Living in in A’aba village that lies on the west of Jenin, Palestine, Basem is the breadwinner for his wife and four children, out of which two are university students. Like the rest of Palestinians, Basem and the rest of the farmers in his community struggle with the high cost of irrigation water threatening the continuation of their farming practices despite the availability of land and fertile soil.

Farmer Field Schools (FFS) have been identified under the Water Productivity (WP) component of the regional project ‘Implementing the 2030 Agenda for water efficiency/productivity and water sustainability in NENA countries’, as a key activity to increase and enhance water productivity. Within this activity, Basem and 16 other farmers who own greenhouses cultivated with cucumbers, were trained on good agricultural practices to increase water productivity and efficiency in irrigation. To evaluate the intervention, one greenhouse belonging to a farmer who has joined the FFS was compared with another greenhouse that was not included in the intervention; the result of this comparison showed that the returned income went up by 42 percent. This reflects that the potential in cucumber cultivation can be capitalized on by tackling the water management aspect to improve the livelihoods of many farmers in A’aba and their families.