The Nebraska Farm Bureau and the FBI’s Omaha Field Office are partnering to encourage farmers and ranchers to be aware of agriculture threats with a rise in technology.
At the Nebraska Innovation Campus, part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, FBI Omaha Special Agent in Charge Gene Kowel said four main threats face the agriculture sector.
These include bad actors seeking to halt business operations, steal data or technology and manipulate the markets, as well as bioterrorism or biowarfare.
Kowel and Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue said the rise in American technology and innovations have made farms, ranches and the food processing industry more productive and efficient “than ever before.”
However, this technological rise has brought a trade-off in vulnerability to cyber threats without additional protections.
McHargue and Kowel spoke in a video prior to the two-day event, which began Tuesday.
“Cyber risk is business risk,” McHargue said in the video. “And cybersecurity is national security,” Kowel continued.
‘Nothing more urgent’
Agriculture is vital to the nation’s security as well as its economic security and public health, Kowel said. He echoed warnings that the world is only a handful of meals away from anarchy.
“It can be argued that there really is nothing actually more urgent or critical to our nation’s security than our supply of food, feed and biofuel,” Kowel said. “It doesn’t take a long time for our food supply to be threatened to have a real threat to our national security.”
McHargue said technological innovations include gene editing to decrease the susceptibility of crops or animals to certain diseases. The changes have also led to less water, fertilizer and diesel fuel being used than ever before while producing more crops.
“We have the ability to do more with less,” he said. “And those of you in agriculture know that we have been doing that for a long time.”
Source: nebraskapublicmedia.org
Photo Credit: Nebraska Farm Bureau
Categories: Nebraska, Business, Crops