The missing half of the national herd, and what it means for prices

South Africa counts about 12 million cattle. Roughly four in every ten of them stand on communal land and small farms. Most of those animals never reach a formal sale. This is where they go instead, what their owners get for them, and why it matters for the price of every animal in the country.

How big the herd is, and where it stands

The Department of Agriculture counted about 12.1 million cattle in South Africa in August 2024, and again about 12.1 million in August 2025. The herd used to be bigger: it stood at 13.9 million as recently as August 2014. The country also has about 21 million sheep and 5 million goats.

Of those cattle, about 7.2 million were on commercial farms in August 2024. The rest, close to 4.9 million head, were on communal land and small farms. That is about 40% of the national herd. The red meat industry's own 2030 strategy puts the share at 40 to 50%, and researchers have been finding a number near 40% since at least 2010.

The census of 2022 tells you who owns these animals. 565 444 households farmed cattle. Six in ten of them kept between one and ten head. Only about 15 000 households kept more than a hundred. This is a herd held by many families, in small numbers, mostly in the former homelands of the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.

Why "missing"

The commercial herd sells about a quarter of its animals every year. That is called the off-take rate, and it is how a beef business stays a business. Studies of communal herds keep finding an off-take of only 5 to 10% a year. A survey of three Eastern Cape districts measured 12%.

So the formal market, the auctions and abattoirs that set the prices you read in the paper, runs mostly on the 60% of the herd that lives on commercial farms. Abattoirs slaughtered about 3.25 million cattle in the 2023/24 year. The communal herd contributes a small share of that. The rest of its animals are kept, used for ceremonies and lobola, sold to a neighbour, or sold at the gate to a trader with a bakkie.

That is the missing half. Not missing from the veld. Missing from the market.

What a communal farmer actually gets

When researchers asked communal farmers in three Eastern Cape districts what they were paid, the average price of a cow was around R4 000 (Chris Hani R4 061, Amathole R3 897). That was a study published in 2010, so the rand has changed since, but the pattern has not: the farmer at the gate gets far less than the auction price for the same animal.

There are honest reasons and there are unfair ones.

• The animals are often older and smaller. Communal cattle are frequently mature crossbreds of 225 to 450 kg that grade C at the abattoir, which pays less per kilogram than a young A-grade animal.
• Distance and cost. The nearest auction may be far away. Transport, the papers to move animals, and sale-yard fees all come off the price, and a farmer with three cattle cannot spread those costs.
• No price information. If you do not know that weaner calves sold for R49 a kilogram live this week, you cannot tell whether the man at the gate is being fair.
• Trust. Selling to a stranger means handing over animals on a promise. Many farmers sell only to people they know, which means one buyer and one price.

The gap is real money, and it closes when a farmer can reach a proper buyer. In the Eastern Cape's custom feeding programmes in 2016, cattle sold through the programme fetched an average of R8 614 a head, against about R7 267 from abattoirs and R7 015 from middlemen. In two other Eastern Cape feedlot communities, farmers reported their average price per animal rising from about R5 000 to R7 500. In Ganyesa, North West, in the 2024/25 year, 31 farmers on the ARC's Kaonafatso ya Dikgomo programme sold 50 head for R345 000, about R6 900 a head, and their goats and sheep fetched around R1 400 each where smallholders are usually offered R800 to R1 000.

What it means for prices

Beef prices have swung hard in the last two years. Early December 2024 was the low point: an A2/3 carcass fetched about R53.90 a kilogram and weaner calves about R32 a kilogram live. A year later the same carcass grade was at R74.15 and weaners at R42.68. In the first week of September 2026 the carcass was at R67.12 and weaners at R49.30, according to the Red Meat Producers' Organisation's weekly table. Absa's economists say foot-and-mouth disease limited the supply of cattle through 2025 and pushed prices up sharply; prices softened again from December 2025 to May 2026 as disease control improved and slaughter numbers recovered; and good rain in 2026 made farmers keep cattle to rebuild herds, which has kept weaner prices high, 31.7% above a year earlier in early September 2026.

Disease hit communal sellers hardest. By March 2025 KwaZulu-Natal alone had 165 foot-and-mouth outbreaks. Between December 2025 and March 2026 Meat Naturally Africa, which runs village auctions for communal farmers, had to cancel all 27 of the auctions it had planned. Its farmers earned R1.6 million in those months instead of the R20 million or more they would normally have earned.

Think about what that means for a farmer with ten cattle on communal land. Every rand per kilogram that the formal market gains is a rand that never reaches the gate unless the farmer can reach the market. And think about what it means for a buyer: 40% of the country's cattle are not on offer to you, so you are bidding against everyone else for the 60% that are.

If even a small part of the communal herd could sell openly, at a known price, to a verified buyer, with the money safe, two things happen. The farmer's price moves towards the market price. And the buyer gets a supply that has never been on the table.

What Live Stock does about it

We did not build a new auction. We built the three things that were missing at the gate.

1. A known price. Every listing shows the price per head and the animal's weight and age. Buyers post what they want and what they will pay.
2. A buyer who cannot run. Every buyer is identity-checked. Their money sits with a licensed escrow provider before anyone travels, and it is released only when they inspect and accept the animals.
3. Papers that issue themselves. A health declaration, a movement record and proof of sale on every deal, so the animal that leaves your kraal is not "missing" from anything.

The farmer keeps 97% of the price. Listing is free. That is the whole idea: bring the market to the kraal, so that the missing half of the herd stops being missing.