Anti-Agriculture Designs: Suggested Action Plan

摘要

Anti-agriculture designs are a new potential threat to agriculture and food security. Disease-causing pathogens and other biological agents intentionally introduced into crop and livestock production systems can ravage our agro-based economy. The knowledge available from the technologies employed in genetically engineered crops and livestock and the information on new findings and their potential biological applications available on internet can be manipulated and misused by individuals or groups for anti-agricultural activities. Government, non-government and regional level policies and action plans need to be formulated to combat such situations. Devices based on bio-chips for their applications as field-mountable systems for sensing and detection of targeted biological agents and e-noses to sense bacterial contamination and resulting spoilage in food are being experimented. Satellite imagery based surveillance systems to provide farmers with information such as moisture content, vegetative differences, weed and pest infestations, overall crop health to rapidly monitor crop condition in their fields are under trials. While such devices and systems have started to appear in commercial market, for their use they will need to be tuned to meet the location specific requirements in respect of their selectivity and sensitivity vis-a-vis cost affordability and easy availability.