The government is in the process of drafting a law that would criminalize building on agricultural land, giving the Agricultural Reform Authority the power to confiscate any illegally built structures.
“The law aims to limit threats to national food security,” said Ali Ismail, director of the authority.
Ismail also said the authority would legalize the status of land squatters and recognize their ownership of the land only if they use the land exclusively for agriculture purposes.
A Ministry of Agriculture report recently detailed 159,000 incidents of agricultural land encroachment nationwide.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
