Defining Agriterrorism

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

National security conversations rarely focus on agriculture, but that doesn’t mean that the risks don’t exist. David Stiefel, director of Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, notes that while phrases like “agriterrorism” and “agricultural warfare” are commonly used, they fail to capture the full scope of their meaning or, more importantly, the risks they pose to farmers.

Stiefel... "Everybody uses the term agriterrorism because it sounds really sexy, right? Ooh. Agriterrorism. But really agriterrorism is a very specific form of crime that involves trying to change government or society through or through the use of some sort of agricultural agent, right? So that could be making pig sick or it could be doing some sort of threat that makes people lose confidence in our food supply, right? So there's also agricrime, which is just using agriculture, committing crime through agriculture. And then there's agricultural warfare, which would be using agriculture and food as a method of warfare. So salting the earth back in the day would've been agricultural warfare. So like, I'll use the term agriterrorism, but like it's a much broader field that I'm talking about."

Once again, that is David Stiefel with the Nuclear Threat Initiative.