The Case for Connectivity

Dr. John Fulton re-joins the FarmBits podcast to talk about a critical topic in agriculture right now: connectivity. This episode marks the beginning of a series focused on connectivity and is intended to make the case for why connectivity is so critical to the future of agriculture, and specifically digital agriculture. Many people who live in rural areas, and in some cases even urban or suburban geographies, experience the frustrations of unreliable, slow, or even non-existent internet connections. For farmers living in these areas who are increasingly presented with opportunities to enhance their operations through digital technologies, lack of internet connectivity can be a serious limitation to their adoption of these technologies and improvements to their operations. Even for farmers who are not actively exploring adopting digital technologies, lack of connectivity can also limit their access to important information like weather forecasts or University recommendations that can contribute significantly to their decision making. Dr. Fulton provides a fantastic overview of the landscape of connectivity, how our current state of connectivity impacts agriculture and digital technologies, and how connectivity challenges may best be solved for rural stakeholders built on his own experiences and a breadth of research. "They [the FCC] just did a report where they went through and said well what is the value, for example, if we could tomorrow just turn on and everyone has access in rural America to the internet - wireless connectivity - what would that mean to the ag economy? . . . We would instantly see a 3% increase in corn production in the U.S." - Dr. John Fulton