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Safe land possession
Background
The rural inhabitants are usually ignored although they comprise tens of millions of poor and marginalized persons, whose numbers increased with the virtue of laws’ implementations, natural catastrophes, land privatization, forests’ destruction and widening in the commercial agriculture. Rapidly, great part of the rural land is isolated to comprise poverty, resources fall down in addition to depriving farmers from land possession. It is not acceptable that the food producers (agrarian labourers) are the poorest categories in the community that enjoy fewer opportunities for the nutritional safety.
Therefore, many conferences oblige the governments to guarantee the rights of the poor farmers in food and safe land possession in addition to achieving fair distribution of the agricultural and commercial possession in order to improve their living conditions, develop their capacities and resources and activate them to participate in policies making.
These conferences assert the protection of the farmers’ right in safe land possession that improve their conditions and promote the rural development. The poor groups in the countryside have nothing but excessive usage of land in order to feed their families because of their poverty, absence of credit services, unsafe land possession, non-compensation throughout the occurrence of the natural catastrophes, non-education and weak participation in decision making. We couldn’t blame the poor farmers because they threaten their natural resource because they do such violations for survive. Therefore, by securing the safe land possession, we will protect our resources and guaranteeing the humanity future of food. It is a necessity for the life continuity and the protection of the poor farmers affected negatively by the economical policies.
World governments and international organizations ask for promoting the fair development and protecting the natural resources struggling against the allegations stipulated by the policies of the international trade organizations that the farmers’ land possession will impact negatively the production and the national nutritional safety. Oppositely, many studies all over the world assert that there is a conversed relation between the cultivated area and its production. Moreover, the big farms condense its production in order to achieve more profits, press the land, evict the labourers, use the machinery because of its few cost and make use of the chemicals that impact negatively the healthy and clean food. The small farm managed by the family protects both the natural resources and farmers’ lives.
The international conferences and the right of land possession:
Through the International Conference for Land Reform and Rural Development organized by FAO in 1979, the governments asserted the necessity to guarantee land possession of farmers in order to destroy the poverty and protect the resources. Throughout Land Summit held in Rio in 1992 and the International Summit for Food held in Roma in 1996, the governments and the international organizations called for protecting the rights of the rural poor in addition to the other agricultural productive needs. They asserted that development couldn’t be achieved without safe land possession. The conferences of FAO and UN as Stockholm Conference in 1972 assert that the governments have to promote the rights of the rural poor by implementing alternative legalization and policies that improve their conditions and incomes. Moreover, the governments have to create methodologies for the rural development in order to protect the land and the natural resources. It may be accompanied with fair distribution of the wealth and activating the rural poor to participate in planning the public social and economical policies.
Safe land possession in Egypt
The experiment of agricultural reformation in Egypt contradicts with all UN conferences related to safe possession of land and the right to have access to land. This experiment that led to the implementation of law no. 96 of 1992 that expelled a big number of farmers from the arable lands and violated the right of farmers to a safe possession of land. Implementing of that law turned arable lands into consumption goods whose owner may rent for one year, one agricultural season or half a year with a high rent value. Accordingly, farmers lost the feeling of a safe possession of land and lost access to bank loans as well as access to a better land management. Farmers stopped caring for the land and think only of getting the utmost out of it.
Protection of the right to a safe possession of land requires changing that law so that it determines five years as a minimum for land tenure. Law must also determine a minimum and a maximum for tenure value according to the net profits of one feddan of arable lands in Egypt. Studies assured that the net profits of best quality lands do not exceed 1500 pounds. The new law must guarantee access to credit for farmers with an interest rate that does not exceed 4% as it is a civil not a commercial interest.
Law must also guarantee farmers’ participation in determining the policies related to farming and to their lands. Farmers should be motivated to establish their own associations. In the meanwhile, the government must stop hindering the existing associations from supporting the farmers in a fair way not for the sake of trade. The law must also include guarantees to compensate farmers in case of any natural disasters.