Vol. 77/No. 31      August 26, 2013

BY PAUL DAVIES  
FAYED, Egypt — In Egypt, where 58 percent of the population lives in rural areas, small farmers have stepped up their fights for lands rights and other demands since the 2011 popular overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship. After elected President Mohammed Morsi failed to deliver on promises to address the farmers’ grievances, many took part in the movement to oust his Muslim Brotherhood government, confident and determined to press ahead with their struggles.

“For decades small farmers have waged fights for access to land, cheap credit, fertilizer and seeds, abolishing debtors prison, and the cancelation of debts,” Ibrahim Abdel Gawed, an organizer of the Independent Farmers Union, told members of the Militant reporting team that traveled to this small town near the Suez Canal during its recent visit to Egypt. “These are the same issues we continue to fight around today.”

Mustapha Moughazi, a former mango farmer here, said he was forced to sell some of his farm and rent out the remaining land five years ago to pay off loans that banks foisted on him and other farmers. He described a practice of the Development and Agricultural Credit Bank to pressure farmers to put their land up as collateral for loans that had nothing to do with farming.

“They would push the loans and urge you to give your daughter a big wedding, buy a vehicle, or whatever. Under [former Egyptian heads of state] Gamel Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, interest rates were only 3 percent. Now they’re as much as 18 percent, and the payments are impossible,” said Moughazi. “The agricultural bank should change its name to the ‘bank for the imprisonment of farmers.’”

In the 1990s, thousands of farmers received jail terms for not paying their debts. According to Gawed this practice continues in many rural areas, and small farmers unable to pay their debts are imprisoned. The Independent Farmers Union campaigns for their release.

“From Nasser through to today, government policies have favored large farmers against the small farmers. If there is a water shortage it’s always the small farmers that receive the least,” Karam Saber, director of the Land Center for Human Rights, told the Militant during an interview at the center’s office in Cairo. The Land Center defends the rights of agricultural workers and farmers, and works with the Independent Farmers Union.

Many people interviewed by the Militant spoke favorably of the farm policy under Nasser, who came to power in a popular military coup that overthrew the hated Egyptian monarchy in the early 1950s. The new military regime instituted measures in response to pressure from workers and farmers, including setting a 200 feddan (1 feddan equals 1.038 acres) limit for the amount any one farmer could hold, and distributing land to tens of thousands of small producers. But after the land reform 80 percent of Egyptian farmers were still landless. The farm cooperatives were headed by the landed aristocracy.

Residents of Fayed, a town renown for its mango and melon production, took part in the massive June 30 demonstrations in Cairo and nearby Ismailia against the Muslim Brotherhood government. “The June 30 revolution was necessary,” Moughazi said. “I was at first happy with the Morsi government, but within a year he was worse than Mubarak!”

Many farmers in interviews with the local press and those the Militant spoke with were especially angry over the unkept promises of the Morsi government to relieve debts of small farmers.

“Hundreds of the village’s farmers believed the president’s decision would improve their financial situation,” said Farag. But the debts of only a small number were alleviated.

“The cost of seeds has risen,” Moughazi told the Militant. Government seed production has been reduced and privately produced seed is much more expensive. In addition, shortages of government-subsidized fuel have as much as doubled the cost of harvesting crops like wheat that depend on diesel-powered machinery.

Morsi had decreed a minimum price of 2,000 Egyptian pounds ($286) per ton for rice. Al-Jazeera reports that when Mohamed Abdel-Kader, a farmer in Daqahliya governate, complained to buyers that the price they were offering of just 1,600 pounds was less than the new minimum, he was told “so let the president buy your rice.”

“In the 1990s Mubarak removed restrictions on the upper limit tenant farmers can be charged for rent and ended restrictions on expulsions of tenants,” Saber said.

“As a result half a million farmers have lost their land since then,” noted Gawed.

“Land that is being reclaimed from the desert should be handed to small farmers, not just wealthy landowners and there should be a 100 feddan limit on land ownership,” Saber said. “Farmers with less than five feddans of land should have their debts cancelled.”

Since the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak, farmers have organized protests against evictions and other government policies. Hundreds demonstrated in May 2011 against the eviction of farmers in Monofeya. In 2012 farmers from Madinat al-Sadat protested in Cairo following their removal from land they had reclaimed from the desert in 2007. This year Fayoum farmers demonstrated in Cairo demanding the release of eight farmers in prison for allegedly stealing crops. Hundreds of farmers from three villages in the Nile Delta blocked a highway in April to demand the government release water for their crops.

“A large proportion of the millions who signed the petition demanding that Morsi step down were workers and farmers,” said Mahmoud Ali Mahmoud, a plumber from Ismailia, describing the response to the petition circulated by Tamarod, a coalition of groups and individuals opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood’s repressive regime.

“On January 25, 2011, and again on June 30 this year, farmers were among those who fought” against governments that oppressed farmers and workers, said Gawed. “We’ve lost our fear.”
 
 
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