ELZUBI – Urban Expansion Consumes Farmland, Food Security the Greatest Loser

Food security expert Dr. Fadel ELZUBI explained that the common mistake is to blame the individual landowner. In reality, the farmer acts with complete rationality within a system that pushes him in one direction: a rain‑fed dunum yields meager and uncertain income, while the same dunum near municipal boundaries is worth a fortune. Inheritance then divides the land into small plots unfit for mechanized farming and incapable of generating meaningful returns, making sale for construction the only option.

ELZUBI added that when municipalities expanded their boundaries after the early‑2000s mergers, vast agricultural areas were absorbed into urban zoning without any assessment of their productive value. The Syrian refugee influx after 2011 doubled this pressure. Land‑use studies in Irbid’s Qasaba District showed that rising housing demand accelerated construction at an unprecedented pace. More alarming, however, is that the loss of farmland does not appear in any budget or annual report. There is no official indicator measuring how many fertile dunums exit production each year, and what is not measured is not managed—land disappears silently, plot by plot, permit by permit.

He stressed that the problem lies in law and planning, not morality. Supporting wheat prices alone is insufficient, as it rewards the crop but does not protect the land. A subsidized ton will not persuade anyone to keep a two‑dunum plot whose market value equals decades of agricultural income.

ELZUBI outlined three urgent steps:

1. Establish a binding legal classification for high‑value agricultural land—based on soil, slope, and rainfall—prohibiting changes in use except by published, reasoned exception.
2. Set a minimum subdivision threshold for such land, with mechanisms allowing heirs to share ownership in a single agricultural entity (family company or cooperative) instead of physically dividing the land.
3. Direct population growth toward vertical construction inside cities and on low‑value agricultural land, incentivized through floor‑count allowances and reduced permit fees.

He further noted that the agricultural census offers a rare chance to measure fragmentation precisely and identify land still salvageable. Unless its results are converted into a binding protection map, the country will continue paying for wheat grown on shrinking land. Every building permit in the Hauran plain is a food security decision with generational consequences, and must be taken with that awareness.