Monitoring Agricultural Drought in the Near East - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 210

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Table 16.2 Agriculture in the Near East countries

Importance of Main crops

agriculture (in order of importance, most important first) a

% Agricultural

% GDP b workers c Country 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Algeria 11 26.0 WHE POT BAR WAT CIT ONI OLI

Egypt 18 40.0 SUC WHE MAI CIT SUB POT WAT

Iraq n.a. 16.0 WHE BAR WAT CIT POT GRA MAI

Israel n.a. 4.1 CIT WAT POT WHE COT GRA ONI

Jordan 3 15.3 CIT POT OLI WAT WHE ONI BAR

Lebanon 12 7.3 CIT SUB POT GRA WAT OLI ONI

Libya n.a. 10.9 WAT POT OLI ONI WHE CIT BAR

Morocco 25 44.7 WHE SUB BAR CIT SUC POT OLI

Syria n.a. 33.2 WHE SUB COT BAR OLI GRA POT

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Tunisia 13 28.1 WHE OLI BAR WAT POT SUB ONI

Turkey 15 53.1 WHE SUB BAR POT WAT GRA ONI

Line
——
5.3
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Norm
PgEn

So urce: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on-line FAOSTAT database ( http://www.fao.org) and
W ord Resources Institute, Washington, DC ( http://earthtrends.wri.org).
a BA R: barley; CIT: citrus; COT: cotton; GRA: grape; MAI: maize; OLI: olive; ONI: onion; POT: potato;
SU B: sugar beet; SUC: sugarcane; WAT: watermelon; WHE: wheat. Ranking based on production figures.
b Pe rcentage contribution to GDP from agriculture.
c A gricultural workers as a percentage of the total labor force.

80 % of all the water used in the Near East (Margat and Vallée, 1999). In
su mmary, the livelihoods and food security of large population segments
in the Near East depend directly or indirectly on weather conditions.

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D rought in the Near East
Regardless of the degree of aridity, precipitation variability is considerable
in the Near East. Figure 16.2 shows the annual rainfall variations for three
stations in different moisture regimes across a considerable annual pre-
cipitation gradient (150-1000 mm). It is evident from figure 16.2 that high
rainfall variability is not confined to the low rainfall areas of the region. The
large amplitude of the variations is typical for the region and predisposes it
to drought. The patterns of drought in the region are extremely variable in
their spatial and temporal dimensions. Some droughts are severe enough
to affect the entire region from Morocco to Iran, and well beyond, into
Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Although droughts can have a regional scale, their effects can be very
local. In Syria the drought of 1999 initiated a severe decline in the pro-
ductivity of the rangelands and barley areas at the steppe margins, which
continued for several years. However, the drought had comparatively little
effect on the production of wheat and tree crops in the higher rainfall areas,
which recovered from 2000 onward. This variability of drought patterns at