The Seimas Committee on Rural Affairs is looking for safeguards to prevent resellers from acquiring land encroaching on another farmer's land.   

„So that only natural persons can buy, not any funds, speculators, resellers“, Kęstutis Mažeika, the chairman of the committee, said on the eve of the committee's meeting, according to BNS. 

He said the committee would still discuss and vote on the conditions under which such a plot could be acquired by agricultural companies. 

The committee will discuss on Wednesday amendments to the law on the acquisition of agricultural land, which propose to liberalise the procedure for the purchase and sale of plots adjacent to agricultural land for sale.

The right of first refusal for the acquisition of private farmland is proposed to be extended to owners of plots of land of any purpose adjacent to the land to be sold and to enterprises whose agricultural income represents more than 50% of their income.

Farmers oppose this and say that wind and solar farm developers will buy plots on the outskirts. 

The author of this amendment, conservative Kazys Starkevičius, is inclined to give in   he proposes to allow only cultivated land to be traded, and only those plot owners whose land is adjacent to cultivated land would have priority to acquire it.   

In the meantime, Liberal Simonas Gentvilas is proposing to abandon the current right of first refusal to acquire a parcel of cultivated land for persons adjacent to another such parcel. According to him, this would ensure a rational use of land.

In addition, the right of first refusal to acquire private farmland at the sale price and under the same conditions is granted to co-owners of the plot, farmers who have farmed the land for at least one year and who are not related to the owner by kinship, and companies whose income from agricultural activities exceeds 50% of their total income.