I recently wrote about a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about limited access to broadband in Afton MN. The comments were almost as interesting as the article. One theme that always emerges is – why should urban subsidize rural? Here’s one reason – access to food. (I know Afton is not a world farming center – but other areas in Minnesota are – and the themes are the same regardless of specific location!)

The USDA recently released two smartphone apps that will make farming more efficient. I’ll paste the story below – but one important caveat is that you need a smartphone and wireless or cellular access. And I assume you need a great data plan because I can only imagine how much data will be going up and downstream. I heard a little bit about farmers’ need for broadband in Willmar last week. In Willmar people are defaulting to using hotspots and bringing data back to the office to upload. The age of precision ag is already here – and it will help produce food more efficiently – but to really take advantage we need adequate broadband access in these areas, which by definition are not densely populated to have broadband coverage. It’s just one straightforward reason folks in urban areas might want to subsidize rural broadband access…

This past April, they [Agricultural Research Service (ARS)] released the first two of a suite of mobile phone apps that, once all are issued, will connect agricultural producers around the world and provide them with shared knowledge on ways to maximize their land’s productivity while protecting its resources for future generations. The two apps, dubbed “LandInfo” and “LandCover,” can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and are currently available for use on Android phones only. However, other platforms, including iPhones, may be available by year’s end, noted Herrick, with ARS’s Range Management Research Unit in Las Cruces, New Mexico. …

“The LandPKS is a global network of open-source databases and computer simulation models that anyone with a mobile phone and a wireless or cellular data connection will be able to access,” explained Herrick.
The apps use the latest in digital soil mapping, GPS-enabled camera functions and Cloud-computing technology, but require no special training—thanks to picture-matching, drop-down menus, explanatory video and multiple-choice questions.

With LandInfo, for example, users can collect and share soil and land-cover information as well as gain access to global climate data. The app also provides some useful feedback, including how much water the soil can store for plants to use, average monthly temperature and precipitation, and growing season length.
LandCover simplifies data collecting for use in land-cover inventories and monitoring. In fact, a yard or meter stick with five notches is all that’s needed to document tree, grass, bare-ground and crop-residue cover. The app automatically generates basic indicators of these cover types on the phone and stores the data on servers that are accessible to users worldwide.

A future app (LandPotential) will use the LandInfo data together with Cloud-based models and additional knowledge bases to help users identify and select management systems that increase production while reducing soil erosion.

Herrick said this type of shared knowledge will become especially important as agricultural producers seek to meet the food, fiber, fuel and feed needs of a growing world population projected to reach 9 billion individuals by 2050.