Olive oil harvest in Jordan hit hard by climate change and farmers experience drastic reductions in yields

(MENAFN- Jordan Times) AMMAN - A source of income for thousands of Jordanian families and a sizzling commodity present in all households across the Kingdom, olive oil has not escaped the impacts of climate change on food production in Jordan. Hasan Smadi is an olive farmer in Ajloun, a town in northern Jordan, some 76 kilometres north west of Amman. He pressed the first patch of his olive harvest for this year on October 22. To his disappointment, that patch, which included 50 kilogrammes of olive fruits, only yielded six kilogrammes of olive oil. The 48-year-old, who inherited his land from his father and his grandfather before him, has been a farmer for most of his life. He noted that this season has been particularly difficult with the felt impacts of climate change taking a toll on his harvest. Smadi, an agricultural engineer, added that the reduced amount of extracted olive oil“was not surprising” to him, considering the difficult weather conditions which impacted the ...