Executive summary
In November 2025, South Africa’s Minister of Agriculture announced the designation of indigenous crops and medicinal plants as agricultural products under the Marketing of Agricultural Products (MAP) Act. This declaration marks a significant policy shift: bringing sectors historically rooted in livelihood-based, decentralised, and largely policy defined informal systems into a formal market governance framework. As a result, these sectors may now be subject to statutory measures such as levies, registration, records and returns, and export controls.
This briefing examines why this declaration matters, not as a symbolic act of recognition, but as a material intervention that will reshape how indigenous crops and medicinal plants are governed, valued and commercialised. It analyses the implications of formal market regulation for small-scale actors who underpin these sectors—including wild harvesters, small-scale farmers, traditional healers, processors, and informal traders—and explores how statutory design choices will affect livelihoods, biodiversity stewardship, and agroecological systems.
From unregulated to regulated Indigenous crops, medicinal plants, and the future of livelihoods, biodiversity, and agroecology in South Africa
On paper, the declaration presents potential opportunities. Formal recognition could unlock investment, improve coordination, generate sector-wide data, support research and development, and raise the profile of indigenous crops and medicinal plants in food systems, healthcare, and climate resilience strategies. If designed and governed inclusively, statutory measures could support local value addition, strengthen sustainable harvesting practices, enhance farmer-managed seed systems (FMSS), and improve market access for marginalised actors.
However, these outcomes are not guaranteed. The statutory tools of the MAP Act were developed for consolidated, formal and export-oriented value chains, and are structurally misaligned with the decentralised, livelihood based realities of indigenous crops and medicinal plant sectors. Without careful adaptation, statutory measures risk reproducing existing patterns of exclusion, shifting regulatory and financial burdens onto small-scale actors while consolidating power and value among well resourced intermediaries.
Several key risks emerge from this shift towards formalisation:
There is a high risk of exclusion and criminalisation of livelihoods. Registration, reporting and levy requirements can impose administrative, financial and time burdens that many small-scale actors lack the capacity to meet. Where compliance is required at the first point of sale, local markets or informal trading nodes, costs are likely to be passed down to harvesters, growers and traders, increasing the risk of exclusion from formal markets or the further criminalisation of livelihood activities.
Governance processes established under the MAP Act create significant risks of elite capture. Representative bodies responsible for administering statutory measures are required to demonstrate sectoral support, yet consultation processes—often conducted through Gazette notices and formal submissions— are inaccessible to most informal actors. Without explicit representation and accountability safeguards, governance structures may be dominated by well-organised and well-resourced actors, marginalising knowledge holders and consolidating decision-making power.
The declaration may intensify extractive, export-oriented commercialisation. Standard setting, traceability, and scale requirements associated with formal markets can redirect value away from local economies toward higher value processing, branding, and intellectual property (IP) controlled elsewhere. In most value chains, the greatest value is generated through processing, standardisation, branding and ownership of IP rather than the supply of raw plant material. Without safeguards to localise value addition, small-scale producers risk being locked into low-margin raw material supply while higher value activities remain concentrated higher up the chain.
Biodiversity and knowledge systems are at heightened risk. Increased demand, combined with weak stewardship incentives, may accelerate overharvesting, habitat degradation, and pressure on vulnerable wild harvested species— particularly those for which roots, bark, bulbs, or rhizomes are extracted. Existing access and benefit sharing (ABS) frameworks have shown limited effectiveness in delivering equitable outcomes for knowledge holding communities or in achieving conservation objectives. They often prioritise formal compliance and
redistribution over strengthened community resource rights and sustainable use systems. Rising commercial value may also intensify bioprospecting and biopiracy risks, particularly where governance and enforcement capacity is weak.
There are significant implications for food and nutrition security, as well as water and energy use. Enhanced production and use of indigenous crops and medicinal plants could strengthen nutrition, health, and livelihoods, supporting food security if investment is inclusive and oriented toward local markets. However, if development is driven primarily by export markets, supply may be diverted away from local food systems. Registration, standards, and levies that raise consumer prices could further reduce access for low-income households, particularly those reliant on informal markets. Even with greater awareness of the value of indigenous foods, reversing decades of deliberate stigma will require sustained, coordinated efforts across government, the private sector, and civil society.
Climate change further heightens the stakes of this declaration. Many indigenous crops and medicinal plants are well adapted to drought, poor soils, and climatic variability, aligning closely with South Africa’s National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, which prioritises diversified, low-input production systems and the protection of climate vulnerable rural livelihoods. Poorly designed statutory measures, however, could incentivise water-intensive commercial cultivation, land-use change or homogenised production models that undermine climate resilient agroecological practices.
The outcomes of this declaration will therefore depend not on the act of declaration itself, but on how statutory measures are designed, governed, and implemented. The paper argues that statutory intervention must be accompanied by deliberate safeguards to ensure proportionate regulation, inclusive governance, and the protection of livelihoods and biodiversity.
Key priorities include:
• Shifting compliance and cost collection higher up the value chain to prevent burden shifting,
• Ring-fencing levy funds for public-good investments such as sustainable harvesting and local value addition,
• Embedding agroecological principles into research and extension, and
• Aligning market regulation with biodiversity, ABS, and climate commitments.
Ultimately, the declaration represents a pivotal policy moment. It could either reinforce patterns of exclusion, extraction and ecological degradation, or support a more just, inclusive and agroecologically grounded transformation of South Africa’s food, health and biodiversity systems.
Realising the latter will require political will, cross-departmental coordination, and a governance approach that recognises indigenous knowledge holders, small-scale producers and harvesters not as peripheral stakeholders, but as rights holders and custodians at the centre of these sectors.
Several key concerns emerge:
There is a high risk that formalisation will impose administrative and financial burdens on small-scale farmers, wild harvesters, traders, and traditional healers—many of whom operate outside formal systems and lack the capacity to comply. This could lead to exclusion from formal markets or increased criminalisation of livelihood activities.
Governance processes under the MAP Act tend to favour well-organised and well-resourced actors, creating a significant risk of elite capture. Representative bodies tasked with administering statutory measures may not reflect the diversity of value chain actors, leading to inequitable benefit sharing and the consolidation of power.
The declaration may intensify commercialisation pressures that prioritise export-oriented and standardised production systems. This could risk undermining agroecological practices, eroding FMSS, and redirecting value away from local economies towards higher value processing and IP located elsewhere.
Biodiversity and knowledge systems are at risk. Increased market demand without adequate safeguards could accelerate overharvesting, habitat degradation, and biopiracy, while existing ABS frameworks have shown limited effectiveness in delivering equitable outcomes for knowledge holding communities.
Finally, there are implications for food and nutrition security, as well as water and energy use. While indigenous crops are associated with resilience and low-input production, poorly designed regulatory and market incentives could encourage more resource intensive models and reduce the availability of these crops in local food systems.
To address these risks, the paper proposes a set of core recommendations. Governance processes must be inclusive, with clear requirements for the representation of small-scale actors and safeguards against capture. Regulatory systems should include exemptions, simplified compliance pathways, and accessible support to avoid criminalising informal livelihoods.
Statutory measures should explicitly embed agroecological principles, directing investment towards sustainable harvesting, FMSS and localised value addition. Strong alignment between agricultural and biodiversity governance is essential to ensure implementation supports national biodiversity and climate commitments.
Equitable benefit sharing must be strengthened through legal, institutional, and financial mechanisms that recognise knowledge holders as rights holders. Transparency, accountability, and participatory monitoring systems are critical to ensuring benefits flow to communities and ecological impacts are tracked.
Ultimately, the declaration represents a pivotal policy moment. Its outcomes will depend not on the act of declaration itself, but on whether subsequent regulatory design reinforces existing patterns of exclusion and extraction, or enables a more just, inclusive, and ecologically grounded transformation of South Africa’s food and biodiversity systems. From unregulated to regulated Indigenous crops, medicinal plants, and the future of livelihoods, biodiversity, and agroecology in South Africa
