Farms' Broadband Needs Different From Rest of Rural America

She cited a tomato-growing system as an example of broadband's utility. During part of their growing cycle, tomato plants need almost continuous watering. By installing a system that can be monitored on a cellphone and requires little bandwidth, farmers can reduce water use by more than 10%, she said. That’s a big deal in California, “where water is more precious than gold."

Precision agriculture requires multiple networks, Sterling said. “The needs of precision [agriculture] are very different [from those of] rural broadband.” Serving a farm is different from providing broadband for a house, Sterling said. “You need connectivity across the entire farm.” For instance, when using an autonomous tractor, you can’t have any areas where the network doesn’t function.

“There’s a saying in agriculture: ‘If you’ve seen one farm, you’ve seen one,’” Sterling said. “One size does not fit all.”

With farms facing labor shortages, farmers appreciate automated equipment, said Andy Bater, a farmer in Pennsylvania who also served on the FCC task force. But automation requires "nearly 100% broadband capability.”

The industry also wants better data on crops and livestock, which requires broadband as well, Bater added. Farmers need data to increase their efficiency, reduce the amount they spray crops and time harvests, he said.

Precision agriculture can mean that people who grew up on family farms can survive in the face of agribusiness consolidation, said Mark Rubin, director-government relations at CostQuest Associates, a broadband consulting firm. But “to be viable, you need connectivity.”

The biggest takeaway from the final Precision Ag Connectivity Task Force report was the importance of an “all-of-the-above solution,” Sterling said. “We need everything,” including fiber, wireless and satellite communications. “In this case, technology-neutral means everything."

“When we need to farm, we need to farm,” Bater said. “We need broadband that’s available all the time … so that when the weather is right, we can get out and we can plant, or we can harvest, or we can bale hay." Bater also predicted that an increasing number of farmers will launch private wireless networks as technology evolves.

Speakers also discussed the importance of broadband mapping by the FCC and NTIA.

One of the things Sterling learned on the task force was that 90% of farmland is within 10 miles of fiber. That isn’t a very large distance, making universal coverage, which looked “impossible,” seem “feasible,” she said. “That’s a perfect example of the power of mapping.”

Bater noted that he spent decades as a radio and TV engineer before returning to farming. Mobile mapping needs work, he said. “I’d love to see more transparency” from wireless carriers. “It’s kind of opaque how the carriers provide service across an area."

CostQuest provides data for FCC mapping, as do the carriers, Rubin noted. There have been “issues” with data from the providers, he said. The FCC is aware of the problem and is trying to improve the data, he said. “You’re buying equipment, you’re buying technology, but it isn’t any good unless you have sufficient connectivity.”

Christine Hallquist, a former Democratic candidate for governor of Vermont, told the webinar that wireless solutions “are fine if you have reliable and strong signals,” but that’s not the case in her state. “In many of our farms, we do not even have a cell signal,” and satellite signals are “often obscured by hills, mountains and trees.”