AgroterrorismBetter Strategy to Protect U.S. Agricultural Sector
The agriculture sector in the United States accounts for more than 5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (about a trillion dollars) and provides jobs for more than 10 percent of U.S. workforce, and threats to the agricultural sectors. Agriculture impacts more than just the food provided for the family dinner. It’s a part of forestry, fishing, food and beverages for restaurants, textile, and leather products. In the past, biological weapons (BW) attacks were typically considered with the framework of anti-personnel attacks. Experts say that state-actors or terrorists could wreak havoc – and misery – on millions of Americans by launching attacks on the U.S. agricultural sector.
The agriculture sector in the United States accounts for more than 5 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (about a trillion dollars) and provides jobs for more than 10 percent of U.S. workforce.
Albert Mauroni, the editor of a new and important collection of studies on agroterrorism, notes that agriculture impacts more than just the food provided for the family dinner. It’s a part of forestry, fishing, food and beverages for restaurants, textile, and leather products, plus tobacco products.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) provides an unclassified assessment of threats to the United States every year in testimony and report to Congress. The report usually contains a paragraph or two on the threat posed by nation-states and violent extremist organizations in their development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment, the intelligence community notes that, “The threat from biological weapons has also become more diverse as BW agents can be employed in a variety of ways and their development is made easier by dual-use technologies.”
Mauroni says that, often we view these statements as cautions warning about anti-human biological warfare (BW) agents, “but is the United States prepared for deliberately developed biological agents that target crops, plants, and animals?” he asks.
Between 2000 and 2004, in the wake of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, there were a number of academic papers and discussions on the threat of anti-plant and anti-animal BW agents.
These studies led more and more experts to argue that the United States had to develop a more comprehensive national strategy on biodefense. In 2004, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) asked the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center (now the Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies) to conduct a study to determine the potential involvement of defense forces in response to a domestic agroterrorist attack. That report, titled Agroterrorist Attack: DOD Roles and Responsibilities, was released in 2006 to start a discussion on the threat and the military’s role in combating agroterrorism.
