Landlord blasts ‘unjust’ agricultural leases situation: ‘we want the right to decide what to do with our land’

A landlord has detailed to The Malta Independent on Sunday how a significant number of farmers are merely posing to be so in order to retain their hold on farming land which they are occupying on an agricultural lease.

Under Maltese rental laws, agricultural leases (known as qbiela in Maltese) are protected – meaning that neither can the landlord end a lease, nor can they amend the rental fee which they receive for the said lease.

Land being leased out on an agricultural lease can only be returned to the landlord if the person leasing it passes away with no heirs or if the land is left untouched in terms of crops for more than two years.

A recent court judgement, where a protected agricultural lease was declared to be a breach of the constitutional rights of the landlord, has set an important precedent for the years to come.

It is a precedent which has been debated widely, with many sounding a warning that if nothing is done, farmers will be forced off the land which they till, hence killing the agricultural industry and leaving the land in a state of abandon.

However, there is another side of the story: that of the landlord himself.

A landlord, who operates his own agricultural business but who preferred to remain anonymous, has told The Malta Independent on Sunday that not all is as it seems, and blasted claims that agricultural land will suddenly become ‘picnic areas’ as “utter rubbish.”

Indeed, he describes the situation as a complete “injustice” for landlords and says that people who claim to be farmers have resorted to certain tactics to ensure that they can keep the land, even without setting a foot in it, and to other, even illegal, practices to try and make a fast buck.

One common way of making sure that something is grown in the field is by growing animal feed – or qamħ in Maltese.

“You can sit at your desk, or at home, or eating at your kitchen table, and call up someone to sow some qamħ – he’ll go with the tractor and do it, then you