Animal Health
NAMPO Park, Bothaville, South Africa, 14 May 2026: Walk the livestock arena at NAMPO Park this week and you will notice something missing.
The familiar sounds and smells of South Africa’s prize cattle, sheep breeds, and pigs — a fixture of every NAMPO Harvest Day since 1967 — are absent.
In their place: horses, poultry, breed displays without animals, and educational exhibits. The reason is not a logistical choice. It is a disease emergency.
Grain SA and NAMPO management took the decision earlier this year to ban all cloven-hoofed animals from NAMPO 2026 — cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs — citing the ongoing foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) outbreak that has spread to all nine South African provinces and been declared a national disaster by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
It is the first time in the show’s 59-year history that livestock of this kind have been excluded.
The decision speaks to the severity of what South Africa is facing: not a routine FMD flare-up, but what veterinary officials and industry bodies are describing as the worst outbreak in the country’s recorded history.
FMD at NAMPO 2026 — The Decision at a Glance
The Outbreak: Scale, Spread, and a National Disaster Declaration
South Africa’s current FMD crisis has roots going back to 2019, when the country lost its OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) FMD-free status following an outbreak linked to buffalo in Kruger National Park — Africa’s only known natural wildlife reservoir for the virus.
But the scale of what has unfolded since mid-2024, and particularly from late 2025 into 2026, represents an entirely different order of magnitude.
By January 2026, the disease had spread to seven of South Africa’s nine provinces: KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, North West, Limpopo, Free State, and Western Cape.
KwaZulu-Natal has been the most severely affected, designated a Disease Management Area, with 187 unresolved cases out of 207 reported since the crisis began.
The disease has moved from communal farms and informal livestock auctions — where inadequate biosecurity allowed rapid spread — into commercial beef feedlots, dairy operations, and game reserves where buffalo populations serve as long-term carriers.
President Ramaphosa referenced the crisis in his 2026 State of the Nation Address, and in early 2026 the government formally declared FMD a national disaster.
Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen confirmed the government would cover the full cost of vaccinating the national herd — a commitment that reflects both the political urgency and the enormous scale of the response required.
We have seen the pain, the uncertainty and the economic damage this disease has inflicted on farming communities across our country. I have made a commitment that if we continue implementing this plan at scale and with urgency, this must be the last major Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak to devastate our people.
The Vaccination War: 15 Million Doses and a December Target
The government’s response has been an unprecedented national vaccination campaign, the ambition of which reflects the scale of the emergency.
The target: vaccinate 80% of South Africa’s national cattle herd — approximately 14 million animals — by December 2026. It is the most ambitious animal health intervention in South African history.
Vaccine procurement has been pursued internationally at scale. South Africa received one million doses from Biogénesis Bagó in Argentina — the same company exhibiting at NAMPO this week as part of the Brazilian/Argentine agribusiness delegation — and 1.5 million doses from Dollvet in Turkey in the early stages of the campaign.
A further two million Dollvet doses arrived in early May 2026. With an additional five million doses expected shortly, Minister Steenhuisen confirmed South Africa’s total imported vaccine volume will rise to 13 million doses.
Combined with two million doses secured earlier from the Botswana Vaccine Institute, the country is projected to have 15 million doses by end of May 2026.
Hundreds of thousands of animals are being vaccinated each week across all provinces.
The government is pursuing a vaccination-to-live strategy rather than the stamp-out culling approach used in countries like the United States and Western Europe.
he distinction matters commercially: vaccination-to-live aims to achieve ‘FMD free with vaccination’ status under international trade rules — a designation that still allows exports but carries more trade conditions than full FMD-free status.
South Africa’s Vaccination Campaign — Key Facts
On 11 May — just one day before NAMPO opened — Minister Steenhuisen joined Eswatini’s Agriculture Minister Mandla Tshawuka and Mozambican representatives in Hazyview, Mpumalanga, where 300 cattle were vaccinated in a demonstration of regional solidarity.
A SADC agriculture ministers’ meeting focused on regional livestock traceability and coordinated transboundary disease response is scheduled to follow later this month in Zimbabwe — a signal that South Africa recognises FMD cannot be contained within its borders alone.
The Economic Damage: China, Zambia, and Billions in Lost Exports
The commercial consequences of South Africa’s FMD crisis have been severe and are compounding.
The livestock and red meat sector — beef and dairy together contributing an estimated R68 billion in annual gross production value — has been hit by a cascade of export market closures that directly reflect the disease’s spread.
China, South Africa’s largest trading partner and its most important beef export destination, suspended all beef and related product imports following confirmation that FMD had spread beyond KwaZulu-Natal into Mpumalanga and Gauteng.
The ban came despite a Memorandum of Understanding signed between South Africa and China in September 2024, which had been specifically designed to allow exports from FMD-free provinces to continue during localised outbreaks.
The virus outpaced the regionalisation framework before it could be practically implemented.
This development is a stark reminder of the fragility of our export markets when faced with biosecurity threats. The economic impact on South African farmers and the entire red meat value chain is severe and disheartening.
Zambia followed in February 2026, suspending all import permits for South African livestock and related products with immediate effect and no declared end date.
The ban covers live cloven-hoofed animals, skins, hides, feed, and dairy products unless strict biosecurity conditions are met.
Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique have all previously suspended imports during earlier outbreak phases.
The financial toll is now quantified. Beef export volumes fell from a record 39,700 tonnes in 2024 to 29,500 tonnes in 2025, with projections suggesting a further decline to approximately 13,400 tonnes in 2026 if current conditions persist.
Across three major FMD waves between 2019 and 2025, beef export revenue losses are estimated at more than R821 million.
At the current trajectory, cumulative losses could reach R2.6 billion by end of 2026. Under a sustained high-burden scenario extending to 2030, the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy (BFAP) projects beef gross production value losses of up to R11.3 billion.
The dairy sector has felt the impact in a different but equally painful way. More than 90 dairy farms reported FMD outbreaks between January 2024 and January 2026, with over 210,000 dairy cattle affected.
Cumulative dairy losses to date are estimated at approximately R1 billion, with per-cow losses averaging around R5,000 driven by reduced milk production, higher veterinary intervention costs, and management disruption.
BFAP has warned that prolonged disease pressure could push some family-owned dairy operations beyond financial recovery.
Beef & Dairy Trade Disruption — Key Data
How FMD Spreads — and Why Equipment Matters
Foot-and-mouth disease is caused by an RNA virus of the Picornaviridae family and is among the most contagious pathogens known in veterinary medicine.
It infects all cloven-hoofed animals — cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, buffalo, and many wildlife species — through direct contact with infected animals, aerosol transmission, and critically for the agricultural machinery sector, through contaminated equipment, vehicles, clothing, and footwear.
This last transmission pathway is directly relevant to AgriMachinery.Africa readers. Farm vehicles, livestock transport trucks, loading ramps, handling equipment, and any machinery moving between properties can carry and spread FMD virus on contaminated surfaces.
The virus is robust: it can survive for weeks in the environment depending on temperature and pH conditions, and can be carried on tyres, wheel arches, chassis undercarriages, and cab interiors.
The South African outbreak has demonstrated how easily the disease travels through interconnected commercial supply chains.
Spread traced to informal livestock auctions, movements between holding stations, and transport to feedlots — all involving vehicles and handling equipment — has been a consistent feature of confirmed outbreak clusters.
Karan Beef’s Heidelberg feedlot outbreak in Gauteng in mid-2025, for example, was traced to cattle transported from an auction in Heidelberg, with subsequent spread to adjacent feedlot camps.
FMD Biosecurity for Farm Equipment — Key Protocols
The decision to exclude cloven-hoofed animals from NAMPO 2026 is itself a biosecurity measure of the highest order.
Concentrating tens of thousands of animals from across South Africa in one location during an active national outbreak would create conditions for accelerated viral spread on a scale that could be catastrophic.
The show organisers made the correct call — but the very fact that this call was necessary tells the story of how serious South Africa’s situation is.
The Regional Picture: Zimbabwe, Botswana, and the Cross-Border Risk
South Africa’s FMD crisis does not exist in isolation.
The disease is spreading across the Southern African Development Community region in a pattern that reflects the biological reality that viruses recognise no national border.
In Zimbabwe, veterinary authorities have confirmed active FMD outbreaks in Matabeleland South Province, close to the Botswana border — an area where communal grazing systems and informal cross-border livestock trade create ideal transmission conditions.
Botswana has confirmed infections in its northeastern Masunga district, triggering quarantine measures and livestock movement controls.
Botswana, whose economy depends heavily on premium beef export markets, is moving urgently to contain the outbreak before it threatens its trading reputation.
For East Africa, the risk is longer-range but real. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia all carry endemic FMD in their livestock populations to varying degrees, and each shares porous borders where informal cattle and livestock trade is routine.
The biosecurity lesson from South Africa’s 2025-2026 experience — that commercial supply chains, livestock auctions, and transport networks are primary amplification mechanisms — applies with equal force to East African cattle corridors.
Minister Steenhuisen’s upcoming SADC agriculture ministers’ meeting in Zimbabwe, focused on establishing a regional platform for animal movement control and livestock traceability, is a recognition that disease management at this scale requires continental coordination.
It is also an acknowledgement that South Africa’s outbreak, however severe domestically, is the region’s problem collectively.
What NAMPO’s Empty Livestock Arena Signals for African Agriculture
The sight of NAMPO’s livestock arena running without its traditional cattle and sheep breeds is, in its own way, one of the most powerful agricultural policy signals in Africa this year. NAMPO is not a minor provincial show.
It is the largest privately-owned agricultural exhibition in the Southern Hemisphere, a gathering that for nearly six decades has been the continent’s most important platform for livestock genetics, breed performance, and animal health knowledge exchange.
Its empty animal pens in 2026 are a visible reminder that biosecurity — long treated as a background operational concern for most farming businesses — has become a front-and-centre strategic issue for African agriculture.
The economic stakes demonstrated by South Africa’s experience are not abstract: R821 million in confirmed export losses, a 26% decline in beef export volumes, the loss of the Chinese market, and the prospect of R11.3 billion in cumulative production value destruction under a sustained high-burden scenario.
For machinery and equipment operators across Africa, the FMD crisis has a direct practical message: biosecurity protocols for vehicles, handling equipment, and transport infrastructure are no longer optional considerations.
They are commercially essential — and in South Africa, legally required.
The equipment industry has a role to play in this response, from washdown facility design and disinfection station manufacturing to GPS-enabled livestock traceability systems that allow outbreak clusters to be traced and contained before they reach the scale of what South Africa is now managing.
FMD & Agricultural Impact — Key Insights
Outlook
NAMPO 2026 closes on Friday 15 May. The livestock ban will be lifted in future editions if South Africa can achieve and sustain its vaccination targets and regain FMD-free with vaccination status under international trade rules.
That process is expected to take years, not months.
The vaccination-to-live strategy requires consistent coverage, rigorous traceability, and sustained inter-provincial biosecurity enforcement — all of which have historically proved difficult to maintain across South Africa’s complex mix of commercial and communal farming systems.
What is certain is that the landscape of African livestock farming has shifted. The question of how farm businesses, transport operators, equipment suppliers, and governments manage biosecurity at the intersection of animal health and agricultural commerce is no longer theoretical.
South Africa’s 2025-2026 FMD crisis has made it one of the defining agricultural risk issues on the continent. NAMPO’s empty animal pens are the most emphatic possible illustration of what is at stake.
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Martin is a writer at Agrimachinery Africa specializing in agricultural machinery, mechanization trends, and farm technology across Africa. His work focuses on tractors, harvesting equipment, irrigation systems, and emerging innovations helping farmers improve productivity and efficiency. Through in-depth industry coverage, he highlights technologies shaping the future of modern agriculture.