AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND FOOD SECURITY IN JORDAN

Abstract

Jordan is a country with limited land and human resources available for agricultural development and utilization. With the gap widening between food products and consumption demand, the need has grown for an adequate response from agricultural activities towards development efforts. The present study is based on the information available to the author. It includes a compilation of the economic agricultural land, human, water and animal resources as well as an exposition of the agricultural development plans between 1963 and 1980. It also assesses the achievements of the agricultural development plan, which laid the foundations and adopted the concept of national food security, and tried to achieve this security through carrying out agricultural developmental projects and building storage silos to secure a strategic stock of cereals and other foodstuffs. The concept of food security goes back to the early 1960s when the international community was faced with famines ravaging entire continents, not to mention malnutrition affecting millions of human beings.