Mrs. Najah Ja’afreh, 40 years old, lives with her husband, who has been retired from the army for a few years with a pension of 245 JD – around 250 €, and their 7 children in a village called Rakin, in the Karak governorate in the south of Jordan..
Mrs. Najah owns a small plot of agricultural land of 4 dunums near her house on which she grows olive trees. But these olive trees suffered from drought, especially in the summer,without a source of irrigation. Mrs. Najah usually resorted to irrigating the trees once during the summer from her own drinking water, which cost her a lot of money, as the whole Rakin village suffers from drinking water scarcity in the summer. Despite her efforts, the lack of irrigation causes the quality of her olives to be very poor, which in turn keeps her income very low-to around 200 Jordanian dinars annually, she says.
When she heard about the Convenio “Improvement of water resources management in the agricultural sector to guarantee food safety in the Palestinian Territories and Jordan”, funded by AECID and the FPSC and implemented by JOHUD, in her village, she applied through a written application form to the Rakin Women’s Society, in order to obtain a pear-shaped cistern of 40 cubic meters for collecting the rainfall water and to be stored in the cistern to irrigate her trees combined with drip irrigation system. Her farm was then selected among 60 candidates by the local committee to be one of Rakin beneficiaries, according to a certain selection criteria, which takes into consideration the socio-economic situation of all beneficiaries.
The underground pear-shaped cistern that collects rainwater— previously collected from the roof of Mrs. Najah’s home—has been constructed in 2011, and since then hasbeen filled completely. She saysthis enables her to install a drip irrigation system not only to her olive trees, but she also became encouraged to plant different vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants, pepper) as under cropping.
The Field Supervisor in Karak, Eng. Rasha Tarawneh, met the beneficiary to follow up with her and to assess the impacts of the project.
The beneficiary said that her small agricultural project has done well to help her generate income, as her income has been increased from 200 JD yearly to 700 JD yearly, and she is convinced now on expanding the planted area so as to improve her family income, and to provide more products for her family consumption. She said that even the quality of olives has been improved after securing the supplementary irrigation for the trees, as well as saving the cost of irrigating with drinking water to the trees since water is now more easily available.
Mrs. Najar says that her new cistern has improved the life of her farm and made it more productive.