Subsidy for cyber security cooperative in the Dutch agricultural sector

8 September 2020

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate has selected the cyber security cooperative in the agricultural sector (of which ForFarmers is the founder) for the Cyber resilience 2020 subsidy. Thanks to this subsidy the cooperative, consisting 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 the budgeted costs that are eligible for subsidy; the chain cooperation receives a subsidy of 109,960 euros.

Basic security level in the agricultural sector

The Ministry has a subsidy for collaborations in the field of cyber resilience, in order to make Dutch businesses digitally safer. Chain cooperation is one of the six organisations that receive a subsidy; the committee assessed a total of twenty applications. The committee judged: "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 responds enthusiastically: "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."