Rural Broadband Internet Access – Why it's Important

Part of that newfound interest was driven by pandemic-induced stresses on food systems around the nation and world. The drive to use available technology to maximize crops on farms suddenly felt more urgent—and legislators understood what growers and advocates had already pointed out: the only thing holding farms back from using such technology was broadband Internet gaps in the nation’s more remote regions.

Without rural broadband Internet, farmers are unable to deploy precision agriculture, develop new routes to market, or use new autonomous and artificial intelligence technology. Filling this gap has been a priority for elected officials on both the federal and local levels, which is why it was a key line item in the 2021 infrastructure bill and remains a prominent part of the 2023 Farm Bill.

This pointed interest doesn’t come a moment too soon. The USDA noted early this year that only 5 percent to 25 percent of all U.S. planted acreage for key crops (winter wheat, cotton, sorghum, and rice) has benefited from the use of precision-agriculture tools that require a broadband connection.

Boom times  

As the effects of the pandemic abated, governments began pouring broadband resources into the nation’s least populated terrain. First came the aforementioned infrastructure bill, which included $42 billion to expand rural broadband. That funding has been working its way downstream; in the summer of 2023, the government divvied up that amount among all states based on need. Now each state has a broadband office, and in June of that year, officials for the first time could access street-level maps showing where broadband remained unavailable to about 12 million buildings or homes.

“The big story right now is this map that has come out is an improvement over what we had previously, and we actually now have building-level data,” says Brian Whitacre, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University. With that roadmap available, officials are now plotting the best way to extend broadband to each area, whether it’s via fiber, fixed wireless, or some combination of technologies.

“We’re finally to the point where we’re trying to get those places connected,” Whitacre says, adding that the $42 billion “is going to get us a good chunk of the way there.” He notes, however, that some estimates put the cost as high as $60 billion.

That’s why in August 2023, the USDA offered a fourth round of funding for the ReConnect program, which provides grants and loans to help farmers access broadband. That was on top of another $714 million released in June of that year as part of the initiative, which seeks to spread broadband funding “to communities in every corner of the country,” said Mitch Landrieu, the White House’s infrastructure coordinator.

And negotiations continue on the 2023 Farm Bill, the last incarnation of which was passed in 2018—a lifetime ago, technology-wise. Broadband is now being discussed in that piece of legislation with an urgency normally reserved for issues such as drought.

As investment gets underway, close coordination between federal and local agencies will be necessary to avoid duplication of government-funded broadband deployments, Seidemann says. And to speed things along, there must also be a way for providers to begin to install systems while waiting for the red tape—meaning environmental and historical preservation permits—to be cut through.

High-speed solutions

Farmers will benefit from the investments in myriad ways. One 2022 study published in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy showed that doubling the number of broadband connections in rural communities is associated with a 4 percent increase in corn yields and a 2.5 percent decrease in farm operating expenses. Another piece of research earlier revealed a county-level increase of $25,000 in profits after farms were able to deploy broadband for the first time. The NTCA reports that with broadband, farm income increased by 10 percent from 2018 to 2019, while precision agriculture dropped hired-labor costs on some corn farms by 60 percent to 70 percent.

The benefits take many forms, including see-and-spray solutions, in which an array of cameras on the front of a tractor or other piece of farm equipment captures real-time images of what’s happening in the field and sends them to the cloud. AI technology can then identify the plant as a weed or crop, and by the time the back end of the machine passes over it, the equipment knows whether to spray herbicide or fertilizer. One manufacturer predicts this can reduce chemical use by about 66 percent.

“One, you’re not spraying chemicals unnecessarily,” Seidemann says. “And two, you have the more precise and targeted shot of the chemical onto a particular spot.” Other Internet-based technologies enable mapping that can measure yield as a harvest is happening—for example, as grain is being shot from a harvester into a collection bin. “That enables us to see the productivity results as we map out our acreage,” he says. “And that also tells me, do I need to change my irrigation? Do I need to change my seeding strategies?”

These and other technologies have the combined effect of reducing input costs and improving yields. Meanwhile, sensors can monitor the health of livestock—down to a hog’s cough or a cow’s body temperature—and alert a farmer if animals need to be separated. And auctions can be done remotely, saving the farmer the expense of trucking animals around and sparing the livestock the stress of the experience. “It really expands the marketplace opportunities in a way that’s just incredible,” Seidemann says.

Other potential benefits are global in nature: Broadband-fueled precision agriculture helps farmers cut back on emissions and sequester carbon—steps that will help contribute to sustainability.

Broadband in rural areas may sound for many people like an investment in places they’ll never see. But the benefits are likely to reach nearly everyone.