Big Agriculture, Big Government Align on Restricting Private Access to FMD Vaccine

AgriSA, a body representing commercial farming interests, has moved to distance itself from legal action taken by one of its provincial affiliates during South Africa’s ongoing foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak, warning that litigation risks undermining disease control efforts at a critical moment.

Free State Agriculture, one of AgriSA’s affiliates, is part of a legal challenge, along with Sakeliga and the Southern African Agri Initiative (SAAI) to allow the private procurement of FMD vaccines. However, the Department of Agriculture pushed back against the legal challenge by the three bodies, saying that litigation could derail the overall response to the FMD crisis. In a statement the department said: “Proposing a vaccine free-for-all is short-sighted and reckless and flies in the face of established international and local precedence for disease control. We have already seen the disastrous effects of unfettered access to vaccines that have been illegally imported into KwaZulu-Natal by certain farmers and the serious risk this has posed.”

This appears to be a position held by AgriSA too.

In a letter sent to its members at the end of last month, AgriSA said that eight of its nine provincial affiliates (all provinces except the Free State) supported the government’s current approach of restricting private vaccine access.

What AgriSA would therefore have the country believe is that farmers themselves support the idea that they should not be allowed to source and administer vaccines, subject to reasonable regulations. Farmers who spoke to The Common Sense say they do not know any of their peers or neighbours who would support that position.

The apparent contradiction between what AgriSA declares and what farmers themselves want is easily explained by understanding the nature of the organisation itself. While positioning itself as a voice for farmers, its most powerful members are not farmers but banks, agribusinesses, and large corporates whose commercial interests often diverge from those of primary producers. These entities typically benefit from lending to farmers at higher interest rates, selling farming inputs at elevated prices, buying agricultural output at lower margins, and maintaining a close alignment with the state. This has long fuelled tension over whose interests ultimately shape AgriSA’s policy positions in moments of crisis.

Questions are being asked about the fees and prices being charged by the few entities allowed by the state to procure and administer vaccines. As there is no open market for these doses and demand is extremely high, the vaccine deals are potentially lucrative, adding another layer of controversy to an already strained response.

This has also created a difficult bind for the Democratic Alliance (DA). Its leader, John Steenhuisen, is the Minister of Agriculture, meaning the party in practice directs national agriculture policy. The DA has historically drawn support from farming communities precisely because it opposed state monopolies, regulatory bottlenecks, and the concentration of power in a few politically connected hands. Yet in the FMD crisis, the DA is now aligned with a system in which a small number of state-approved entities control access to vaccines, pricing is opaque, and supply remains constrained – all to the detriment of farmers. If outbreaks continue, export markets stay closed, or vaccine access remains slow, frustration will not be directed at abstract bureaucratic processes but at the political leadership of the department itself and by extension, the DA.

The risk for the DA is exacerbated by policy developments around black economic empowerment in agriculture which are occurring concurrently with the FMD outbreak. These again have won the endorsement of the DA leader as well as large agri-corporates and banks, even as they contradict historical commitments to farmers. Read our report on that contradiction in today’s edition of The Common Sense.