October 5,  2020

ForFarmers: Subsidy for cyber security cooperative in Dutch agricultural sector

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate has selected a cyber security cooperative in the agricultural sector -- of which ForFarmers is the founder -- for the Cyber resilience 2020 subsidy, ForFarmers announced last month.

With the subsidy, the cooperative -- which consists of cyber security experts from ForFarmers, De Heus, Nutreco, VION, FrieslandCampina and Eurofins and led by AgroConnect -- is able to better protect the entire agricultural sector against security risks. The subsidy amount is 50% of budgeted costs. Overall, the chain cooperation receives a subsidy of €109,960 (US$129,078).

The ministry has a subsidy for collaborations in the field of cyber resilience, in order to make businesses in the Netherlands digitally safer. Chain cooperation is one of the six organisations that receive a subsidy; the committee assessed a total of twenty applications. The committee said: "The project is supported by the six important chain parties in the agricultural sector. These large parties take responsibility by being pioneers. The agricultural sector is also a large and important sector in the Netherlands. It is good to set up a cyber resilience network for this."

Johan Rambi, group security officer at ForFarmers, said: "We are very proud and happy that the ministry recognises the importance of cyber security in the agricultural sector and is supporting us financially in this. With this amount, we can set up a sector security standard and realise associated tools that are suitable for all chain partners. With this, we want to create a basic security level in the agricultural sector."

- ForFarmers