§2. Agriculture Cybersecurity Centers
This section establishes a competitive grant and cooperative agreement program, administered by the Secretary of Agriculture through the Director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, to create five Regional Agriculture Cybersecurity Centers at eligible colleges or universities (i.e., those with food and agriculture sciences and cybersecurity programs that coordinate regional industry, cooperatives, government, and other stakeholders). The Secretary must also establish a national network of the centers and designate one college or university as coordinator. Each center must (1) conduct research on agriculture-sector cybersecurity systems, including situational awareness tools; (2) develop a security operations center to analyze threats and recommend mitigations; (3) create cybersecurity technologies and tools (e.g., intrusion detection/prevention, access controls, authentication protocols, secure architectures); (4) build testbeds to assess technologies; (5) conduct attack/defense exercises; (6) develop education and training programs for agricultural stakeholders; (7) provide training using testbeds; and (8) build regional research collaboration networks. The section authorizes $25 million for each of FY2026 through FY2030.