Do Son 
One of South Africa’s largest agro-industrial corporations, Astral Foods, has confirmed that it fell victim to a cyberattack on March 16, resulting in widespread disruptions across its production and logistics operations. The incident impacted all business units, including meat processing, product distribution, and feed manufacturing. In response, the company was compelled to activate its full-scale emergency contingency plans.
The disruptions persisted for nearly a week, causing production standstills, supply delays, and breakdowns in logistical chains. Astral Foods estimated direct losses at 20 million South African rand—approximately one million US dollars. These losses primarily affected earnings for the current financial period, which is set to conclude in the coming week. The company has issued a warning to investors, indicating that earnings per share will fall significantly short of projected figures.
Despite the severity of the attack, Astral Foods has announced that all divisions have resumed normal operations and that business is currently functioning as usual. The company also emphasized that no sensitive information belonging to customers, suppliers, or other stakeholders was compromised during the breach.
The nature of the attack and the identity of the perpetrators remain undisclosed. No known ransomware group has claimed responsibility, and Astral Foods has declined to provide further comment on the technical specifics of the incident—raising concerns amid a broader surge in cyberattacks targeting the agribusiness sector.
According to the Food and Agriculture Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Food and Agriculture-ISAC), the agricultural industry experienced no fewer than 167 ransomware attacks in 2023 alone. Threat actors often target such critical sectors, calculating that the urgent need to maintain food supply chains increases the likelihood of ransom payments.
In recent years, other major food producers—including JBS, Dole, Sysco, and Mondelez—have also fallen prey to cyberattacks. Even the United States Department of Agriculture confirmed last year that it had suffered a data transmission system breach, leading to the leakage of a substantial volume of industry-related information.
The most devastating incidents in the sector have resulted in losses amounting to millions of dollars. In 2021, a single U.S. farm reported damages of $9 million due to the paralysis of its production systems. Large-scale cyber incidents continue to undermine the stability of global food supply chains and exacerbate risks to food security.
While the aftermath of the attack on Astral Foods appears, for now, to be confined to short-term disruptions, the incident underscores a pressing question: how well-prepared are agricultural corporations for threats of this nature? Given the critical role such enterprises play in national food systems, breaches of this scale have the potential to inflict long-lasting consequences on a country’s economic well-being.
