Egypt loses 8K feddans of arable lands over 8 years

CAIRO – 24 August 2019: Over the past eight years, Egypt has lost 8,014 feddans of arable lands due to 1.9 million cases of encroachment and violations, said the Central Department for Land Protection at the Ministry of Agriculture in a report issued on Saturday.

The encroachments include illegal construction on the Nile’s banks and Delta, unlicensed fish farming, as well as industrial waste and other forms of pollution. Since January 2015, the Ministry, in cooperation with the concerned security bodies, has launched a campaign to remove violations detected by the government on the Nile banks.

According to the Ministry’s report, a total of 695,727 violations of encroachment on the arable lands have been removed on 33,421 feddans since 2011 and more than 1.3million cases have not removed yet.

In January 2018, Egypt passed a law toughens punishment against the violators, who could face penalties punishable by up two to five years in prison and a fine ranging between LE 100,000 (US$ 5,648) and LE 5 million.

Egypt’s agricultural lands cover 10 million feddans (one feddan equals about 1.038 acres) in 2015, compared to 9.6 million feddans in 2010, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) noted in a report issued on September 19, 2016. According to World Bank data, Egypt’s agricultural areas on the country’s whole land increased to 3.6 percent in 2015, compared to 2.6 percent in 1961.