Article 10a of the Act on the Protection of Agricultural and Forest Land of 3 February 1995 (Journal of Laws 2017 item 1161) has been in force for years now (since 5 September 2014). According to the Article, limitations to the allocation of land for non-agricultural purposes envisaged in the Act do not apply to agricultural land located within the administrative boundaries of cities. This, however, is not the only regulation which limits trade in agricultural property.

It is worth remembering the provisions of the Act of 11 April 2003 on the development of agricultural order (i.e. Journal of Laws 2019.1362), whose Article 2a(1) states that agricultural property may only be purchased by an individual farmer, unless the act stipulates otherwise. The Article also includes a list of exceptions from this rule. Although long, the list mostly includes cases which are so specific that there is only one which seems important to a regular buyer. The recently added item (which entered into force on 26 June 2019), Article 2a(3)(1a), stipulates that the obligation to sell agricultural land to individual farmers only does not apply to agricultural property smaller than 1 ha. This results in a general trend towards the fragmentation of agricultural land, which is not always conducive to correct spatial planning. The fact that the legal regulations concerning these issues are scattered across different legal acts, whose mutual relationships are not entirely clear, does nothing to improve certainty as regards trading in agricultural land located in urban areas. Harmonization of the abovementioned regulations by the legislator would be welcome.

Author:

Marcin Ziółkowski, Legal Adviser