As Food Production Moves to Automation, Is More of the Food Chain at Risk of Cyberattacks?

Not even a month after a cyberattack shut down the Colonial Pipeline in the U.S. another cyberattack came. This time, it had a direct hit on agriculture.

“They've just gotten bigger and bolder," says Jason Crabtree, CEO of Qomplx and former advisor to U.S. Army cyber command.

JBS, the world’s largest meat producer, was the latest victim of a cyberattack, and one that crippled JBS packing plants across Australia and North America.

“It's not just in the U.S., it's a global phenomenon,” says Glynn Tonsor, livestock economist for Kansas State University.

As JBS plants started opening back up in days, the recovery was swift. However, the impact already sent ripples through the industry.

“We've had labor challenges for months now,” says Tonsor. “Now you have an IT challenge. Anything that keeps certain plants offline will make that particular challenge worse.”

Processing Pinch

Tuesday’s USDA cattle slaughter numbers showing the U.S. processed 27,000 head fewer cattle than plants did the week prior, and the total impact this week looks to be larger.

“Our calculations is it looks like it backed up about 42,000 head of cattle,” says Dan Basse of AgResource Company. “So important, if you will, but not devastating.”

As the majority of JBS packing plant locations were back online in days, the overall blow to U.S. packing capacity wasn’t as severe as if the situation would have lingered for weeks.

“If it stays at that level, nothing, you know, no other shoe to fall here, then the impact is relatively minimal, not for the company, necessarily. I'm sure they're scrambling a lot,” says Derrell Peel, Oklahoma State University livestock specialist. “Some of their customers, both on the procurement side, as well as on the sales side are no doubt being impacted by flows of product. But in terms of a broader sort of a disruption in overall supplies of beef, and certainly anything that consumers would see, I don't think this will have that kind of impact if it stays at this level.”

Crunched Cattle Processing Capacity 

While the impacts seemed to be minimal last week, it’s adding to the bigger issue packers already face.

“The timing is very unfortunate, because we've been struggling with capacity issues and trying to move enough cattle through to sort of get feedlots caught up and cleaned up and more current. And so this aggravates that a little bit,” adds Peel.

“We have a lot of heavyweight cattle, we need to move through,” says Basse. “Backing up 40,000 cattle is not a big deal today. But expanding the kills has been a real problem for packers, especially with beef prices is high. So, the packers are trying to work through the inventory, but we believe it'll take longer than many think, probably to the middle or end of summer.”

Tonsor says bringing more processing plants back online isn’t the only answer and isn’t a quick fix.

“We can't just look at one news event label one a black swan event and move on,” he says. “It's a function of a lot of other things. Simply adding more plants, which is talked about would ease some of that challenge. But that's not free. And we all need to remember why that hasn't been, you know, done already. They're expensive investments.”

The Threat of More Cyberattacks 

As the cattle complex worked to recovery from the cyberattack, the worldwide cyberattack also caught the attention of the White House.

“Obviously ransomware attacks, we've seen them increase over a period of time. It's an increasing threat to the private sector and to our critical infrastructure and there are other countries, many of whom we will see when the president is in Europe, who have similar concerns, so we expect this to be an issue of discussion,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki last week.

The White House said on Tuesday that Brazil's JBS SA informed the U.S. government that the ransomware attack against the company originated from a criminal organization likely based in Russia, a theory Psaki confirmed in the press briefing this week.

U.S. Food Production at Risk 

As cyberattacks seem to become more common, it also brings up a broader concern as more of the food chain may be at risk.

“I do believe that automation, and then everything run by a central brain, a computer brain, if you will, offers that opportunity,” says Basse. “And how good can our firewalls be? What do we have to do are the key questions for corporations going forward. But I do think that this is a shot across the bow of agriculture. I think we have to be attentive to it. I would say that automation is going to be good for processing margins and for agriculture in general. But it does expose us some different types of risks.

From robotic milkers to robots picking and processing lettuce, as more of food production relies heavier on automation and less on manual labor, creating an efficient food chain could come at a cost. 

“What's an IT risk relative to labor excess risk? What's a modern facility driven by IT risk versus an old facility that might be more manual and maybe has a more fire risk with it because it's an older facility? So, there's a lot of tradeoffs in the broader risk context,” says Tonsor. “We're homing in on cyber risk, because that's what we're talking about today. But it is far from the only risk."

Crabtree, who has experience dealing with cyber security issues, says solutions to cyberattacks, like the ones impacting everything from gasoline supply to beef, are possible.

"This is solvable,” he says. “But a lot of organizations have made a choice not to bring in the experts or the technology or the process material they need to do so."

As companies work to beef up cyber security even more, Tonsor says the future of food could depend on it.

“These things are going to keep coming up, because we all rely on the internet,” he says. “With that, that's another vulnerability. That's why companies keep investing in backup systems, and so forth. I'm an optimistic person. I think those investments make us more efficient, let us have a better world. And we shouldn't try to walk away from them. But we need to recognize that we got to manage them.”