Jordan Valley - While farmers in the Jordan Valley struggle to keep working amid mounting challenges, the early growing season has suffered a fresh setback. Vegetable prices have fallen below production costs, a severe blow to farmers who had hoped the start of the season would bring good prices to cover preparation expenses and allow them to keep caring for their crops.
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With no marketing balance and rising input costs, the farming sector faces accumulated challenges that go beyond individual farmers' losses, reaching the stability of Jordan's food basket as a whole. The first harvests exposed the sharp gap between high production costs and low returns, turning the start of the season from an opportunity to make profits and meet obligations into a financial and emotional haemorrhage.
Losses and high costs
Farmers say early indicators for this season show no real improvement in selling prices, with crops still being sold for less than they cost to produce, causing continuing losses.
Farmer Ahed Al-Shobaki says: "In past seasons, we were used to starting with an ideal run, as prices are usually at their best during this period, because production is low compared with growing demand for vegetable varieties such as cucumbers, courgettes, aubergines and all kinds of peppers." He explains that this season is completely different. Although production is still at the start, selling prices are far below production costs, costing farmers heavy losses at a time when they most need to keep working.
He says that at this stage a farmer needs to spend more to protect the crops, and if they do not earn a good return from selling their produce, the situation will be disastrous. He points out that most farmers have been exhausted by spending huge sums on preparing land, buying seedlings and production supplies, and paying labourers and other costs. They had hoped the start of the season would bring the means to keep going, but the reality is entirely different.
He adds: "We are not talking today about making profits, but about stability and endurance. The farmer is now looking to reach the point of not making a loss, because he sees every day how his capital, effort and hard work are being drained over the past months." He warns that continuing the current situation will be a harsh blow to the farming sector in the Jordan Valley, which has suffered greatly in recent seasons from successive losses.
Farmer Mazen Al-Balawneh believes the current start to the farming season is not promising. Prices that should be good for farmers, given low production, are still poor. He explains that the burden has been increased by high costs, caused by a large rise in the prices of production supplies and labour wages, while exports have stopped and citizens' purchasing power has declined.
He says: "The season is still at its start, and we find ourselves unable to cover daily wages for workers to tend the land, or to buy the fertilisers and pesticides needed to care for the crops." He explains that liquidity is the farmer's lifeline, and that its absence at this early stage means complete paralysis before the peak of production.
Al-Balawneh stresses that every day a farmer lives under current conditions adds another loss to their debts. Production volumes are still small and prices are discouraging, failing to cover even marketing costs, including transport, packaging and central market fees. He points out that the farmer is caught between continuing to harvest to protect the seedlings, or stopping to limit losses, and both options mean a certain loss.
Farmers warn that the coming seasons will see a significant drop in cultivated areas if the government does not step in quickly, particularly on the prices of production supplies, migrant labour and debt. They stress that the continued decline in the sector's condition will directly affect its ability to continue, and to provide livelihoods for thousands of citizens.
Agricultural trader Nawash Al-Yazjeen believes governments bear most of the responsibility for the problem, through opening new markets, studying trade opportunities, encouraging investment in the marketing sector, and curbing the sharp rise in production supply and labour costs. He says the current situation of the farming sector in the Jordan Valley poses a serious threat to the sustainability of national food security, and requires urgent and fundamental government intervention to enable farmers to hold on.
Low production and falling prices
The head of the Jordan Valley Farmers' Union, Adnan Al-Khaddam, confirms that the start of the current season has stumbled, and warns that if things continue as they are, the crisis in the sector will worsen to catastrophic levels.
He points out that continued production in the rain-fed areas reduces demand for valley produce. This uncoordinated overlap of seasons floods markets with extra products, pushing prices down further.
He warns that if things stay as they are, small farmers will face a disaster, as they will not be able to withstand successive losses. He says: "Marketing has always been the biggest obstacle farmers face. The absence of exports to foreign markets, and the local market's inability to absorb the full production, have led to unfavourable results throughout past seasons."
Al-Khaddam adds: "The season is still at its start, the agricultural companies are demanding debt repayments, and the farmer is shackled by debt and unable to find the money needed to cover the farm's expenses, which may lead him to neglect caring for the crops. This has serious consequences for the season in the coming period as winter's 'forty days' approach." He stresses the need to reconsider the prices of production supplies, support basic materials, and expand the search for new export markets that ease the local surplus and protect farmers from collapse.
Market manager Eng. Ahmad Al-Khatalin says vegetable prices have dealt a harsh blow to farmers as the Jordan Valley's season began to produce. Data and figures show that selling prices in the central markets are far below actual production costs, meaning every new day of work turns into accumulated losses.
He attributes the fall in prices at the start of the season to the overlap between the valley and rain-fed seasons, which has increased supply in the markets, alongside the absence of exports to foreign markets. He explains that stable high temperatures played a key role in boosting vegetable production in the Jordan Valley and sustaining production in the rain-fed areas.
According to Al-Khatalin, the quantities reaching the market range between 120 and 140 tonnes a day. This is small compared with past seasons, and most selling prices are below actual production costs, meaning a loss for farmers at the start of the season.
Source: Al-Ghad. Reporting by Hatem Al-Adwan
