First, let’s pretend — the crowd is applauding wildly. Because you’ve just unveiled your new vehicle, and it’s really cool. Slick styling. Of course, the latest tech is onboard. Goes zero to 60 in nothing flat. Runs on electricity.
One problem.
There is no road to drive it on.
That’s the agricultural technology dilemma. A rapidly accelerating niche, as you know by now, of dirt-to-space hardware and software managing the 360-degree spectrum of food production.
Satellites, drones, machines, apps, water and “inputs” (fertilizer and pest control) management, energy demand and soil conditions.
It’s all there, good to go. Problem is, the San Joaquin Valley — one of the planet’s premier food production regions — lacks broadband wireless.
To paraphrase the sci-fi classic “Soylent Green,” the issue is plants, not people. Our friends from the telecom giants look at the San Joaquin Valley and see low population density. But ag tech users are plants. Each tree in an orchard, for one example, would host at least four wireless sensors. Multiply that by several thousand for a single larger grower.
The pro bono AgTech Roundtable convened last week in Sacramento to explore the lack of a broadband wireless lane on California’s information highway. The conversant group included a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) member; a California Farm Bureau Federation officer; San Joaquin Valley education and business leaders; the founder of the Silicon Valley ag tech meetup; and senior executives from the state departments of Technology and Pesticide Regulation, and the California State Library.
Our consensus:
Broadband wireless service is declining in rural California. This is a serious problem beyond enabling ag tech. It adversely impacts rural communities where residents must drive 45 minutes to check their cellphone emails.
Lack of wireless broadband means a lack of jobs, health-care delivery and distance learning, and endangers public safety.
We invite you to join us in our solution:
Provide CPUC with irrefutable evidence of intolerable broadband neglect. Next time you’re outside somewhere and your cellphone dies, use this app.
The CPUC has its broadband division watching the results, and is ready, willing and able to leverage the telecom industry. (Note: This is an Android app, but CPUC promises us we’ll have an iPhone version in mid-2015. So borrow your friend’s phone!)
It took decades for rural residents to get electricity. Let’s not repeat a problem that is so last century. Broadband wireless for rural communities — and for ag tech.
This story was originally published by TechWire.
