DEIR ALLA - A group of young women sat around a table in a small room, manufacturing household accessories and decorations out of date palm tree leaves.
Quickly absorbing their trainer's directions, the women started fashioning accessories and decorations from a single green leaf.
Twenty-two-year-old Mai Zu'bi said she enrolled in the training course three days ago and has already learned how to make furniture and household accessories from palm tree materials.
"I heard about this course from a women's society and realised that instead of wasting my time, I could actually learn a vocation to secure my future," Zu'bi told The Jordan Times.
"I am now considering starting a small business with my friends and sisters for selling these items," she added with a shy smile.
Mathayel Huwayat, head of the rural women's cooperative society in Deir Alla, told The Jordan Times that wicker tables are sold for JD100-JD150 in the local market, while accessories made from date palm leaves sell for JD2.
The training course, which teaches local residents, particularly women, how to produce handmade household accessories and furniture out of palm tree materials, is part of the USAID-funded Date Palm Nursery and Training Centre.
Under the $115,000 initiative, which was launched in April 2006, date palms are cultivated, while providing the local community with palm tree-related vocational training.
A 60-dunum area, owned by the Jordan Valley Agriculture Department, was planted with 1,800 date palm saplings which will be distributed to farmers to encourage them to plant water-saving crops.
"Date palms are one of the best revenue-generating crops that use limited amounts of water," Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development Project Coordinator Mohammad Nueimi told reporters during a media tour of USAID-funded projects on Thursday.
He noted that palm trees require little water and can be irrigated with saline water.
"One tonne of dates are sold in external markets for around $3,000. If farmers were given the right directions and use good date palm nurseries, that same tonne can be sold for up to $10,000," Nueimi added.
"We are trying to encourage farmers to shift from conventional cultivation, which consumes large amounts of water and does not generate equal revenue, to more efficient crops," he said, adding that a mere 8,000 dunums in the Kingdom are currently planted with date palms.
Starting next year, palm tree saplings will be sold for JD5 apiece to farmers, who will then plant and cultivate their own date palms, according to Nueimi.
"After three years, farmers will provide us with new saplings, which will then be sold to other farmers and so on," he noted, adding that the project aims to increase the areas planted with palm trees by 200 dunums annually.
According to Nueimi, the Jordan Valley is suitable for planting date palms, especially the area extending from Kraimeh to north of the Dead Sea.
Another pioneering project aiming at improving water management in the Kingdom is the five-year Community-Based Initiatives for Water Demand Management Project.
Funded by USAID and implemented by Mercy Corps, an international relief agency, 150 grants of JD7,000 were distributed to several community-based organisations (CBOs).
The CBOs, in turn, have provided financing for farmers to support and encourage water-saving and water-efficient projects.
Recently funded projects included the use of rainwater harvesting cisterns and reservoirs, drip irrigation, agricultural canal maintenance and spring improvement.
Mercy Corps coordinator Zeid Hatoqei said 70 CBOs who received grants distributed 866 loans, adding that 60 per cent of these loans were used for water-harvesting projects.
Ziyad Horat, who heads the Abu Zeighan Society in Deir Alla, said the society was able to distribute loans to 14 farmers with the JD7,000 grant.
One of the loan recipients, Ali Saleh Hwarat, said the financing helped him shift to a drip irrigation system.
"Previously, I used to water my 22-dunum farm planted with tomatoes using surface irrigation which consumed time, effort and money, but didn't positively impact the quality or quantity of the produce," the 62-year-old farmer said, adding that using drip irrigation has helped increase production by around six tonnes.
By Hana Namrouqa
© Jordan Times 2008
