This report provides evidence for enhancing water saving in agriculture in Jordan. We examine on-farm irrigation practices and water management; barriers and challenges to repairing, maintaining, and investing in irrigation infrastructure; and farmers’ beliefs about the linkages between groundwater depletion and agriculture. Based on this evidence, we identify farmer and farm characteristics as entry points for effecting changes.
Our results suggest that the major barrier to water saving in Jordan is not investment in watersaving irrigation technologies. Rather, the major barriers are farm managers’ inefficient on-farm irrigation practices and their mistaken beliefs about the relationship between agriculture and groundwater levels. Although developing value chains and linking farmers to markets may help to increase irrigation efficiency by alleviating constraints on access to parts and services for
equipment maintenance and repair, these investments are not likely to have an adequate impact on Jordan’s groundwater problems unless the challenges to reducing farm managers’ groundwater use are addressed. This means changing the practices of over-irrigation and sensitizing owners and managers to the role that agriculture has had on groundwater depletion in Jordan.