Pete Kean: A boardroom solution to a farmyard crisis

Key topics:Advisory board lacks representation of independent, frontline farmersSlow, bureaucratic responses worsen the Foot and Mouth crisisExcluding dissenting voices risks trust, livelihoods, and food security.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Pete Kean.There’s a moment in every national crisis where you realise the gap between paperwork and reality has become dangerous. The announcement of yet another advisory board for Foot and Mouth Disease feels like one of those moments. Not because consultation is wrong but because the people living with the consequences are still watching decisions being made about them, not with them.On paper, the new board looks impressive: established farmer organisations, recognised bodies, familiar names. In reality, many farmers don’t see themselves in those structures at all. They don’t align with them, don’t feel represented by them, and most importantly don’t believe those organisations have shown the urgency this crisis demanded over the past few years. For farmers who’ve been sounding alarms, self-funding responses and taking reputational and financial risks, this feels less like inclusion and more like déjà vu..This is where the frustration sharpens. The same leadership figures who have occupied seats in various forums while Foot and Mouth quietly spread are now positioned as the voices of farmers. Meanwhile, the independent operators the so-called mavericks the ones who challenged delays, pushed for bloods to be sent, questioned zoning logic, and demanded vaccine access long before it was fashionable remain outside the room.The cartoon captures it perfectly: a boardroom full of familiar faces, staring at each other, while the real work happens elsewhere. This isn’t about rejecting AgriSA, RPO, Kwanalu or any formal body outright. It’s about balance. A crisis advisory board that excludes dissenting, experienced, hands-on farmers is not a problem-solving structure it’s an echo chamber.If this board is meant to guide South Africa through one of its most serious agricultural threats, then it needs people who have already proven they can act without waiting for permission. People who understand that every day of delay costs more than money it costs trust, jobs, animals and long-term food security.Because if the same people who’ve “been engaging” for four years are the only ones advising now, then the question farmers are quietly asking is simple: who exactly is this board designed to protect farmers, or the system itself?

Pete Kean: A boardroom solution to a farmyard crisis

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