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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Tenants' fate
By Sherine NasrThe economic and social repercussions of the agricultural tenant law passed in 1992 and implemented in October 1997 are still causing debate among agricultural experts, academics, and above all, the tenant farmers who have been most affected by the law.
Issued as part of the government's economic reform programme, the law put an end to the 40-year-old Agrarian Reform Law which had been one of the main pillars of the government's socialist policy after the 1952 Revolution.
During a seminar recently held at the Land Centre for Human Rights, critics of the law questioned whether it will deliver the economic dividends that it has promised -- expanding agricultural land and raising farmers' living standards. They allege that the law, which was implemented on a one-million-feddan area, has negatively affected the economic welfare of at least 700,000 tenant farmers.
By virtue of the law, land rents have multiplied more than fivefold their original rates which averaged an estimated LE120 per feddan annually. Statistics show that total rents paid by tenants to landowners in 1993 -- one year after the law was implemented -- soared to LE279 million as the rent per feddan jumped to an average high of LE660. The fact that annual crop return per feddan now stands at almost LE500 on the average means that the tenant farmer now pays LE160 over and above his land's net return. This means declining income and declining living standards for the majority of tenant farmers.
According to Mahmoud Mansour, a professor of agriculture at Al-Azhar University, small farmers who own less than five feddans constitute almost 95 per cent of the nation's farmers and control approximately 67 per cent of total agricultural land.
"My children had to quit school two years ago because I could not afford to pay the fees. Now, I have become unemployed and homeless after I was driven out of my land because I could not pay the rent," said Mohamed Bastawisi, formerly a tenant farmer on four feddans in the governorate of Gharbiya.
These negative repercussions have not only hit individual farmers but have had an effect on a national scale as well, says Salah Sadiq, a professor of law and administration at El-Sadat Academy, who is currently involved in a lawsuit contesting the constitutionality of the 1992 tenant law. "The abandoned lands' agricultural yield is now being depreciated because a portion of this land is being exploited for non-agricultural uses," Sadiq said. He added that large plots of productive land have been sold for millions of pounds for construction purposes, wasting good agricultural land forever.
The country's animal wealth has also been victimised by the law, counter its critics. "When the law was first implemented, there were seven million productive cows In less than two years, the number has dwindled to four million cows and the rest were sold at a very low price," said Mohamed Abdou, a member of a non-governmental committee which has been formed to champion farmers' rights.
Wasted as well will be the Egyptian farmers' age-old skills and their potential to maximise the utilisation of tilled land. "The Egyptian farmer is capable of yielding the utmost productivity per feddan, because of the elaborate methods he applies despite the complete lack of modern technology," said Abdou.
Controversy over the issue has been politicised. Protest rallies were held by opposition parties and human rights groups, claiming that thousands of small farmers have been forcefully evicted from the land and have been made destitute because of the law.
"When farmers failed to pay their rents, local authorities resorted to the police to confiscate the tnants' harvests and expel them from their land," Sadiq said.
"According to the law, landlords are allowed to expel tenants from land they have been farming for generations if they cannot pay the exaggerated rents forced upon them," says Fathi Abdel-Fattah, a writer who is active in opposing the law. "No reference was made to expelling farmers when the law was first discussed. There was only talk of raising the rents."
Several lawsuits filed by farmers against their landlords have culminated in a suit before the Supreme Constitutional Court contesting the constitutionality of the new tenant law.
Abdou argues that the law has no relation whatsoever to the current privatisation programme. "It has simply been tailored to benefit a handful of already wealthy landlords," he said.
When the law was passed in 1992, the government attempted to compensate affected tenants by promising to reinstate them on lands in newly reclaimed areas. "This is no solution. It is a joke," said Abdel-Fattah, explaining that reclaimed lands need highly advanced techniques to become productive, something that is beyond the means of the majority of small farmers. The promise also contradicts the government's policy of allocating the newly reclaimed lands to major investors with large financial potential.
"We are not against the concept of private ownership, but we strongly object to the idea of destabilising the lives of the people who make up one of the biggest sectors of Egyptian society and disturbing the well-established agricultural policy in as huge an area as one million feddans," said Abdel-Fattah.
Mohamed El-Sayed Said of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies says that the law has provided no alternative to farmers. "They really have no choice. The government has provided them with neither compensation, nor low-interest loans which would enable them to buy other lands. They did not receive any funding so that they could be rehabilitated into another profession," he said. "By so doing, the government has definitely succeeded in increasing the number of the unemployed."
Said said that unless farmers unite, "in order to put pressure on the government, they will remain marginalised."
