless of the level of investment.
Challenges to Agricultural Sustainability
Dr. Khaled Khreissat, executive director of the Academia-Industry Integration Platform, said the fragmentation and subdivision of agricultural land into small holdings is one of the most significant challenges facing agricultural sustainability and food security.
The consequences extend beyond geography to affect economic viability, he said, as economies of scale disappear, limiting the ability to introduce modern technology, machinery and smart technologies such as innovative irrigation systems and soil sensors.
“As a result, agricultural investment in small, fragmented holdings becomes a financial burden, prompting many farmers to abandon them or convert them into residential land,” Khreissat said.
This contributes to the accelerated decline of green areas and the degradation of the environment and water resources.
Globally, he said, the nature of the crisis varies according to agricultural and land-management policies and systems.
While European Union countries have successfully used land-consolidation mechanisms to restructure farms and improve their competitiveness and productivity, large areas of Asia and Africa are experiencing increasingly smaller holdings as a result of population growth and the fragmentation of inherited land.
This has weakened smallholder farmers’ ability to cope with climate and economic fluctuations.
At the regional level in the Middle East and North Africa, fragmentation is steadily increasing due to water scarcity and intense urban pressure on already scarce fertile land, in addition to inherited legal and social frameworks that make ownership and inheritance issues obstacles to agricultural consolidation.
Individualization of Land Ownership
At the local level, Khreissat said land fragmentation is the result of a historical process extending over more than a century.
Real-estate ownership shifted from the Ottoman-era tribal communal system toward individual ownership through surveying and land-settlement campaigns in the 1930s. At the time, these processes produced large holdings that were economically viable for growing strategic crops across the Irbid, Balqa and Karak areas.
However, successive generations and the application of inheritance laws, combined with population growth, successive waves of migration and horizontal urban expansion since the middle of the 20th century, led to a proliferation of extremely small holdings and a sharp decline in the average plot size.
The phenomenon was further aggravated by the expansion of jointly owned properties and the widening of municipalities’ comprehensive planning schemes at the expense of high-quality agricultural land.
This has made restoring the productivity of these lands an urgent necessity requiring action to address the effects of this historical legacy.
Khreissat warned that this trajectory poses a direct threat to both the near and distant future.
In the short term, fragmentation undermines the economic profitability of small landowners, raises operating costs and encourages the abandonment of agricultural land, leaving it vulnerable to desertification and soil erosion. It also increases ownership disputes over jointly held properties and raises the import bill for food commodities.
In the long term, continued fragmentation threatens the permanent and irreversible loss of historic green areas to concrete development, exposes national food security to complete dependence on foreign markets and supply chains, further depletes already scarce water resources and damages the local ecosystem and agricultural heritage.
Khreissat said the agricultural census is the most accurate diagnostic tool available to countries for measuring the scale of fragmentation and tracking its patterns over time.
Census data can provide a comprehensive digital map of landholdings by size, reveal the extent of micro-holdings and show how quickly land use is changing.
Without the findings of the agricultural census, he said, policies and legislation remain theoretical solutions. Census analysis, by contrast, allows policymakers to determine minimum subdivision limits, direct land-consolidation projects and design targeted investment incentives for associations and joint-stock companies managing contiguous agricultural areas.
To address the challenge institutionally, Khreissat said the next phase requires an integrated package of measures.
This should begin with updating legislation to establish minimum land sizes below which subdivision would be prohibited, activating land-consolidation laws and spatial land classification to prevent changes in designated use.
Jordan should also move toward flexible investment models, such as supporting the establishment of land-management companies or agricultural cooperatives that would enable small landowners to invest their holdings as a single unit.
Government support and smart services should be linked to the degree of consolidation of productive areas, while geographic information systems (GIS) should be used to manage the transition efficiently.
Source: Al-Ghad
