Agroterrorism: How Could You Tell?

Writing for Common Dreams, Stan Cox, a Kansas-based plant breeder and writer, has a witty and awfully sad take on the specter of "agro-terrorism."

First, he gets a big "thank you" for calling attention to the absurdly random semantics of the terror threat naming racket. The bottom line: watch out for prefixes:

Keeping in mind that terrorists never seem inclined to take targeting suggestions from US politicians, we know these days to treat any use the word "terrorism" with deep skepticism. But when a prefix is attached, we should be especially wary.

Given the lack of standardization (the prefix of "bioterrorism" denoting the means of attack, of "narcoterrorism" the means of finance, of "ecoterrorism" the beneficiary, and of "agroterrorism" the target) it's clear that "terrorism" is simply a device to draw attention to whatever is in the prefix, and maybe scare up some funding.

The meat of his argument, however, is in a point-by-point look at the variety of agroterrorist threats, as described so breathlessly by Republican senators Susan Collins and Pat Roberts.

Contaminating the food supply? Who would know, with 76 million Americans getting sick each year from foodborne illness? Poisoning the rural water supply? Already got that goin' on pretty well, too, thanks. Chemical weapons? Let's look at the consequences of the 1.2 billion POUNDS of pesticides used in the U.S. each year.

Cox concludes:

Those who are sounding the agroterrorism alarm acknowledge that the increasing concentration of US agriculture, and its increasingly industrial infrastructure, make it more vulnerable. But those same, homegrown forces are already having consequences that are not easy to distinguish from the results of a hypothetical agroterror attack.

With an agriculture like this, who needs terrorists?

Read the whole article...