Agriculture’s Thirst for Water: Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

By Ashley Pacheco

I came across an agency called the International Program for Technology and Research in Irrigation and Drainage (IPTRID) that aims to assist developing countries in the Mediterranean Basin identify research needs, and implement national research, development and technology transfer programs for water conservation. Because of the limited availability of water in many areas, agriculture, in the years to come, will face a drastic reduction in its share of water use, thereby allowing inadequate quantities for other uses. Therefore, irrigated agriculture now faces two priorities: increase productivity of water for crop production and save water for other uses. Mediterranean countries face these challenges, where the rate of water withdrawn is often close to or higher than the rate of renewal. One country that is facing a great crisis is Jordan. The IPTRID has taken the initiative and are looking at two main aspects that will help stabilize Jordan’s water use; water saving technologies and the use of marginal quality water.

Water is scarce in Jordan and water demand is already higher than the available supply. This problem is greatly enhanced since Jordan relies heavily on agriculture because it allows high value crops to be exported to balance the countries deficit. Jordan has been innovative in the use of nonconventional water for agriculture, even before the IPTRID came into the picture. It has now been admitted that treated wastewater has been an increasing part of Jordan’s agricultural water supply. Along with the fact that this raises some serious environmental problems, there are also the health implications that arise from exporting food produced with mixed fresh water and wastewater.

There have been many incentives to reallocate agricultural water to municipal and industrial uses due to Jordan’s decreasing freshwater supply. This means that an even larger portion of the water used in the irrigation process will unfortunately be wastewater. This mixing also leads to poorer quality of irrigation water and of soils, which will cause a downward spiral of deterioration in Jordan’s agriculture.

Jordanian Farm

To correct the obvious problems plaguing Jordan’s water resources there must be improvements made to its irrigation efficiency. This will allow Jordan’s crop production to be sustained or increased as well as act as a way to save water that can be used for other purposes. Because the annual water withdrawal in Jordan is 25 percent larger than the renewable freshwater this improvement is essential to Jordan’s survival. In Jordan they are currently forced to exploit their groundwater at such a high rate that it is not being replenished fast enough.

At present the harvesting of rain water is hardly ever practiced in Jordan. Irrigation in the uplands represents more than half of the irrigated surface using almost exclusively groundwater whose quality makes it more appropriate for domestic use, therefore since 1992 drilling wells for irrigation has been forbidden. The National Centre for Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer estimates that around 10 percent of rainfall on the uplands could be captured by means of basin-level water harvesting methods using small dams to recharge groundwater aquifers and using them as storage for municipal and industrial uses and irrigation. By doing this Jordan will have enough water to easily cover the deficit that is troubling them due to their overexploitation of ground water.

Wasted Rain Water

Also, the irrigation system in Jordan is being run on a rotational delivery system which is proving to use an excessive amount of water. It has been shown, through initial simulations, that it is possible to operate the farms using an on-demand process. The agency found that there was significant water savings of up to 30-60 percent of irrigation water on certain farms. If farmers accept the new delivery system and Jordan implements initiatives to explore the collection of rain water they will be able to sustain their water demands for years to come.

Resources

http://www.fao.org/landandwater/iptrid/index.html

www.fao.org/landandwater/iptrid/EN/about.html

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119925607/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.jordantimes.com/img/3000/3158.jpg

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