Representative Yasser Mansour Qadah, member of the Agriculture, Irrigation and Food Security Committee, presented… House of RepresentativesBy requesting an urgent briefing to Counselor Hisham Badawi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, addressed to Dr. Osama Al-Azhari, Minister of Endowments, regarding the “imaginary” and sudden rises in the rental value of the lands of the Egyptian Endowments Authority, warning of their effects on the stability of food security and small farmers.
In his request, the representative revealed numbers that he described as shocking, as the rental value per acre in some areas jumped from 17 thousand pounds in 2024 to recently reach 60 thousand pounds currently, an increase equivalent to about 300% in less than a year, stressing that this increase is absolutely not proportional to the productive capacity of the land or the financial return achieved by the simple farmer.
Qadah explained that these measures come at a very sensitive time, as farmers are already suffering from the insane rise in production costs and agricultural requirements as a result of the current economic situation, noting that these estimates transform the farmer from a productive element in the country into a “debtor” threatened with imprisonment or expulsion from land that he and his family have been farming for decades.
The representative criticized the absence of “social feasibility studies” at the Ministry of Endowments when making this decision, stressing that the governance of endowment assets never means crushing the farmer, as a member of the Agriculture and Irrigation Committee requested, in the briefing request, the immediate intervention of the Minister of Endowments to review these arbitrary estimates, and the formation of a joint technical committee with the Ministry of Agriculture to set fair rental values that take into account the quality of the land and living conditions.
Representative Yasser Kadah stressed the speedy referral of the request to the Agriculture, Irrigation and Food Security Committee of the House of Representatives for urgent discussion in the presence of government representatives, stressing that protecting the “Egyptian farmer” is protecting national food security, and that continuing this rental policy will lead to farmers’ reluctance to cultivate endowment lands, which will harm the interests of the state and the endowment alike.
