Amman, May 30 (Petra) – Exactly 210 days after casting their wheat and barley seeds into the rain-fed soils of Jordan, the Kingdom’s farmers have begun their annual harvest. The arrival of early summer heat at the tail-end of May sparks an intensive reaping cycle that will sweep across the plains through June and July before wrapping up in August.

This year's harvest represents a stark divided landscape: a tale of two methods, where state-of-the-art agricultural machinery operates alongside centuries-old manual reaping techniques. Yet, both approaches share a common celebration. Following a highly favorable winter rainfall pattern, the 2025–2026 rain-fed (Ba'li) agricultural season has yielded a significant output, with farmers reporting a "season of abundance and blessings."

The Jordan News Agency (Petra) traveled across the country’s main agricultural belts, capturing a palpable sense of triumph among the farming communities. Wheat and barley serve as economic backbones for rural Jordan, yielding grain for local bakeries, milling flour, and providing straw (Tiben) for livestock feed.

The Mechanics of the Modern Machine
In the northern district of Al-Shajara within the Ramtha Governorate – famous for the expansive plains of Houran – 33-year-old Ali Adnan Al-Shbool monitors the horizon from the cabin of a advanced combine harvester. Al-Shbool, who inherited the trade from his father and grandfather, represents the technological leap that transformed Jordan’s large-scale farming over the last two decades.

"Modern technology has almost entirely replaced manual labor on large, flat tracts of land," Al-Shbool told Petra. "However, machine harvesting is dictated by strict thermal conditions. We require peak afternoon heat and zero moisture to ensure high-efficiency threshing – a benchmark we call Al-Qiyas (the thermal measure)."

Al-Shbool noted that while some historical years yielded higher figures, this season reached roughly 80 percent of optimal peak capacity due to its reliance on rain-fed conditions. Barley harvesting typically begins around mid-May, while wheat fields mature fully by early July.

According to Al-Shbool, a single dunam of barley yields between 250 and 320 kilograms of grain alongside high volumes of feed-grade straw. Wheat fields yield between 250 and 350 kilograms per dunam. The high-grade grains are hauled directly to Jordan’s official state silos, while the byproduct straw is sold directly to livestock owners.

The deployment of advanced machinery on flat plains drastically lowers operational overhead, with processing costs averaging 15 dinars per dunam of barley, inclusive of automatic sorting and bagging.

Preserving the Sickle and the Soil
In stark contrast, north of Zarqa, 60-year-old Abu Tariq and his sons still reap their smaller family plots entirely by hand using old-fashioned sickles. The rugged, fractured topography and compact size of their land holdings make heavy machinery impractical.

For manual harvesters, the operational schedule is completely inverted. "We cannot harvest in the heat of the day," Abu Tariq explained. "We work exclusively during Al-Barad – the cool windows just after dawn until 9:00 AM, and from late afternoon until sunset, when the breeze turns crisp."

Even bagging the threshed grain requires traditional weather literacy. It must occur during Al-Khumoud – a state of total atmospheric stillness with zero wind activity – which usually occurs during the dawn twilight.

"Our harvest goes entirely to feeding our own livestock, helping us cover our annual feed costs alongside the subsidized feed we receive from the Ministry of Agriculture," Abu Tariq added. "This year was exceptionally generous. We did have to artificially irrigate our crops during a brief drought spell in February, but the subsequent late-winter rains saved the season."

Abu Tariq, who has stood in Jordan’s harvest fields since he was seven years old, admitted that manual reaping is physically exhausting and that traditional community-help harvest circles have largely disappeared, replaced by paid manual labor. "The lifestyle has transformed," he reflected, "but the unmatched aroma of fresh wheat and barley left on the hot earth remains exactly the same."

//Petra// AA

30/05/2026 15:24:39