Honourable House Chairperson,
The ACDP affirms the vital role of agriculture in securing food, growing rural development and building economic resilience. Food producers are the backbone of national survival and sovereignty.
The Department’s 2025/26 allocation of R7.6 billion focuses on infrastructure and biosecurity. We remain concerned by underperformance in supporting emerging farmers. Few transition to commercial viability – many lack access to finance and extension services.
The ACDP calls for the accelerating of the Agro-Processing Master Plan and the fast tracking of blended finance to reach our marginalised farmers. We assert that regimes that dismiss the agricultural base – through over-taxation, land dispossession or neglect – invite food insecurity, unrest and ultimately collapse. This is why the government’s dismissive attitude to the systematic murder of farmers and workers is irrational – or intentional. These murders know no colour and the ACDP condemns these heinous crimes, as we do all other murderous criminal acts.
The ACDP acknowledges the work done by the Agricultural Research Council as the country’s principal agricultural research institution, with OBP having the potential to manufacture animal vaccines, and particular, the foot and mouth vaccine, for the continent.
On the intended poultry avian influenza vaccination, however, the ACDP notes the caution of Professor Tim Noakes, who mentioned that in the USA, the CDC, NIH and FDA have all advised against the vaccination of poultry, noting that most nations will not import vaccinated poultry from the USA. The rationale is that if you vaccinate with a leaky vaccine, you turn those flocks into mutation factories. One of the three vaccines, the Vectormune recombinant DNA vaccine, places a live turkey herpes virus, into a chicken, affecting the chicken’s DNA. On 6 June 2025 poultry vaccination began. Three weeks later, on 1 July Bird flu was detected. The ACDP would like to know the specifics of these poultry vaccinations. What are the contents and efficacy? Are they mRNA vaccines? Have longitudinal studies been conducted on the effect of these vaccines on humans?
As Kingdom builders, the ACDP calls for a just agricultural economy rooted in good governance and ethical stewardship. Until we obtain answers to our questions, the ACDP will not support this budget vote.
I thank you.
