The Food and Agriculture Sector (FAS) accounts for 20% of the United States (US) economy and has been designated a Critical Infrastructure Sector by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This sector consists of an extensive, open, globally interconnected, diverse, and complex array of privately owned "just in time" networks; and encompasses a variety of goods and services including the production and manufacturing of crops, livestock, poultry, and seafood products and by-products. As such, the threats to food and agricultural resources will come from various sources including foreign and domestic events, naturally occurring and/or human-induced, and the interdependencies of FAS with other critical infrastructures. Given the broad scope of these possibilities, the 2021 Threats to Food and Agriculture Resources (TFAR) Teams focused on the myriad of threats that could disrupt or devastate supply chains within the vast FAS of the US; examine shortfalls in US capacity to prevent and mitigate the threats; and recommend best practices, policy, and research priorities that will foster preparedness and resilience of the FAS against all threats. The TFAR discussions centered on terrestrial and aquatic environments in the context of food and agricultural systems, climate change, food adulteration, disruptions in the transportation sector, water shortages, globalization of trade/travel, biosurveillance limitations, social culture, cyberthreats, agro/bioterrorism, and economic coercion. In-depth capability and vulnerability analyses of the FAS identified several key areas for utmost attention by the public and private sectors, with recommendations to prepare for and address the likelihood of emerging threats that could severely impact the food, agriculture, and aquaculture industries, including: Aquatic/seafood safety and biosecurity.
Globalization will remain the determinant factor to the world’s economic, technological, and societal progress; with caveats that geopolitical disputes amongst dominant world powers for access to natural resources, including agricultural and aquaculture/seafood products, may change the dynamics of the global food supply chain. This will significantly impact the FAS and its interdependencies with other critical infrastructures. This report can be leveraged to support and address a variety of research requirements embedded within existing US government policy and doctrine. In particular, six key recommendations were provided, one of which was: The US government needs to promote domestic aquaculture for food production. National Security Memorandum-16 (NSM-16) on Strengthening the Security and Resilience of United States Food and Agriculture (2022) assigns key roles to the DHS related to overall strategic guidance and enhancing national unity of effort. DHS, in coordination with the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and other relevant agencies, will continue to integrate food and agriculture sector efforts across the Homeland Security Enterprise to promote the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructures.
DHS TFAR Report: https://foodsafetytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Threats-to-Food-and-Agriculture-Coordinated-Research-Agenda-AEP-final-paper-2021.pdf
DHS NSM-16 Bulletin: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-11/NSM_DHS%20FACT%20SHEET%20on%20NSM%20Food%20and%20Agriculture.pdf