The global food system is a $10 trillion dollar per year complex, dynamic web of people, processes and geographies engineered to feed the eight billion people on the planet today. It intersects with human health, global trade and national security, and consists of farmers, transporters, processors, freight forwarders, wholesalers, retailers, buyers and consumers. In some nations – like Australia – the system has a strong export focus, and in many others the focus is on importing to maintain food security.
The resilience of the global food system isn’t a given. Not even close. That’s both a challenge and an opportunity.
The threats to the global food system are changing exponentially. Up until this point, these have included organic threats like disease and invasive species, exacerbated by increased global trade, people movements, and environmental stresses.
Going forward, add bioengineering, motivated bad actors with the means to cause harm and perturb food systems, geopolitical weaponisation of food, and even misinformation campaigns.
In recent months in Mozambique there have been false reports of a cholera outbreak on X (formerly Twitter), which led to 96 deaths as people panicked and tried to escape by boat, several of which sank. On TikTok, campaigns are circulating that the recent bird flu event in Australia was intentionally introduced.
The global food system also relies on imported product inputs like machinery, chemicals, fertilisers and services, creating critical supply chain dependencies. Moreover, 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply is used in agriculture today, while crimes against water are on the rise around the world.
For agribusinesses participating in the global food system, emergency management of biosecurity incursions of exotic pests, weeds and diseases can disrupt business continuity and market access.
The stakes are even higher given the direct link to human health. Approximately 60 per cent of new human diseases, known as zoonoses, originate from animals. This means that about three out of every five new human diseases each year stem from animal sources.
A recent example in Australia is Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), a mosquito-borne disease which showed up for the first time in Australia in 2022 in piggeries, and then in the human health system.
Australia can lead the world in creating a much-needed new class of global infrastructure to manage biosecurity threats and protect global food systems.
Analogous to cybersecurity infrastructure, this biosecurity threat management infrastructure would seek to collapse the time between threat detection, response and recovery and would ultimately predict areas of elevated risk.
It would also emphasise global cooperation to anticipate biosecurity risks before they transcend geographical boundaries. This is only possible through digitisation and the extensive use of machine learning, combined with cutting-edge sensing, diagnostics and genomics.
Protecting global food systems requires technology-enabled shared responsibility, with industries collaborating closely with governments.
Governments retain primary responsibility for biosecurity at national and state borders. However, this new biosecurity threat management infrastructure needs to be industry-led and to serve industry – we have heard first hand that agribusinesses will not trust governments to be in their operational systems day to day.
This last mile biosecurity protection all the way to the farm gate, and on farms, is essential to protecting the entire global food system.
Delivering global biosecurity threat management infrastructure from Australia will lift our national standing as we seed a new industry, and help protect other agriculture-based economies, while concurrently protecting our own agriculture trade and domestic agriculture industry.
According to the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF), Australian agriculture accounts for 55 per cent of Australian land use, 74 per cent of water consumption, 13.6 per cent of goods and services exports, 2.7 per cent of value-added GDP and 2.2 per cent of employment, representing approximately 239,000 people. Around 72 per cent of Australia’s agricultural production is exported.
Food Security is tied to Biosecurity
Food security refers to the constant and reliable production and distribution of food to those who need it. This encompasses physical, societal and economic considerations that can all impact the availability of food.
In 2022 the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimated that 2.4 billion people experienced moderate or severe food insecurity and 900 million people faced severe food insecurity – around a third of the world’s population.
The FAO describes food security as a function of the following four pillars: that food is available, that individuals can access food, that they can utilise food in ways that meet all their physiological needs, and that there is stability to ensure that adequate food is always available for any given individual, household or population.
But food production globally is unevenly distributed. Some countries produce more than others due to the productivity of their lands, driven by factors including soil quality and access to technology that can enable more efficient production methods. Many more rely on imports to ensure food security for their population.
Factors impacting production include loss of farmland at continental scale through desertification, and water stress. Effective irrigation systems can double agriculture yield.
In Australia we are familiar with the impact of drought on food production but may not be so aware of the rise in water crimes globally that are impacting the ability to irrigate.
These crimes can include corruption, theft, contamination, terrorism and cyber-attacks. In 2014, ISIS flooded hundreds of square kilometres of agricultural land downstream of Fallujah, displacing thousands of people.
Human conflict can also result in the destruction of infrastructure and the weaponisation of food and inputs. We saw this recently with Russia disrupting fertiliser supplies, as a key input for the agriculture industry.
Russia handles a large portion of world fertiliser trade, amounting to 23 per cent for ammonia, 21 per cent for potash, 14 per cent for urea and 12 per cent for phosphate. Similarly, Ukraine supplies 40 per cent of Africa’s and the Middle East’s wheat and corn.
Natural disasters also have an impact on food security, ruining crops, accelerating the spread of waterborne disease, and disrupting transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure. We witnessed this firsthand in Australia with the Black Summer fires and the floods that followed soon after.
Finally, pesticides and chemicals used to treat pests and disease in food production can have environmental consequences leading to soil degradation. We have heard first-hand from Australian farmers who battle soils becoming less productive due to the use of a well-known weed killer over many years.
All of these production issues lead to food insecurity, the opposite of food security, that can result in second and third-order consequences in addition to the direct impacts.
According to Unicef, nearly 282 million people in 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023, 24 million more than the previous year. This directly impacts the health of those affected.
A reduction in production yield will lead to inflated prices for food and agricultural products, which then can drive social unrest. We are seeing this on a very small scale in Australia currently, as Australians are expected to pay more for eggs in the coming weeks due to the spread of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in egg production facilities.
When food is unavailable there are precedents for riots. By the summer of 2022, more than 20 countries were facing protests and riots related, at least in part, to high food prices as a result of COVID supply chain disruptions, compounded by the war in Ukraine.
In late 2022 the US Senate and Congress passed resolutions – S.Res.669 and H.Res.922 – condemning the use of food as a weapon of war and bringing new resources to bear on the problem of food-related instability.
When we hone in on the drivers of food insecurity, the links between food security and biosecurity become very clear. The threat landscape for biosecurity is directly related to the potential disruption of many aspects of food production systems.
Cybersecurity as a biosecurity analog
According to the CSIRO, biosecurity measures in agriculture are aimed at protecting food crops and livestock from pests, weeds and diseases and enhancing access to markets. Effective biosecurity impacts three of the four pillars of food security: availability, access and stability.
In biosecurity, the key challenges mirror those in cybersecurity: threat prevention, accelerated threat detection, response and recovery.
Effective and early threat detection and response are crucial in cybersecurity, but challenges persist. Mandiant recently reported an average nine-day detection time for network intrusions. IBM found it takes an average of 277 days to identify and contain a breach, while Palo Alto Networks’ Unit42 reported data extraction within two days of intrusion.
Enterprises also face regulatory obligations like the SEC’s requirement to report major breaches within 30 days in the US, similar to Australia’s SOCI Act for critical infrastructure. Under this Act, Australian providers must notify the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) within 72 hours of detecting a cybersecurity incident with a “relevant impact”.
Cybersecurity and biosecurity share a networked risk profile that can impact community safety, underscoring the importance of shared responsibility.
If this sort of gap from cybersecurity detection to response exists in a wholly digital environment, it’s understandable that the gap in physical and analog operating environments today for biosecurity detection and response can be even longer.
This is despite threats moving at pace. The UK foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 was the result of sheep being transported throughout the country from an infected saleyard. By the time the source of the threat was determined a few days later, it was too late to stop the spread.
Although not widely appreciated or tested in the same way cyber regulations have been tested, there is also a regulatory obligation on agribusinesses to not only manage but to proactively protect against biosecurity threats, according to state biosecurity acts.
In cybersecurity, we have lived through bad actors evolving from script kiddies, to organised crime and now nation states with most developed countries, including Australia, now adding another branch of military – cyber. There is no reason that threats to food systems won’t follow a similar trajectory and evolve to be the next contested domain globally, after IT systems and possibly space.
Cybersecurity has transitioned from an IT concern to a C-level function with the establishment of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) role, now a critical risk managed at the board level. Directors are now personally accountable for safeguarding data assets within their organisations.
Biosecurity, a latent threat to agribusiness continuity, often lacks the necessary board-level attention. It must evolve, with agribusinesses integrating expert advice and data-driven risk insights at the board level to allocate resources effectively.
There are also analogs in national benefits for innovators. In the same way that Israel’s deep cybersecurity expertise resulted in outsized geopolitical influence – and global companies being started and scaled in Israel, creating jobs, wealth and stronger cyber protections – Australia can be a global leader in a new biosecurity threat management industry focused on protecting global food systems.
Today cybersecurity is a $210 billion per year industry growing at 14 per cent CAGR. Biosecurity as an industry is unlikely to reach the same market size but is still likely to be a market in its own right that reaches tens of billions of dollars annually and will be equally important to economies, industry, human health and national security.
The second-order benefits of effectively managing biosecurity threats, and protecting global trade, human health and national security could be measured in the trillions of dollars.
Biosecurity in Australia today
Australia is highly regarded internationally for its strength and leadership on biosecurity. Building on natural advantages as an island continent with no shared national land borders, and geographic isolation which provides an advantage with respect to air and avian borne diseases, is the long history of sound quarantine policy.
The Federal Quarantine Act (1908) stood the test of time through an evolutionary process to protect our industries through border controls, until it was replaced by the Biosecurity Act (2015). State governments and territories are also at various stages of reform into modern biosecurity legislation.
Periodic policy reviews have ensured that the $730 million per annum sector has continued to evolve into a world-class, modern biosecurity system. These reviews have emphasised a policy of shared responsibility for biosecurity between governments, business and the Australian community.
In addition to this principle of shared responsibility are two other important principles that underpin the policy framework: the notion of the biosecurity continuum shifting from the old quarantine at the border mindset, to a continuum from pre-border, border and post-border to the farm and back again; and the embedding of science-based assessments.
Due to infrequent reviews – Nairn in 1996, Beale in 2008, and Craik in 2017 – the reformers did not anticipate the digitisation of the economy and assurances from global trade.
The shift from a predominantly defensive quarantine approach to a modern biosecurity continuum occurred prior to the advent of smartphones, IoT sensing technologies, widespread connectivity, global digital platforms, machine learning, and AI.
Consequently, the policy framework lacks digital enablement, specifically purpose-built digital infrastructure to integrate parts of the continuum which are siloed by jurisdiction or public-private divides.
This integration is crucial for generating necessary data flows to assess, manage, and mitigate biosecurity risks. The current biosecurity system is not fit-for-purpose, because this data driven biosecurity threat management infrastructure has not been anticipated.
Without it, the system will struggle to evolve quickly enough to address an exponentially growing threat landscape. There are already increasing cost pressures on the government, and traditional co-funding sources including industry and importer levies won’t adequately fund the growth of the system.
Although recognised as being world-class, the biosecurity system in Australia has inherent weaknesses that are showing up through more frequent incursions of notifiable pests and diseases – Fall army worm in crops, Japanese encephalitis virus in pigs and then into humans, Varroa mite in honey bees, to name a few recent ones.
A step change is needed to future proof the system, in a way that enhances the legacy investment and evolution over the decades, while exponentially increasing the effectiveness of current systems, processes and people, enhancing their ability to function. It can’t add a work burden to farmers and supply chain participants, and it can’t cost too much.
The opportunity
What’s required is a rethink of how we deal with biosecurity through all its stages – prevention, detection, response, and recovery.
The boundaries between government and industry responsibilities also need to be redrawn, and this new class of biosecurity threat management infrastructure needs to be scaled, and led by industry.
This is not in any way intended to take away from the role of government, or government affiliated organisations. In fact, the opposite.
SpaceX revolutionised the space launch industry, igniting a vibrant sector that Forbes reported in 2021 encompassed over 10,000 companies, 5,000 investors, 150 R&D hubs, and 20 sectors from navigation to space medicine, with a market capitalisation exceeding $4 trillion. In FY23, Australia alone had 640 space industry companies, according to Austrade.
The shuttle program created reusable launch platforms costing $10,000 to $25,000 per kilogram to deliver to cargo to low earth orbit. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reduced this to $2,720 per kg, and the next-gen Starship aims for $200 per kg, and potentially $10-20 per kg with full reuse.
Just as NASA is now better placed to choose from a wider range of capabilities to deliver on its upcoming lunar missions post-SpaceX, with innovation co-funded by industry and leveraging industry ingenuity, so too can our global biosecurity systems be re-engineered while reinforcing the role and importance of government.
But it requires new mental models from our public and private sector leaders, our science and research sector, and industry bodies like the Rural Development Corporations (RDCs). Above all it requires more ambition to deliver larger scale outcomes by working together in unprecedented but technically feasible ways.
Australia is well placed to lead this transformation with its strong competitive edge in biosecurity.
Leading in this field will safeguard our $80 billion agriculture industry and enhance our reputation as a reliable trade partner. By assuming a leadership role, Australia can influence global data sharing standards and biosecurity protocols.
At the core of biosecurity threat management infrastructure are secure, transparent data management protocols. The data needs to be owned by the originator of the data, always. The data also needs to be portable across service providers, analogous to number portability with telcos, ensuring that the power of choice sits with agribusinesses.
The data sharing architecture that can enable this level of data movement between private sector participants, especially the plethora of smaller family-owned farm businesses that are the backbone of Australia’s agriculture system, and governments, must be intentionally developed to build a trusted data capture system which respects the data privacy rights of each individual participant.
In no way can this type of new infrastructure be used as a surveillance platform on industry with punitive consequences.
Industry should share their data that could include tracing data in the case of a biosecurity incursion, with the confidence that only the data that is needed is requested by authorities, and that data is only used for the described purpose and deleted once the task is complete.
All of this should take place with express permissions and controls of the agriculture industry participants impacted. Additionally, to deal with emerging threats, any credible biosecurity threat management infrastructure also needs to be API-driven and extensible.
Similar to SpaceX, establishing biosecurity threat management as a novel category of infrastructure will attract external capital investment. This can complement existing public and industry-funded initiatives.
The outcome will be a state-of-the-art digital biosecurity system, fostering the emergence of a new biosecurity threat management industry, with Australia leading.
ExoFlare biosecurity threat management
The dynamics described in this industry capabilities paper and an absence of any existing infrastructure or platform company focused on comprehensively solving for biosecurity has compelled the formation and build out of ExoFlare from within Australia.
ExoFlare is developing the world’s first biosecurity threat management infrastructure for agribusinesses. We see this as an industry creation opportunity for the country. This is bigger than just ExoFlare.
Launched publicly in July 2024, ExoFlare is already running in more than 680 sites in Australia and the Indo Pacific and has completed more than 230,000 comprehensive biosecurity risk assessments across seven commodities to date.
The ExoFlare platform is being developed to integrate expert knowledge, sensing, genomics-based diagnostics and analytics to provide accelerated detection, response and recovery from biothreats.
The result is a new benchmark for the way businesses manage biosecurity risk and maximise asset value, revenues, market access and compliance in a rapidly evolving threat and regulatory environment.
Over time ExoFlare will also have other secondary and tertiary benefits, including helping to ensure more targeted use of vaccines and antibiotics in livestock, including spillover benefits in dealing with antimicrobial resistance which is estimated by the World Economic Forum to potentially cost the world $100 trillion by 2050.
At scale globally, ExoFlare’s biosecurity threat management infrastructure will also help to ensure global market access for Australia’s agriculture products and global agriculture trade, the latter is estimated at approximately $1.5 trillion annually for both imports and exports.
There are also secondary benefits to individuals including direct health benefits through a reduction in the risks of zoonosis because of higher levels of resilience to biosecurity threats within the agriculture sector as well as mental health benefits for farmers and agriculture employees.
After the recent Australian varroa mite incursion that led to the destruction of approximately 60,000 hives, there are beekeepers on suicide watch. In the US, farmers have among the highest suicide rates of any occupational group, 3.5 times the general population, which also has implications for regional communities.
Policy recommendations
Given the perishable, but enormous opportunity that Australia has to lead the world in creating a new biosecurity industry – biosecurity threat management, analogous to cybersecurity in IT systems, we encourage federal and state governments and their shadow counterparts to consider the following policy recommendations:
- Increase concessional capital available for building an Australian biosecurity industry. Encourage it and support it as a complimentary peer to quantum, AI and genomics
- Extend the Department of Home Affairs’ Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) work to establish threat intelligence data sharing protocols within industry, and between industry and government, using cybersecurity as an analog, for adoption by Home Affairs, DAFF, state governments and industry
- Influence global biosecurity data standards, leveraging the infrastructure of Standards Australia
- Develop a national biosecurity research roadmap that is coherent and high impact across academia, publicly funded research organisations and RDCs to deliver larger scale research outcomes with domestic and international impact pathways
- Provide financial support for TAFEs to develop new vocational biosecurity training as was done with cybersecurity and AI, to ensure industry participants are better informed about the potential impacts of biosecurity risks to their businesses, so they are better able to mitigate the risks ahead of time with the support of veterinary officers and other experts.
Adrian Turner, co-founder and CEO of ExoFlare. Adrian was previously the founding CEO at CSIRO’s Data61, the team that led the development of the national AI roadmap, AI ethics framework, standards advisory work for consumer data rights and open banking. He is an influential Australian tech entrepreneur who spent 18 years in Silicon Valley building businesses, before returning to Australia in 2015.
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