AgroterrorismReaping What You Sow: The Case for Better Agroterrorism Preparedness

By Stevie Kiesel

Published 21 February 2020

For years, interest groups, academics, and policymakers have sounded the alarm on the vulnerability of U.S. crops to a terrorist attack. This article briefly reviews the history, risks, and consequences of agroterrorism attacks targeting crop yields and suggests how the recently established DHS Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office could play a role in countering this threat.

For years, interest groups, academics, and policymakers have sounded the alarm on the vulnerability of U.S. crops to a terrorist attack. This article briefly reviews the history, risks, and consequences of agroterrorism attacks targeting crop yields and suggests how the recently established DHS Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office could play a role in countering this threat.

Infecting a plant with disease is not always a technically challenging operation, and there are examples of this throughout history. In Alabama in the 1970s, the Ku Klux Klan poisoned black Muslim farmers’ water supplies for their cattle. Also, in the U.S., in 1989 a group calling themselves The Breeders spread medflies (an invasive species of fruit fly that has destructive effects on 22 different crops grown in California) in the Los Angeles area to protest aerial pesticide practices. Although medfly infestations are not abnormal in California, the numbers and patterns of this particular infestation raised red flags. Law enforcement also received several letters signed by The Breeders claiming responsibility for the medflies’ intentional release. A few months later, California stopped its aerial pesticide program. Elsewhere in the world, in 1978 the Arab Revolutionary Council poisoned citruses that were being exported from Israel to Europe with liquid mercury as a means of harming Israel’s economy. In 1997, Israel sprayed a chemical on grapevines in Palestinian territory, destroying hundreds of vines and nearly 17,000 metric tons of grapes.