Travis Moser can't afford to put up a steel fence to keep terrorists off his 330-acre dairy business in western Montgomery County. But he has dogs that bark.
Duane Hershey doesn't have an alarm system to monitor the perimeter of his farm in Chester County. That's what his neighbors are for.
And Phoebe Bitler can't protect all of her farm in Berks County, but she'll be watching closely if you decide to walk your dog across her field.
When the nation went back to Orange Alert last week, a special message went out to farmers in a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reminding them that the terrorist threat goes far beyond buildings, bridges and airplanes. "You are on the front line of defense for protecting America's food and agriculture," begins the list of tips at www.usda.gov/homelandsecurity.
Worried about terrorists trying to cripple the country's economy by attacking its $200 billion agricultural economy - including production worth $821 million in New Jersey and $4.5 billion in Pennsylvania - USDA Homeland Security officials are asking farmers to help.
The USDA warns farmers to watch for suspicious activity around their farms and feedlots; lock up their chemicals and fertilizers; conduct background checks on their farmhands; watch for strange diseases in their animals or crops; and cut back on access to the farms, even for school groups.
"You don't just get out of your car and go walking into the plant," said Bruce Schmucker, chief of the regulations and compliance division of Pennsylvania's Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Services. "Maybe [farmers] won't have the Brownie troop over to watch the sheep being shorn."
Though the concept of agricultural terrorism, or "agroterrorism," has become a buzzword at the USDA and Department of Homeland Security, farmers and industry officials say their defenses were already raised against what they see as a greater threat - the accidental introduction of disease that could destroy them.
