MONTGOMERY | Ed Harless has been farming for more than 50 years in the Elrod community, and for most of that time he didn't give much thought to terrorism, mad cow disease or fertilizer bombs.

Even now, Harless, who will turn 80 next month, doesn't lie awake at night worrying about stolen chemicals, the bird flu or a tainted water supply. But he does see the value in a state effort to prepare for agriculture-related terrorism, disasters and emergencies.  '9/11 made an impression on us all,' Harless said Friday morning as he prepared to feed his cattle. 'What that said is ‘It can happen to you.' It really did.'

Harless attended an all-day emergency planning workshop in Tuscaloosa last month that was coordinated by the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries and other state agencies. The workshop addressed a variety of potential emergencies, not just terrorist attacks, and how best to prevent, limit and respond to them. The workshops are planned for every county.  'It was a good training session,' Harless said. 'The main thing is, it made me more aware of the things that I should do.'

Subjects included how to respond to an apparent case of mad cow disease, limiting the rat population by keeping cats around, safeguarding fertilizer and chemicals that could be used to make bombs or taint the food supply, and remaining vigilant and aware of one's surroundings.  Some of those things he's always done; others are new defenses for a changing world.

The linchpin of the interagency effort to prepare for agricultural emergencies is the State Agricultural Response Team.  According to its Web site, 'The team's mission is to develop and implement procedures and train participants to facilitate a safe, environmentally sound and efficient response to agricultural emergencies on the county, regional and state levels.'  The emergency planning workshops, announced in January by Gov. Bob Riley, are part of that mission. It includes drafting emergency responders, veterinarians, agricultural experts, public health officers, feed store operators, investigators and others to be part of the response team.  'These county planning workshops give our local officials and first responders the educational tools needed to help them prepare and respond in case there is an attack in Alabama,' Riley said.  Agriculture is a $40 billion industry that employs about one in eight Alabamians, said state Homeland Security Director Jim Walker.

The workshops include learning to write response plans, establishing local and regional response teams, quickly enlisting resources.

Preparing, not anticipating

Like Harless, Deborah Gaither, director of the Gadsden-Etowah Emergency Management Agency, isn't preoccupied with concerns about a terror attack on the state's food, livestock or poultry industries.  'I don't think there's a great possibility for an intentional terrorist event, but that doesn't mean we don't have to plan and prepare for it,' said Gaither, who recently attended one of the emergency planning workshops. She understands that even unintentional emergencies can arise in unexpected ways and the workshops help address that.

David Hartin, director of the Tuscaloosa County EMA, attended the Tuscaloosa workshop and came away with an appreciation for who would handle an emergency involving livestock, crops or food, even in a barge on a river or a truckload of disease-infected cattle stopped on the interstate.  'Our county really does not have a lot of large animals, but we are on the interstate so how would we handle something interstate-related and develop resources toward [handling] large animals?' Hartin asked.

Brad Fields is a veterinarian for the state agriculture department and its director of emergency programs who conducts the six-hour workshops.  He said any response, whether for an accidental or intentional event, must be the same, although in the event of an intentional act the FBI is called in.  'You never know,' Fields said. 'In any event you'd have to pounce on it and look at it as an agri-terrorism event until we can exclude it.'

In the army of responders, farmers like Harless are the first line of defense because they're the ones likely to see something amiss.  Harless now has a healthy respect for safeguarding even the basics.  'The idea is rapid response to whatever problem you have,' Harless said.