The FCC’s Precision Ag Connectivity Task Force says rural agricultural areas need broadband accessibility to better address critical challenges and build economic opportunity, competitiveness, and prosperity. In order to accomplish this, the group recently recommended five ways to address the technology and connectivity needs of precision agriculture in rural America.
The five main priorities the Task Force recommends are: to improve federal broadband maps and consistently validate user experiences; increase incentives and clarify that precision agriculture infrastructure are eligible expenses for federal broadband programs to increase adoption and build out a robust infrastructure. In addition to agricultural organizations, the group includes representatives of NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association and SpaceX.
It also recommends the federal government enhance the high-speed standards to meet the technology needs in agriculture, improve collaboration between federal agencies and remove regulatory impediments, and increase digital access to education and training for individuals engaged in farming. Additional consideration should also be given to cyber security concerns and interoperability standards, notes the task force in a report released in November.
The task force says the FCC and USDA should begin working immediately using data “with preeminent industry authority and derive public-facing FCC broadband availability maps that reflect and confirm the unserved and underserved areas on agricultural lands.” It urges the FCC to develop “a uniform set of practices and validation processes … including crowd sourced data validation and on-the-ground testing mechanisms to verify quality of service against broadband provider claims.”
The USDA Extension Service should help facilitate measurement. The broadband data fabric must include agricultural structures to which broadband is now or would be deployed, in addition to homes, shops, offices or mobile equipment, according to the report.
Task force members urge “substantially increased” incentives and subsidies to drive connectivity deployment. The overarching goal should be deploying future-proof networks, relying on various means – terrestrial/non-terrestrial, fixed/mobile platforms – and to include other elements to enable precision agriculture deployment in the areas of edge computing and private 5G-like technology infrastructure. These incentives should be deployed and administered at the local level to ensure they are efficiently, and effectively used, and localized deployment accountability can be monitored and enforced.
The FCC should work with USDA and other relevant agencies to create incentives for specific types of infrastructure build-out that will support precision agriculture networks and operations, says the task force, including:
- Connectivity to rural agriculture land headquarter facilities.
- Expansion of middle mile infrastructure.
- Deployment of local/last-acre network facilities for use by precision agriculture systems and devices.
- Clarify that precision agriculture architecture, including edge compute infrastructure and private 5G wireless systems, are eligible expenses for federal broadband programs to increase adoption.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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