Expert: Eastern Agricultural Integration Begins with a Single Equivalence File
Jordan Can Lead Agricultural Integration with Standards and Laboratories
Amman5 min read
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The expert in food security and the managing partner of the Geneva Center for Studies and Research, Dr. Fadel Al-Za'abi, confirmed that agricultural integration between Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine will not begin with ministerial councils or framework agreements, but with small steps that build verifiable trust and respect the value of water, stressing that the first step is a Jordanian responsibility, because Jordan is the closest of the five countries to regulatory readiness and the most to lose from waiting.
Al-Za'abi said that he posed six questions to the speakers at the session he moderated on September 15 as part of the «Arab Mashreq Agricultural Exports Conference».
He explained that there is no regulatory system in the world that grants «absolute trust», the most stringent markets reject shipments and discover violations, and what can be built is verifiable and auditable trust, based on tracking records, certified laboratory results, and the right of the importing party to inspect. He believed that «mutual recognition» between the Mashreq countries is premature, because their systems are not equivalent in the first place, and the Gulf will not accept the weakest link in them as a standard for all.
He clarified that the practical path is for the most ready country to request Gulf recognition of the equivalence of its system commodity by commodity, on a joint verification platform, based on the principle of equivalence in the World Trade Organization Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, while protecting small farmers is not by easing requirements, but by transferring the burden of compliance from the individual farm to a collection unit, such as a cooperative society or an accredited packing house.
Al-Za'abi pointed out that the Green Corridor is subject to the same logic, as tariffs are not the problem, as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area exempted Arab goods from customs duties since 2005, and the problem is after the tariff.
He drew attention to the prohibition decisions issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture to protect its local seasons, the movement of Palestinian goods controlled by the occupation at its crossings, and the exhausted Lebanese institutions, in addition to Syria, whose «Caesar» law was lifted in December 2025 and was removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism in August 2026, but its laboratories, banks, and regulatory agencies have not yet recovered.
He added that the quintuple agreement becomes in this reality a document that is signed but not implemented, and the possible is bilateral corridors between those who wish, the first of which is a Jordanian-Syrian corridor through the Coordination Council, which held its first session in Damascus in May 2025 and included transport and trade on its agenda, and the second is a Jordanian-Iraqi corridor that begins with a previously announced agricultural calendar instead of sudden prohibition.
Regarding Gulf capital, Al-Za'abi believed that the idea of «a single agricultural investment destination» is attractive, but a prudent investor will not buy five legal systems, which are different in their political risks, as a single package.
He said that what can be unified is not the incentives, but the minimum developmental conditions that each country includes in its legislation, which are renting land not selling it, contractual farming with local farmers at a specified percentage of production, a supply quota for the local market, and measured water quotas granted from treated or surface water licensed not from new wells.
On water, Al-Za'abi stressed the need to dismantle the image of the «breadbasket of the region», as the Mashreq no longer has enough water to be self-sufficient in grains and fodder, and insisting on it produces a political self-sufficiency that depletes groundwater.
He confirmed that the correct criterion is water productivity, i.e. the added value and job opportunities for each cubic meter, and that the transformation by this criterion is not led by a specific crop, but a system that includes highly efficient protected agriculture, seed and seedling production, reuse of treated water, and rain-fed olives that depend on rain not groundwater. He explained that Jordan, with an individual share of renewable water of 61 cubic meters, cannot lead any self-sufficiency in grains or fodder and should not claim it, but it can lead what does not consume much water, from standards, laboratories, cooling chains, and expertise in irrigation and protected agriculture.
Al-Za'abi described the «Joint Ministerial Council for Agricultural and Water Resources» as an idea premature in its institutional form, as the Arab League has a ministerial council for water, and the Arab Food Security Strategy, approved by the Baghdad Summit in May 2025, provides an existing political umbrella.
He said that what is missing is not an additional council, but a regular exchange of drought data and monitoring of cross-border pests through existing channels, and reviewing the Yarmouk Agreement of 1987, which Jordan and Syria included on the agenda of their Coordination Council.
