Health, Food, and Agriculture Resilience (HFAR)

The University Consortium on Health, Food, and Agricultural Resilience (UCHFAR) is an alliance among Land Grant Universities, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Health Security (OHS), and industry. UCHFAR is committed to bolstering the readiness, response, and mitigation strategies aimed at safeguarding the nation’s public health, food, and agricultural sectors.

Recognizing the need to strengthen these critical sectors against intentional threats, hazards, and natural disasters, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Health Security (OHS), in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories, hosted an exploratory meeting in October 2022 with subject matter experts (SMEs) in these areas from universities and colleges across the United States. From these meetings, UCHFAR was born.

UCHFAR fosters a multidisciplinary membership of SMEs drawn from diverse fields, spanning agriculture (animal, plant, and aquaculture), public health, supply-chain management, food science, engineering, computer science, and economics. These SMEs represent faculty members from land-grant universities across the United States, as well as industry and government representatives involved in these sectors.

Embracing a comprehensive approach that integrates geographical considerations into its research agenda, UCHFAR is poised to pave the way toward more resilient and secure public health, food, and agricultural sectors.