The Czech Republic is liquidating its arable land

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A gigafactory will be built between Dolní Lutyní and Věřňovice, the government decided at the beginning of March. For this, 280 hectares of fields will need to be taken, half of which is in II. protection class. At the same time, the House of Representatives is amending the Act on the Protection of Agricultural Land. From now on, it will be forbidden to build large complexes and warehouses on the most valuable land I. and II. protection class. This would also apply to the Lutyń field, but the deputies are rewriting the law operatively.

Apparently, at the end of April, they are already voting on the final version, according to which “buildings mainly used for the production and storage of battery cells” will be allowed in Lutyń. “Today, states are competing with each other and looking for investors, so we have no choice but to have such an option in the law,” explained the author of the amendment Jan Bureš (ODS), justifying the exception for favorable plots of land near the highway.

In the past five years, according to the balance sheet of the cadastral authorities (ČÚZK), 50 thousand hectares, i.e. almost two percent of arable land, regardless of its quality, have disappeared. The new law was supposed to stop these losses, but the gigafactory is an example of why a well-intentioned effort fails.

The most valuable land will disappear in a region where today there is almost none. Lutyně belongs to the administrative district of the city of Bohumín, where there is little arable land, in the last five years it has decreased there at the fourth fastest rate in the Czech Republic, i.e. by one percent per year, and the amendment will specifically make it possible to eliminate another nine percent.

Moreover, the Bohumín example is certainly not an exception. Arable land is disappearing fastest in regions where the majority of it belongs to I. or II. protection class, and the new law can hardly change anything about it.

The law was not characterized by great strictness even in the form sent to the House of Representatives by the Minister of the Environment Petr Hladík (KDU-ČSL). Ecologists traditionally accept that arable land will become grassy or forested. “The change of arable land to permanent grassland does not represent a loss of agricultural land. In the case of forest land, the ecosystem services of the land in the landscape will be preserved,” explains Hladík Ministry spokesperson Veronika Krejčí.

“These changes, on the one hand, reduce the area for cultivation, but on the other hand, they contribute very significantly to the ecological stability of the landscape,” confirms Vojtěch Bílý, a spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, and that even Minister Marek Výborný (KDU-ČSL) has no problems with this.

Nevertheless, even after deducting arable land moved to the category of pastures or forests, 15 thousand hectares of fields decreased in five years. Some of them were turned into “built-up area” (5,500 hectares), the rest into gardens and other areas. If a field destroyed by chemical spraying is turned into a well-kept private garden, experts say it can help the soil, but “garden” usually means the immediate neighborhood of houses in satellites covered with paving, concrete and shelters. In addition to nature reserves, “other areas” include mines, roads, parking lots, warehouses, workshops and land intended for mass recreation.

Detailed data from the cadastral offices show that, apart from Bohumín and the whole of Ostrava, arable land is preferentially disposed of in other localities where the most people live and the most apartments are built. For example, the surroundings of Prague and Brno lose up to 100 hectares annually, to a lesser extent this applies to other metropolises from Pilsen through České Budějovice and Olomouc to Zlín.

The best soil, including chernozem, has the largest acreage in the country in the vicinity of Prague, Brno and Olomouc. Here, however, the law will not help in any way, because it does not prevent housing construction on fields.

The second most common reason for the occupation of agricultural land is the construction of warehouses and logistics centers near highways. Again, according to the ČÚZK, this concerns the vicinity of Brno, in addition to those affected are Břeclav and Tachov, in whose administrative districts important highways D2 and D5 enter the territory of the Czech Republic.

The amendment to the Act on Soil Protection prohibits in fields I. and II. class, the construction of warehouses and shopping centers with an area of ​​more than one hectare, yet even this cautious attempt led to protests by businessmen and mayors, who described the land protection amendment as “the strictest in the world”. For example, the Union of Cities and Municipalities officially stated that although it understands the effort to save agricultural land, it is not necessary to “harm the country’s economic development or fundamentally limit the constitutionally guaranteed right to local self-government and the minimum level of freedom of decision-making of municipalities.”

One of the main critics, the aforementioned MP Bureš from the ODS, eventually forced the environmentalists to retreat even further. In the future, it will be possible to build not only important factories such as the Lutyen gigafactory, highways and other “strategic infrastructure”, but also parking lots and other buildings that “continue to the infrastructure” even on the most valuable land. Municipalities can continue to allow warehouses and supermarkets in the fields – it is enough if they reserve a place for them in the spatial plan by the end of next year. However, it will be possible to build later as well, if it is justified that it is simply not possible to build warehouses anywhere other than on black soil.

“The ministry expressed a favorable opinion on the proposal of deputy Bureš and his colleagues,” confirms the spokesperson of Minister Hladík.