South Africa's chicken farmers are worried they could become a bargaining chip in our trade negotiations with America. Izaak Breitenbach, who heads the SA Poultry Association's broiler organisation, says the industry fears government could make concessions on chicken imports to protect other sectors, including the car and citrus industries. In other words, duty-free American chicken could keep coming in while government negotiates better terms for everyone else.
The chicken deal behind Agoa
The arrangement goes back about a decade. To keep access to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or Agoa, South Africa agreed to let the US export about 65,000 tonnes of frozen, bone-in chicken portions here every year free of anti-dumping duties. That quota has since grown to about 74,000 tonnes a year, although bird flu outbreaks in the US meant only about 24,000 tonnes arrived this year. Agoa mattered to us: South Africa was the programme's largest beneficiary, exporting about $1.7 billion worth of goods to the US under it in 2025. As analyst Anthony Clark puts it, South Africa was strong-armed into compromising its poultry sector to secure tariff-free access for exports like cars, wine and citrus.
Now Washington plans to remove South Africa from Agoa from 1 January 2027, citing barriers to US trade and investment, corruption and threats to US security and foreign policy interests. SAPA says the chicken rebate should fall away with it, but that won't happen automatically: a separate formal decision is needed, and SAPA wants trade minister Parks Tau to ask National Treasury to withdraw it.
A fight headed for court
SAPA has already taken the matter to court, and a judge has been appointed to hear its arguments early in December. Tau's spokesperson said the department can't comment while the matter is before the courts. The industry slaughters about 23 million birds a week and turned over R74 billion in 2025, and Breitenbach says South Africa is the world's second-lowest-cost chicken producer after Brazil. Not everyone is on the farmers' side, though. In a submission reported by Business Day, Amie cited Reserve Bank research estimating that tariffs and duties raised frozen chicken retail prices by 16.2% between 2012 and 2021. So the question for government is whether a concession made to keep Agoa still makes sense once Agoa is gone.
