Innovation and creative marketing are a key (and necessary) component of young farmers in Jordan who are faced with a severe set of natural resource restrictions. They are rising to the challenge!
Young farmers are combining concepts to capitalize on participating in agriculture as a social good.
One of our Agricultural Cooperation for Development (AC4D) project’s early hydroponic adopters in Northern Ghor is building an agrotourism business around his family’s conventional farm. He is installing highly efficient hydroponic greenhouses which he is allowing tourists to work in as an exchange for room and board in the Jordan Valley.
Another young date farmer, just out of college, whose farm neighbors ours, is using highly efficient underground irrigation to build a legacy for his family.
Our AC4D team has spent the last two years helping a young woman develop a rooftop hydroponic farm which produces microgreens via an Arab women’s NGO.
The AC4D program partners with small farmers, locally run NGOs, and agricultural research groups to provide smallholder famers with immediately adoptable and cost-effective technologies and best management practices.
The solutions being adopted are hydroponics and active deferment with cover cropping in the open fields. These practices directly address the most salient water and soil quality issues in our region. Educating farmers about land and water management strategies is an important factor in their ability to provide high quality food in an environment of ecological and marketing changes. Supporting farmers with strategies to improve the quality, quantity and price of their produce constitutes a tangible support to the populations that they feed.
