Kingdom sees bumper cereal harvest — Shahahdeh

AMMAN — High rainfall during last winter resulted in increased cereal yield during the current harvest season, especially in the northern region, Agriculture Minister Ibrahim Shahahdeh said on Thursday.

The minister said that the government has received a total of 20,113 tonnes of consumable barely and 40,122 tonnes of barely fodder from farmers, the Jordan news agency, Petra, reported.

Shahahdeh said that the government supports farmers through buying their wheat and barley at "excellent prices that are much higher than international rates", all with the aim of increasing local production of the strategic crops.

While only one million dunums of land in Jordan is used to grow wheat and barley, the country needs four million dunums of land to raise these major crops.

Farmers grow wheat across the country, but grains are mainly cultivated in Irbid and Houran plains in the north, Madaba and Husban in the central region and Arrabeh in the southern Governorate of Karak.

The Kingdom, which consumes more than 80,000 tonnes of wheat per month, imports over 96 per cent of its wheat needs as domestic production covers only around 4 per cent of demand.

Jordan imports the majority of its wheat from several countries, including Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Romania and the United States.