Agro-Terrorism: A New Peril towards Global Food Security

Abstract

In most of the countries, agricultural systems are the backbone of main economicsectors contributing to political stability. In a country, like India, whose economy is largely dependent on agriculture produce and exports, any such malicious attack can grossly destabilise the socio-economic structure. Inmany countries food price are kept very low due to production efficiencies and disease controls. So, the concept of ‘‘Agro-terrorism”or agricultural terrorism starts to assume vital importance since a diseaseoutbreak in an agricultural system could lose billions of dollars, cause poor production efficiency, drive higher food prices, exports of valuable commodities will be stop, and so create economical instability. What is really needed is to treat the agro-terrorism menace at par with that of other kinds of terror and evolve a well-conceived strategy to deal with it. For this, anti-agro-terrorism models from other countries can be studied and adapted to the Indian situation.Such an effort is worth it even if the threat perception ceases to exist. A constant surveillance against pests and diseases of crops and animals will help combat even natural epidemics that often take a heavy toll on crop and livestock output.