Farming – Agri-Finance · Editorial

By Moakanyi Magazine · June 2026

Disease control protects a national asset, but the immediate cost of it lands on individuals. When a herd is culled or confined to halt foot-and-mouth, the animals lost belong to a particular farmer, and the public benefit of a clean export trade is paid for from a private balance sheet. In May 2023, farmers in the Makgadikgadi asked who should carry that cost.

According to widely reported but uncited accounts [TK], Makgadikgadi farmers sought compensation for cattle lost to culling and movement restrictions, underscoring the cost of disease control. Their claim, as reported [TK], is less a complaint than a question about how the burden of protecting the export herd should be shared between the state that benefits and the farmers who pay.

The Imbalance: Public Benefit, Private Loss

Without compensation, the system asks individual farmers to absorb the price of a collective good, which over time weakens the cooperation that disease control depends on. A farmer who expects to bear the full cost of a cull has every incentive to delay reporting an outbreak rather than disclose it, and a control regime that breeds concealment defeats its own purpose.

A protection paid for by the few it harms will not hold for long.

The Makgadikgadi claim, if confirmed as reported [TK], points to the structural cost of Botswana's disease-control model. Keeping the export trade clean requires occasional sacrifice of individual herds, and a durable system needs a way to make that sacrifice bearable and reportable. Compensation is not generosity; it is the price of keeping farmers inside a regime that protects everyone.