Amendments to agricultural land maintenance law drafted

CAIRO - 8 December 2018: The government submitted to the House of Representatives amendments to law no. 38/1976 on agricultural land maintenance including articles 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6.

The goal of the amendments is rendering the development of field irrigation systems the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. Land owners would be obliged to give access to the ministry’s workers to assume the processes.

Later on, the ministry will prepare a report of all works done along with the costs so as landowners would pay back either at once or in installments over 10 months maximum. Failure to pay will incur a penalty which is a jail sentence of maximum six months, and a fine ranging from LE3,000 and LE20,000.

It would be the owners responsibility to clean drainage systems and maintain the field development projects executed on their lands.

The ministries of agriculture and irrigation have been working together to introduce underground sprinkler systems in five million feddans in the Nile Delta and Nile Valley. That would save 7 to 10 million cubic meters of water that can be used for land reclamation.

The target for this year is 260,000 feddans. Until June, the system has been introduced in 215,000 feddans in the governorates of Beheira, Kafr al-Sheikh, Sohag, Minya, Qena, Luxor, Beni Suef, Asyut, Sharqeya, and Daqahleya.

The goal of the project is substituting surface irrigation which is still the most common method worldwide. The funds constitute €35 million from the French Development Agency, $100 million from the World Bank, $60 million from the European Federation of the Associations of Dietitians (EFAD), and $35 million from OPEC.