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ing chickpea production and expansion into ither areas will depend upon the
demand for consumption and exports.
The government should be seriously involved in establishing a cropping system
for crops in the rainfed area and legislatio, in this direction must be developed. If
a cropping system is followed, production and prices could be stabilized.
Discussion
D. Nygaard
Wheat is also planted late in Jordan sometimes; once the rain starts it is
difficult to get on the fields before February or March. Will the compromise
you suggest, intermediate planting date, land into a similar problem?
N. Haddad
No it will not. The reason is that, if wheat isdelayed to the end of January, the
crop will be very poor and it may be too late for planting the crop after that.
However, with chickpeas the situation is different. Since you can plant the
chickpeas as late as end of March, you will never lose your crop because of
delayed planting as in case of wheat, and under the worst situation you will
plant it as early spring chickpeas. Further, the area under chickpeas will be
very small compared to that under wheat, so it will be very eay to prepare the
land with a very short break in rainfall. Thus I believe that my suggestion for
an intermediate date of planting should work very well in Jordan and similar
countries.