Introduction

Purpose and Scope

With 53% of households vulnerable to food insecurity, Jordan’s “National Food Security Strategy, 2021-2030” report lists as exacerbating factors the “influx of Syrian refugees, decreased remittances from Jordanians working abroad, diminishing support to [the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], and lately, the outbreak of COVID-19”.¹“The National Food Security Strategy, 2021-2030”, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, June 2021, p. 6, available at https://jordan.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-10/Document%202%20-%20The%20National%20Food%20Security%20Strategy.pdf (Jordan, “The National Food Security Strategy”). These externally mediated crises should be viewed not as isolated shocks but as revealing the structural vulnerabilities of a food system that urgently requires reorientation toward food sovereignty.

Such reorientation must begin with centering the caretakers of the land. Despite being the lifeline of Jordan’s domestic food system, small farmers have only a few lifelines extended to them in terms of agricultural support, tenure rights, and social protections. At the same time, large-scale farms that could harness economies of scale for domestic food needs remain largely export driven. Jordan now imports over 95% of its food needs for wheat and barley and 100% of its needs for sugar²Jordan, “The National Food Security Strategy” – staple crops that once constituted important domestic industries³ Omar Al Atiyat, “History of the Sugar Industry in Jordan”, Jordan Heritage, 13 November 2017, available at https://www.jordanheritage.jo/reserches/activities-heritage/sugar-industry-in-jordan/ . It is therefore imperative to analyze the historical and political processes that have dislocated Jordan’s food system from the needs of its producers and consumers.

As of 2023, Jordan cultivated only 58% of classified arable land (2.09 million dunums – a unit of land measure equal to about 1,000m2 ) in a context where cultivated land has declined by a staggering 47% between 1983 and 2023.⁴Department of Statistics, “Jordan in Figures 2024” (Arabic), Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2024, available at      https://dosweb.dos.gov.jo/databank/JordanInFigures/Jorinfo_2024.pdf; Department of Statistics, “The Main Structure and Land Use in Plant-based Agricultural Holdings”, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 2007, available at https://dosweb.dos.gov.jo/DataBank/Analytical_Reports/Agriculture/census/papers/paper_2.pdf This trend is particularly concerning given that only 4% of Jordan’s land area is formally classified as arable.⁵Department of Lands and Survey, “Jordan’s Cadastre”, Presentation at the Improving Land Governance in Jordan: Towards Sustainable Development and Urbanization workshop, UN Habitat, 2024 (Department of Lands and Survey, “Jordan’s Cadastre”). However, there are questions about whether current land classifications and associated legislation reflect the country’s true agricultural potential and whether they adequately address the urgent need to protect agricultural land. In northwestern Jordan alone, an estimated 123,000 dunums of rainfed agricultural land were lost to urban encroachment between 2000 and 2015.⁶Rana N. Jawarneh, Ammar Abulibdeh, Nadeem Hashem, Muheeb Awawdeh, Talal Al-Awadhi, Meshal M. Abdullah, and Ahmed M. El Kenawy, “Assessing and predicting land cover dynamics for environmental sustainability in Jordan’s arid ecosystems using CA-Markov model”, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, Vol. 35, August 2024, available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2024.101262

Jordan’s agricultural potential is further undermined by the sweeping characterization of the country as “water poor” – a framing that overlooks agricultural traditions attuned to climatic stressors and the regional settler and extractive colonialism that exploits Jordan’s water resources.

The expansionist vision of a “Greater Israel” does not spare the fertile lands and resources of the Jordan Valley, long a target of colonial agricultural enterprise.⁷Al Jazeera, “Jordan condemns Israeli accounts for publishing maps that include parts of its territory” (Arabic), 7 January 2025, available at https://sl1nk.com/ztboka6 Moreover, the advancing genocide, ecocide, and weaponization of food and environment in Gaza and historic Palestine as a whole has laid bare how famine can be engineered in contexts where entire populations are denied sovereignty over their food, land, and natural resources.

Building on the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature’s (APN) research, advocacy, and on-the-ground interventions to support farmers in Jordan, this study traces the relationship between the aforementioned structural challenges and the emergent shocks that compound farmer vulnerability at different stages of the value chain. We focus on the lived realities of those who cultivate the land and the root causes that reproduce the conditions of their precarity and dispossession. We are particularly attentive to how fragmentation manifests across land systems, farmer-to-farmer relations, and accountability processes emanating from the commodification of land, production, and agricultural labor. In doing so, we avoid simplistic framings that homogenize farmers or romanticize smallholders or family farming without disentangling the capitalist processes that fragment agricultural production and engineer class divisions away from collective organizing and production systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to systematically document the full cycle of agricultural production in Jordan, from inputs to markets, informed by a food sovereignty perspective.

In parallel, we map the policies, entities, and institutional arrangements that govern food and agriculture, interrogating how agricultural challenges are often addressed in ways that return farmers to a pre-crisis, survival state, absorbing the very shocks that structural injustices generate. Through consultations with diverse actors, often positioned in tension within the food system, we seek to establish areas of consensus on key challenges and recommendations presented in this study, creating a space and basis for dialogue that bridges fragmented perspectives.

Methodology

We devised a mixed-method participatory approach that centers local food producers, small-scale farmers, and agricultural workers across three workstreams:

1. Qualitative data collection

Qualitative data was gathered from 19 focus group discussions (FGDs) and 15 interviews with farmers and agricultural workers across Ghor al-Shamali, Ghor al-Wast, Ghor al-Jnoub (in the north, central, and southern Jordan Valley, respectively), Zarqaa, and Mafraq, along with key informants and experts in Amman. While the study primarily focuses on small producers, who are often overlooked in national consultations and strategy processes, we also conducted interviews with medium- and large-scale producers to contextualize recurring challenges and gaps impacting food producers irrespective of their scale. Feedback loops were introduced that engaged experts and key informants throughout the collection stage.

1. Iterative processes of synthesis and validation of field data through consultations

Two consultations were convened as part of an iterative process of validation and synthesis of key challenges, existing pathways, and responsible bodies within the food system. The first consultation engaged 73 small-scale farmers and agricultural workers across the Jordan Valley, combining open plenary discussions, working group discussions, and focused surveys. The second engaged over 100 actors, including key decision-makers and policymakers, public institutions and agencies, NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs), unions and associations, institutions of knowledge production and dissemination, and the private sector. It also included 24 male and female small-scale farmers and workers, alongside large-scale farmers, brought together in a unique setting that allowed their perspectives to be heard in plenary and across all thematic working groups.

1. Parallel process of secondary research

The qualitative data and consultations were complemented by ongoing secondary research on conceptual and legal frameworks, structural drivers rooted in historical processes that materialize in contemporary policies and interventions, and strategies of food security and water governance.

The different workstreams were guided by eight key determinants of food sovereignty categorized in the three essential stages of agricultural production:

• Preparation: Access to and quality of land, water, and finance as a key prerequisite for food production.
• Cultivation: Access to quality pesticides, fertilizers, and seeds as vital agricultural inputs; and examining the essential role of agricultural labor through a rights-based lens.
• Post-harvest: Equitable participation of small farmers in post-harvest processing, distribution, and market systems as a critical determinant of their ability to secure fair prices and sustain livelihoods.

To provide focused and manageable analysis within the fixed timeframe of the study, we selected the Jordan Valley for the farmer consultation. As Jordan’s food basket, the region remains crucial to the realization of Jordanian food sovereignty, and its high concentration of farmers renders it a key site of analysis for understanding the structural challenges they face. The Jordan Valley has been the experimental grounds for agrarian reforms that have resulted in food system shifts. Its fertile alluvial soils and unique microclimate enabling year-round cultivation have been leveraged to increase production; however, its mineral wealth has increasingly brought agriculture into contention with resource extraction.⁸“The Jordan Valley”, Jordan Touristic Sites, available at http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/tourism4.html

To ensure our regional focus did not narrow analytical scope, the national-level consultation, additional targeted interviews, and secondary research helped address potential gaps.