The soya bean location differential court fight between Grain SA and the JSE has been pushed back: the interdict application is now set down for 6 November 2026, according to Farmer’s Weekly. The hearing was originally scheduled for 8 October. Corné Louw told the publication it was postponed because the assigned judge was unavailable for health reasons, and that the delay does not mean the case has been withdrawn or concluded.
An interdict is a court order that stops something happening while a dispute is settled. Grain SA wants the court to block the JSE from implementing its latest decision on how soya bean futures are priced. A separate review application asks the court to examine that decision and set it aside.
What a location differential is
Soya bean futures on the JSE are contracts to buy or sell beans at a set price on a future date, delivered to JSE-registered silos. Because grain has to be trucked to where it is used, the exchange adjusts the price for each silo to reflect transport costs. That adjustment is the location differential. Per Farmer’s Weekly, differentials account for transport costs when pricing soya bean futures at those delivery silos.
Under the single reference point (SRP) method, every silo’s differential is measured against one benchmark location. As Sunday World reported, that holds even when beans are sold to a processor closer to the production area and never travel towards that point. The benchmark today is Randfontein.
The alternative, the multiple reference point (MRP) model, takes several supply and processing locations into account. At a Grain SA march on the JSE on 13 August, Louw put the farmers’ objection plainly, as reported by Farmer’s Weekly: “As things stand right now, all grain is considered to be from Randfontein, but the reality is that not all grain is from Randfontein.”
How the dispute got here
According to Bizcommunity, the JSE piloted MRP on its deliverable soya bean futures contract over two marketing seasons. The exchange set five evaluation criteria: trading activity (volumes and open interest), the number of active market participants, stock management in zero-differential areas, redelivery of JSE silo receipts, and stakeholder feedback. Zero-differential areas are those where no transport deduction applies.
The JSE announced on 20 July 2026 that it would drop MRP and return to SRP, reports Farmer’s Weekly. Bizcommunity says the JSE acknowledged gains in trading volumes, open interest and physical deliveries during the pilot, but attributed them to external market conditions rather than the MRP model. It cited the availability of soya bean crushing data, differences between processing facilities, reliance on historical data and divergent stakeholder views. It also cited commercial sensitivity and POPIA (the Protection of Personal Information Act) constraints on using older data sets.
The exchange proposes replacing Randfontein with Driefontein as the benchmark when SRP returns on 1 March 2027. A JSE statement carried by Sunday World said the decision followed an extensive review of its responsibilities as a licensed exchange and falls within its mandate.
Grain SA’s case and the money
Grain SA says the JSE did not give criterion-by-criterion reasoning against the agreed framework, and did not fully evaluate the quantitative evidence, according to Bizcommunity. It also says recommendations from the industry technical committee were left out of the final decision, and that the statutory supply and demand data the JSE found hard to use is already collected under the Marketing of Agricultural Products Act.
Grain SA puts a number on the stakes. In an earlier Farmer’s Weekly report, it calculated an average transport deduction of about R113 a ton under MRP, against about R333 a ton under SRP, a gap of roughly R220 a ton. Applied across the volumes and silo points in its analysis, the difference comes to about R696 million. That figure is Grain SA’s own calculation, described as a calculated difference rather than a confirmed loss, and Sunday World noted it has not been independently verified.
Grain SA chief executive Dr Tobias Doyer said: “Farmers are being asked to accept a system that, on our calculations, adds significant costs to the value chain.” Dr Dirk Strydom, managing director of Nampo, told the same report: “If an unnecessary cost is built into the system, somebody ultimately pays for it.”
Richard Krige, Grain SA’s chairperson, said at the march that negotiations had run for about 20 years without results. The march handed over a memorandum backed by a petition. JSE group CEO Valdene Reddy received it, said the exchange is happy to engage with farmers, and noted that the matter is sub judice, meaning before the courts, so the substance could not be discussed publicly.
What happens next
The interdict application returns to court on 6 November 2026. Until a ruling, the JSE’s stated timetable stands: market participants were asked to comment on the Driefontein proposal by 14 August 2026, and the proposed change takes effect with the marketing season starting 1 March 2027. The JSE has said it will oppose the interdict, and the review application remains pending.
