Encroachers on farmlands deprived of all subsidies in 1st-time decision

Over 400 people have been stripped of all government subsidies as punishment for building on land officially designated for agricultural use, the Cabinet announced on Sunday.

The new penalty for encroachment on agricultural land is the government’s latest step in its effort to centralize control over agricultural resources in Egypt, where climate change, desertification, urban sprawl and population growth have made resource preservation and food security hot button topics.

But experts on rural affairs who spoke to Mada Masr warned of the impact the penalties could have on agriculture and questioned the alternatives presented to small-scale farmers who are being punished for building homes near the land they work. Others raised concerns about the lack of parliamentary checks over the decision, which directly targets those in need of welfare assistance.

The government has said that a lack of available housing is no longer an acceptable excuse for using agricultural lands unlawfully, since about twenty new cities have been built over the last eight years, and governorates have been expanded into the desert.

But rural sociologist Saqr El Nour told Mada Masr that these new housing alternatives aren’t as available in areas of the countryside where small-scale farmers live and poverty rates are higher. The new cities are purposed toward middle-income segments of a more urban population, said Nour, and only around five percent of the new housing is available in rural areas. The recently built residential units in New Minya, for example, said Nour, are located about 35 km away from any village in the Abu Qurqas region.

The new projects are “ghost villages,” said Farmers Syndicate head Hussein Abu Saddam, adding that they lack vital facilities and are located far away from farmlands. New housing alternatives need to be provided that are compatible with farmers’ work and living conditions, he said.

Depriving farmers of subsidies, especially on fertilizers, will also have a clear negative effect on the agricultural process itself, said Abu Saddam. “The new penalty contradicts the logic behind fertilizer subsidies, which are meant to support agriculture, not just the farmer as an individual.”

The subsidies ban has been applied in 485 instances of encroachment on agricultural land recorded since February 10 in nine governorates — Beheira, Qaluybiya, Daqahlia, Monufiya, Beni Suef, Alexandria, Sohag, Assiut and Qena, according to Sunday’s Cabinet statement. Encroachments in other governorates are currently being surveyed for similar punitive measures to be taken against offenders, said Cabinet spokesperson Nader Saad.

Sunday’s was the first instance of the punishment being enacted since the decision for it was ratified by the Cabinet in February, having been first brought up by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a speech in September last year.

Saad told television audiences in February that the decision to void access to subsidies did not require any legal preamble and could be implemented directly by the ministries of supply and agriculture. Both ministries are able to take decisions independently to cancel food ration cards, subsidized bread shares and fertilizer subsidies for the encroachers, he added.

However, an adviser to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, Heba al-Leithy, had previously told Mada Masr that canceling any form of subsidy as a punitive measure violates the Constitution, which stipulates that those in need have a right to support from the state. 

Amendments to existing social support laws, such as the social security law and the law on the Takaful and Karama cash benefit programs, would need to be made, said Leithy, or a new law should be issued to that effect.