We Are Not All the Same

Twelve years later I am once again attending a congress of Free State Agriculture. I greet old friends, chat with great minds with whom I have since had contact only on Facebook, take photos with young farmers, and smile and wave stiffly at the "other camp", who are also attending as guests.

Free State Agriculture was in a valuable partnership with Saai and Sakeliga in the court case that brought an end to the state's monopoly over decision-making and management of Foot-and-Mouth Disease vaccinations, and along with it the exclusion of certain agricultural interest groups from the ministerial advisory committees. Agri-SA, as the parent body, distanced itself from Free State Agriculture over the matter, and published the written mandates of seven other provincial agricultural unions opposing the court case and in favour of central state control.

Free State Agriculture has also previously been at loggerheads with Agri-SA over the response to the Expropriation Act and the unfair distribution of risk and profit within value chains. Now the Free State farmers have dug in their heels and withheld their membership fees from Agri-SA. Farmers' associations in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have also shown interest in joining Free State Agriculture, because they feel better aligned with the standpoints and policy positions its leaders articulate.

Contrary to what academics such as Kirsten and Sihlobo attempt to portray in their book The Uncomfortable Truth about Agriculture in South Africa, these differences have nothing to do with personalities, unhealthy ambition or competition between individual leaders. Farmers are a diverse community in South Africa, and unity in agriculture is a chimera. Farmers do not all share the same interests, values or basic needs. We have a multiplicity of agricultural organisations because they represent different, and sometimes even contradictory, interests and values.

All the most contentious issues in today's agricultural environment cut deeper than personal interests and are embedded in demonstrably conflicting mandates. Agri-SA, Grain SA, the RPO, RMIS and Agbiz had mandates from their members to sign off on the Agriculture and Agro-processing Master Plan (AAMP), and they continually push for it to be implemented more aggressively. Saai, TLU-SA, NEASA, the LWO and WRSA — who were excluded from the negotiations on the master plan — object to it on the grounds that transformation is dealt with 92 times in the document, while there is no reference whatsoever to the profitability or sustainability of farms. Four years of tension and three comprehensive meetings to see whether mutual understanding and common interests could be found have not yet been able to bring about the amendment of a single word. Neither of the two sides can yield on its mandate.

A similar tension has built up between the same groups of organisations over Minister Steenhuisen's publication of new regulations on meat analogues, and the extraordinary rights granted to plant-based, insect-based and laboratory-grown alternatives to meat products. Although Saai and the DA became involved in serious policy discussions on the matter, Steenhuisen rightly pointed out that the RPO, as the largest voice for meat farmers, had signed off on the regulations. Saai's members in the red meat industry gave the opposite mandate, and feel very strongly that fake meat on the same shelves, and under the same names, as meat products is not in their interests and must be resisted with conviction.

Free State Agriculture has established its own provincial red meat forum, positioned closer to its own values and interests in terms of policy and action plans.

Nothing has driven the clash of interests to the surface more clearly than the court case against central state control over the Foot-and-Mouth vaccination campaign. On 29 January 2026 the members of Agri-SA and its affiliates all gave their mandates in writing in favour of central state control, apart from Free State Agriculture and Agri-NW. At the Free State Agriculture congress, Agri-SA explained that there had been no other option but to distance itself from its Free State farmers. Equally, the leaders of Free State Agriculture could not, outside their mandate, support a state monopoly over every facet of the vaccination programme.

What do you do when you have farmers with conflicting aspirations, interests and values within one organisation?

The same thing happened in Agri-Limpopo in 2018, when every individual member gave its mandate for a court case against the expropriation of the farm Akkerland, but Agri-SA could not support it. Even after Agri-Limpopo won the case with the help of AfriForum and Solidarity, the president and Chief Executive Officer were targeted and forced out — which is how Saai eventually came into being. The rationale was that commercial farmers who are not politically connected need a structure about which they need not wonder whether collective action will be taken against the state in their interests.

Underlying the policy differences between agricultural organisations lies an ideological point of departure. Although it is often expressed in the public domain in crude, labelling invective — "right-wingers and left-wingers", "pro- and anti-ANC", "AfriMaga and woke", or "racists and state looters" — it is something else. At its deepest, it is probably rather a tension between conservative farmers (and in almost every society farmers are the more conservative part of it) who place greater emphasis on locally rooted traditional values, and those who find meaning in a globalist, more generalised identity in which overarching structures such as the state and multinational and multilateral bodies take control and determine the general direction, principles and pace.

Farmers are, in essence, more independent people who think for themselves and ask critical questions. That is not always the culture in corporate companies. When large companies, banks, input suppliers and cooperatives sit in one organisation together with farmers and formulate common policy, it is never the farmers' voice that comes through. Large companies have no heritage or traditional values. They have boards, shareholders and dividend targets for the end of the next financial year.

Nobody has yet been able to answer how the Employment Equity and Black Economic Empowerment Acts are to be applied on a family farm. For large companies it makes no difference — they simply add it to the salary budget as a minor nuisance. On a small or medium-sized family farm it simply cannot be afforded!

In practical terms, the line between the main groupings of agricultural organisations lies most clearly between those with a mandate to promote and protect the dominant transformation narrative that has dominated our economic and social environment for the past three decades, and those who push back against it. The politically correct and those who are out of step.

The clarity of this line finds expression in the AAMP; in organisations' support for central state control in the procurement of vaccines; in the signing of regulations that cannot, by the furthest stretch of the imagination, be in farmers' interests; and in the embrace of guests of honour, speakers, awards and themes at prestige events. When a business organisation's congress with the theme "Cooperation" is addressed by someone from the heart of cadre deployment, but no businessperson is invited who takes a strong stance on property rights, farm safety or employment quotas, that sends a message. If a provincial agricultural union chooses its speakers from the group of 44 alternative Afrikaners, that congress is not going to decide to roll up its sleeves to strengthen Sol-Tech or Akademia. The NWKV and Agri-SA will host News24's journalists, while Saai will rather support Maroela Media. The other way round is unthinkable! The mandates are conflicting, because the interests and values are often diametrically opposed.

That is the given. Francois Wilken said at the Free State Agriculture congress: "We do not all share the same reality." It is nonsensical to deny, ignore, cancel or belittle one another's realities. Practice has proved all of those approaches counterproductive. In the formulation of the agricultural master plan, the strategy was simply to exclude all opposition to a strictly race-based transformation ideology — except for TLU-SA, which was removed from the communication and invitation lists when it insisted on a definition of "transformation".

The same strategy was carried over from the Didiza era into the Steenhuisen era, when the same organisations were excluded from the discussions on meat analogues and from the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Industry Coordinating Committee. Only TLU-SA's voice is regularly raised in criticism of the narrative of central state control, focused support for the Department of Agriculture, and alignment with the objectives and methodology of decision-making state officials.

Minister Willie Aucamp represents a welcome break with this polarising strategy. He rejects none of the interest groups, excludes no one, and does not act as though those voices do not exist or are not valid. He involves everyone and compels the conversation. He calls the round table. Organisations that whine about having been excluded from the settlement negotiations on Foot-and-Mouth Disease vaccinations were not parties to the court case — and most of them in fact took a harder stance against the court case than the respondents themselves!

But for the first time in decades, the Minister of Agriculture is convening inclusive discussions in which the differences can be defined, policy positions and mandates can be brought into the open, and points of consensus can be mined. For the first time in many years, common interests can be sifted out from among the differences so that we can actively work together on them, even if we differ in other areas.

Even if we move more slowly, let us not leave the small and medium-sized family farms behind. Even if the discussions become heated, it is not only big business's interests that prevail. As in the Government of National Unity, smaller voices also matter. The variety of standpoints and interests must be heard, because our farmers are not all the same.

Every farmer must be able to choose for himself where he stands, and know that he can be counted there.