Canada's food supply — under threat?

The oldest piece of equipment on Chris McLaren’s southern Ontario dairy farm is a W4 International, a four-cylinder tractor his grandfather bought in the 1940s.

Among the newest pieces of equipment is an automated calf feeder that reads a chip in each animal’s ear and delivers them preset quantities of heated milk. 

That data is uploaded to a server, and McLaren receives alerts on his phone if one of his calves isn’t drinking enough. If the machine breaks down, a technician can fix it remotely. 

“As farms get bigger and bigger, there gets to be more strain on the time for the owner and operators of the farm. So moving towards technology allows you to manage the cattle better,” said McLaren, whose family has owned the farm for nearly 160 years. 

But as farms like McLaren’s increasingly become connected — with reams of farming data uploaded daily to cloud servers — they also become more exposed to cyberattacks, including from groups operating with tacit approval of the Russian government. 

“With us moving into robotic milking in the next six to eight months, that becomes even more concerning. It's definitely top of mind right now.”