SECURE-AGRO Agri-Food Cybersecurity Fall Institute

Overview

The SECURE-AGRO Agri-Food Cybersecurity Fall Institute brings together producers, processors, technology providers, government, and researchers for a focused week on the cybersecurity of Canada’s agri-food systems. This inaugural edition runs from October 19 to 23, 2026, coinciding with Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Each day examines a different operational technology profile — from automated livestock production and precision agriculture through to downstream supply chains and national coordination — pairing a keynote and an expert panel with a working session that produces concrete output rather than discussion alone.

Format

Five half-day sessions, each running from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. Every day follows the same structure:

• Keynote — 9:00 to 9:30 a.m.
• Expert panel — 9:30 to 10:15 a.m., with three to five experts including the chair
• Networking break — 10:15 to 10:30 a.m.
• Interactive working session — 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon

The interactive sessions are where the week’s output comes from: participants work through ranked risks, capability gaps, recommended controls, policy requirements, research questions, and implementation priorities for that day’s theme.

Programme

Day 1 — Monday, October 19, 2026

Automated Livestock Production: Securing Reliable Dairy and Poultry Operations

Dairy and poultry production increasingly depends on connected milking, feeding, ventilation, environmental-control, monitoring, and farm-management systems. This session will examine how cybersecurity failures can affect operational continuity, animal health and welfare, food production, and confidence in agricultural data. Participants will identify practical measures for strengthening the reliability and resilience of increasingly automated livestock operations.

Panel — Securing Automated Dairy and Poultry Operations: Resilience, Data Integrity, and Safe Innovation

This panel will examine the challenges and opportunities associated with securing connected dairy and poultry operations. Panelists will discuss cyber risks affecting automated equipment, remote access, farm-management platforms, technology vendors, and operational data. The conversation will explore how producers, technology providers, government, and researchers can improve system resilience, protect data integrity, maintain animal welfare, and support innovation without imposing unworkable burdens on farm operators.

Day 2 — Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Downstream Agri-Food Supply Chains: Building Resilience from Inputs to Retail

Modern agri-food supply chains depend on interconnected manufacturers, distributors, transportation providers, warehouses, retailers, and digital service providers. Disruption at any point can affect product availability, food quality, traceability, and public confidence. This session will examine cybersecurity and data-sharing risks across downstream supply chains and identify opportunities to improve continuity, visibility, coordination, and resilience.

Panel — Securing the Agri-Food Supply Chain: Third-Party Risk, Trusted Data, and Resilient Logistics

This panel will explore cybersecurity challenges across agricultural input manufacturing, distribution, logistics, warehousing, and retail. Panelists will consider third-party and supplier risk, ransomware, platform dependencies, traceability, data interoperability, and continuity planning. The discussion will identify opportunities for stronger information sharing, common standards, trusted data exchange, coordinated incident response, and investment in supply-chain resilience.

Day 3 — Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Precision Agriculture and Controlled Environments: Securing Crops and Greenhouses

Crop production and controlled-environment agriculture increasingly rely on sensors, autonomous machinery, robotics, irrigation systems, environmental controls, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based platforms. These technologies create significant opportunities for productivity and sustainability, but they also introduce new operational and cybersecurity dependencies. This session will examine how farms and greenhouses can adopt advanced technologies while preserving safety, reliability, data integrity, and operational control.

Panel — Securing Precision Agriculture and Greenhouses: Connected Operations, Data Governance, and Safe Automation

This panel will examine the security and resilience of precision-agriculture and controlled-environment technologies. Panelists will discuss risks involving connected sensors, autonomous equipment, environmental controls, remote access, artificial intelligence, legacy systems, and vendor-managed platforms. The discussion will also address agricultural data ownership, integrity, interoperability, and responsible use, while identifying practical pathways toward secure and fail-safe automation.

Day 4 — Thursday, October 22, 2026

Advanced Livestock Production and Primary Processing: Resilient Beef and Pork Systems

Beef and pork production depend on increasingly connected systems spanning farms, barns, feedlots, transportation, traceability platforms, and primary-processing operations. Cyber incidents affecting these systems can disrupt production, compromise animal welfare and worker safety, weaken biosecurity, and interrupt critical supply chains. This session will examine how the sector can improve cybersecurity while ensuring that resilience measures remain practical and accessible to operations of different sizes.

Panel — Securing Beef and Pork Operations: Continuity, Data Stewardship, and Equitable Resilience

This panel will explore cybersecurity and data-governance challenges across beef and pork production and primary processing. Panelists will consider operational continuity, connected livestock technologies, traceability, biosecurity, remote access, vendor dependencies, and the exchange of data among producers, processors, regulators, and service providers. The discussion will identify resilience measures that are technically effective, economically realistic, and applicable to both large enterprises and smaller operators.

Day 5 — Friday, October 23, 2026

Agri-Food Cyber Resilience: Government Readiness, National Coordination, and Public Trust

Cybersecurity in the agri-food sector cannot be addressed by individual organizations acting alone. Effective resilience requires coordination among governments, producers, processors, technology providers, researchers, and critical-infrastructure partners. This concluding session will examine national preparedness, institutional responsibilities, incident coordination, information sharing, and the policies required to maintain public confidence in Canada’s food systems.

Panel — Building National Agri-Food Cyber Resilience: Governance, Preparedness, and Public Trust

This panel will examine how government, industry, academia, and sector organizations can collectively strengthen Canada’s preparedness for significant agri-food cyber incidents. Panelists will discuss roles and responsibilities, threat intelligence, incident reporting, emergency coordination, regulatory and policy gaps, public communication, and mechanisms for trusted information sharing. The panel will identify priorities for national action, investment, research, and cross-sector collaboration.

Confirmed speakers

Further keynote speakers and panel chairs are being confirmed and will be listed here as they are announced.

• Dr. Evan Fraser, Executive Director, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph — keynote, Wednesday, October 21: “Global food security and the digital agricultural revolution”.
• Nasser Alsukayri, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada — keynote, Friday, October 23.
• Janos Botschner, CSKA Canada — panel chair, Friday, October 23.

Attendance

The Institute is invitation only. Attendance is capped at approximately 40 participants per day, alongside a standing core cohort of roughly five to eight seats held across the full week so that discussion carries forward from one day to the next.

Outcome

The week’s working sessions feed a Canadian Agri-Food Cybersecurity Risk and Readiness Report, synthesising the risks, capability gaps, and priorities identified across all five themes.