Horizon scanning rural crime - agroterrorism an emerging threat to UK agriculture?

Acts of terrorism are more normally associated with urban areas, infrastructure, and military or governmental targets. However, as societies around the world come to terms with the reality of asymmetric warfare and global terrorism, new targets and vulnerabilities have to be considered and a wider view of what constitutes critical national infrastructure should be recognised. This paper challenges ‘traditional’ strategic thinking, which has consideredagriculture as having limited vulnerability and being predominately susceptible to biological attack through an exploration of the potential threat and the implications for agriculture and rural communities in the UK for a variety of Agroterrorist attacks. Consideration of case studies and scenario building has identified the wider socio-economic implications for rural communities. These potential impacts go well beyond the farm gate and involve a variety of emerging and established industries such as horse racing, speciality food, leisure and tourism as well as threatening individual well being. Finally an appraisal of the UK government policy in this area highlights some key areas of policy concern given the potential wide nature of an Agroterrorism attack, and argues that the UK should recogniseAgroterrorism as a distinct threat to critical national infrastructure (as in the US). Through doing so it should seek to raise awareness across rural communities and stakeholders for both prevention and mitigation means.