United States 

Department of 

Agriculture

A CASE 

FOR RURAL

BROADBAND

Insights on 

Rural Broadband Infrastructure

and 

Next Generation Precision Agriculture Technologies

APRIL 2019

Published as part of the American Broadband Initiative 
PAGE 2

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

INTRODUCTION AND 

PURPOSE

In January 2018, the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force 

on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity summarized initial findings on how to promote 

agriculture, economic development, job growth, infrastructure improvements, 

technological innovation, energy security, and quality of life in rural America. The 

Report identified Achieving e-Connectivity in Rural America as a central pillar to do 

so. President Donald Trump led the way by creating the American Broadband Initiative, 

which reflects the work of his Cabinet to support the private sector’s expansion of rural 

broadband and effectively steward Federal tax dollars in that partnership.

This analysis opens the next chapter in the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) response to 

this Call to Action. It is intended to convey highlevel and broad concepts about the potential 

benefits of connected agriculture technologies to 

policymakers, industry leaders, and all who are 

affected by the lack of high-speed Internet service 

in rural areas that is inhibiting greater productivity 

and profitability for small producers, stifling 

American innovation, and undermining potential 

advancements in food security, food safety, and 

environmental sustainability.

For the purposes of this report, Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture can be considered an 

interdisciplinary science leading to breakthroughs 

and incremental technology advances to improve 

agricultural productivity, efficiency, 

and/or sustainability. Enabled by digital tools 

and connectivity, Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture is beginning to be applied across the 

entire food value chain to the benefit of both the 

producer and consumer. The concept of “precision” 

in agriculture is not new, and practices called 

Precision Agriculture have always included infield processes aimed for more accurate planting, 

nutrient and pest management, and harvesting. 

Yet, until recently, Precision Agriculture lacked 

data collection and analysis that is enabled by 21st 

century technologies and Internet connectivity. 

This next generation of technologies will continue 

to evolve, building innovation and ingenuity into 

this vital American industry.

Likewise, the definition of broadband continues 

to evolve, historically by increases in speed of 
PAGE 3

Internet connections, with a download speed set 

higher than upload speeds. Currently, the Federal 

Communications Commission’s (FCC) definition of 

“high-speed Internet” is 25 megabits per second 

download and 3 megabits per second upload1

. This 

places more emphasis on data flowing to the end 

user rather than from the end user. Today, some 

Next Generation Precision Agriculture technologies 

require these speeds, while some do not and 

instead data can be transmitted intermittently. 

However, as technology advances and the volumes 

of data to manage agriculture production grow, 

higher speeds will likely be necessary, requiring 

more symmetrical data flows, with a better balance 

of download and upload speeds and reliability.

For many years, the agricultural industry sector and 

its institutions, including USDA, have been active 

in various aspects of researching and supporting 

usage of Next Generation Precision Agriculture 

technologies, as well as investing in rural 

broadband infrastructure. But the interdependency 

of agriculture technology adoption and broadband 

infrastructure has not yet been evaluated at a 

nationwide scale, with a synthesis of the economic 

impact they both could affect. That is the 

purpose of this work: exploring the intersection 

of broadband Internet infrastructure and the 

digital Next Generation Precision Agriculture 

technologies that will depend on improved 

e-connectivity. USDA, therefore, has embarked 

upon this analysis to estimate the possible 

economic benefits of expanding rural e-connectivity 

to farms and ranches and explore what’s needed to 

unlock this potential.
PAGE 4

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

TABLE OF

CONTENTS

02 • Introduction and Purpose

06 • Background: The e-Connectivity Infrastructure and Adoption 

 Imperative

09 • The Power of e-Connectivity to Transform Industries

12 • Approach to Analysis & Patterns of Business Modernization

17 • How e-Connectivity Will Transform the Business of Agriculture

20 • The Potential Economic Benefits of e-Connectivity for U.S. Agriculture

22 • Table: Connected Technologies in Row Crops & Specialty Crops

23 • Table: Connected Technologies in Livestock & Dairy

24 • Table: Potential Economic Benefits of Next Generation Precision 

 Agriculture and Broadband

33 • Societal Benefits of Next Generation Precision Agriculture

34 • Today’s Challenges to Scaling Adoption of Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture

38 • International Benchmarks for Next Generation Precision Agriculture

39 • Connecting Rural Agriculture: Strategies for Action

42 • What USDA is Committed to Doing

45 • Proposal for Partnerships

47 • Conclusion: Connectivity for the Future

48 • References
PAGE 5

“When we are able 

to deploy broadband 

ubiquitously, think 

of all the things 

we will be able to 

design, harvest, 

and develop ... 

Broadband in rural 

America will be as 

transformative in the 

21st century as rural 

electrification was 

in the last century.”

- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture 

 Sonny Perdue
PAGE 6

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

BACKGROUND:

THE E-CONNECTIVITY 

INFRASTRUCTURE AND 

ADOPTION IMPERATIVE

High-speed Internet access across America today is characterized by a stark infrastructure 

gap between rural and urban areas. While urban centers enjoy widespread availability of 

high-speed Internet service, much of rural America has yet to be connected, and of the 24 

million Americans living in households that do not have access to a fixed terrestrial (nonmobile or satellite) broadband provider, 80 percent of them live in rural areas, according to 

the latest FCC data.2

 In addition, the gap between connectivity “haves” and 

“have-nots” is at risk of being exacerbated in the coming years: a leading, multinational 

network hardware and telecommunications equipment technology conglomerate projects 

that the average global download speed will double from 39 Mbps in 2017 to 75 Mbps by 

2022.3

Moreover, the increased speed and capacity from 

forthcoming 5G mobile coverage depends upon 

network densification, requiring the extension of 

deep fiber or intensity of infrastructure for similar 

services to build adequate networks throughout 

rural America. A recent Deloitte Consulting analysis 

estimates the United States requires between 

$130 and $150 billion over the next five to seven 

years, to adequately support rural coverage and 5G 

wireless densification.4 

Such disparities in infrastructure directly 

impact rural citizens and businesses – including 

agriculture, which stifles the modernization of 

food production urban and suburban citizens rely 

on. Digital technologies in agriculture, including 

Precision Agriculture, can substantially increase 

crop and animal yields, improve distribution, and 

reduce input costs. However, without reliable, 

affordable high-speed Internet connectivity 

at both the farmhouse and in the field, many 

of these technologies cannot realize their full 

potential. As a result, producers face inconsistent 

ability to tap into and master new technologies, 

compromising the higher productivity and 

greater profitability needed to sustain and grow 

United States agriculture, meet the dietary needs 

of a growing global population, and maintain 

national competitiveness in international markets. 

Addressing these imperatives is only possible 

through efficiently and effectively building highcapacity rural Internet infrastructure, both wired 

and wireless, to deliver reliable, high-speed 

access and harnessing the emerging generation of 

Precision Agriculture technologies. 
PAGE 7

“For my [10-year] plan, I need 

100 Megabits per second, but 

there’s no way to get it.”

- Specialty crop producer, West Coast

Satellite broadband services for supporting 

Precision Agriculture technologies have historically 

had both benefits and limitations. According to 

the FCC’s 2018 Broadband Deployment Report1

, 

access to satellite broadband is much greater than 

terrestrial broadband in rural areas. However, 

satellite broadband may not be fully sufficient for 

Next Generation Precision Agriculture technologies 

due to the unpredictability of service caused by 

high latency, capacity limitations, and costs for 

securing high volumes of data flows, especially 

when time-sensitive information is required to 

support on-farm operations and quickly respond to 

market conditions.

In recent decades, attempts to increase 

broadband deployment have not replicated 

the nationwide rural electrification effort of the 

last century and did not sufficiently incentivize 

broadband expansion to all rural American homes, 

businesses, farms, and critical community sites 

such as healthcare and educational facilities. 

Low population densities in rural areas and the 

high cost of installing and operating Internet 

infrastructure present a non-viable proposition 

for service providers, disincentivizing large-scale 

private investment in rural Internet infrastructure. 

Telecommunications providers evaluate rural 

areas like they do urban areas, requiring 

sustainable business models where revenues can 

demonstrably cover or exceed costs. This is heavily 

influenced by a focus on population dynamics like 

density, but the complexity of connecting remote 

areas requires new approaches and solutions. 

Another key factor in supporting a sustainable 

business model is the predictability of the market, 

that customers are demanding such products and 

services. One benefit includes direct-to-consumer 

sales, as customers seeking fresh produce can 

more readily find farms that can deliver fresh 

produce in a timely fashion, minimizing food waste 

while also meeting consumer demand.

This analysis explores the potential benefits rural 

Internet infrastructure and emerging on-farm 

technology can bring to the agriculture industry 

and all who depend on its success. These Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture technologies 

support planning, production, and market 

coordination in agriculture. The rural broadband 

challenge is not without precedent as rural 

electrification faced similar dynamics. While the 

cost of connecting each rural property to the power 

grid amounted to, on average, nearly a quarter of 

annual household income, the long-term benefits 

of rural electrification accumulated for decades.6

As America finds itself once again on the verge of 

economic transformation, it may require similar 

investments to unlock the economic gains from 

connectivity for rural businesses and households.

Whereas other studies may focus on the value 

of individual technologies, this report provides 

a summary of how technologies can be 

simultaneously deployed together to impact the 

United States’ top commodity groups: row crops, 

specialty crops, and livestock (including dairy) 

products. The following pages explore: 

1. How e-Connectivity creates value through 

digital transformation;

2. What the potential impact of connected 

agricultural technologies are to the U.S. 

economy;

3. What producers and the agriculture ecosystem 

need to unlock this value; and

4. What strategies for action can make this 

potential a reality.
PAGE 8

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

LIMITATIONS OF FINDINGS

While this report hypothesizes the potential 

benefits that rural Internet infrastructure and 

emerging on-farm technology can bring in the 

future, it does not contemplate or attempt 

to calculate the cost of implementing these 

technologies that would be encumbered by 

producers, telecommunications providers, rural 

communities, or State and Federal Governments. 

Cost estimates are excluded because of the lack of 

clear, accurate, and publicly available data sources 

on where broadband infrastructure currently 

exists, and which connected equipment and other 

devices are presently in use at which farms and 

ranches. Also, peer-reviewed research on the 

required connection speeds is not yet available 

to indicate the costs to build out such supporting 

infrastructure and the monthly Internet service 

costs that would be affiliated for such precision 

agriculture technologies.

Therefore, the findings reported herein should 

not be the sole source for decision-making for 

producers contemplating investing in connected 

agriculture technologies, but rather can be a 

tool for policymakers to use when considering 

the impacts rural broadband infrastructure 

can have on the agriculture industry and the 

American economy. As broadband becomes more 

dependable in rural areas and on-farm technology 

becomes a reality in the coming years, it is possible 

Next Generation Precision Agriculture costs may 

decrease for producers by implementing these 

technologies. Accordingly, USDA recommends that 

producers perform their own cost-benefit analysis 

on whether these emerging technologies would 

benefit their operations. 
PAGE 9

THE POWER OF E-CONNECTIVITY TO

TRANSFORM INDUSTRIES

Like many industries today, agriculture is experimenting with the integration of digital 

technologies that can make the industry more productive. Sectors like finance, logistics, 

and advanced manufacturing are now almost fully reliant on connected technologies, as 

are a limited subset of the agriculture industry. Broad adoption of Precision Agriculture 

technologies has been hit or miss. In the use of autonomous or self-driving vehicles, row 

crop production is a leader, alongside mining and freight logistics. For instance, guidance 

systems are used on around 50 percent of planted acres of some row crops in the United 

States. Other primary segments of the agriculture industry, such as livestock production 

and specialty crops, have experienced slower adoption and are the least mature industries 

in terms of overall use of Next Generation Precision Agriculture technologies, due in part 

to geographic decentralization and cost.5

Looking at patterns of digital disruption 

innovation across industries offers insight into 

how connectivity’s ability to enhance access 

to information creates value and how digital 

technologies may impact agriculture today and 

in the future. Although the agriculture industry is 

experimenting with innovative technologies such 

as autonomous tech and self-driving vehicles, we 

now identify how the collection of technologies can 

work together to improve agricultural production 

economics and consumer nutritional and clothing 

demand, but we do not have the comprehensive 

tools (digital connectivity) needed to realize this 

vision. While individual technologies offer direct 

and discrete value, the greatest impacts will come 

from the creation of new systems and approaches. 

In the case of electric power, for example, switching 

to electricity as a source of power was more 

efficient than steam and offered direct benefits. 

However, the rate of return increased dramatically 

as manufacturers discovered new production 

practices such as switching from “central drive” to 

distributed, modular production in manufacturing. 

The presence of Internet-enabled technology has 

not yet led to similarly remarkable growth in labor 

productivity and yet may now be able to achieve 

the scale and tools needed to truly transform 

operations the way rural electrification did.6
PAGE 10

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

AN ANALOG TO CONSIDER: 

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF ELECTRIFICATION

According to the National Bureau of Economic 

Research7

, “portable power” (including distributed 

electric power and the internal combustion 

engine) initially yielded limited labor productivity 

gains. It required time and widespread adoption 

to transform business models. While initial 

adoption offered direct benefits from 1915 to 

1930, productivity grew at a faster rate beginning 

in 1935, as electricity, along with other inputs in 

the economy such as the personal automobile, 

enabled new, more efficient and effective ways of 

working.

Likewise, electricity-dependent refrigeration 

fundamentally changed the way America’s 

nutrition supply chain operated. When the Rural 

Electrification Act passed in 1936, the impacts 

of refrigeration were not known. For instance, 

the mass adoption of refrigerators into American 

homes which started in the mid-1940s spawned 

new markets in transportation of raw materials, 

refrigerated storage, and innovative food 

products8

. Previously consumers would shop at 

local markets, but refrigeration enabled access to 

new types of fresh fruits and vegetables, often on 

a year-round basis, and less spoilage occurred in 

their homes8

. This resulted in an overall decrease 

in per capita disposable income spent on food, 

improving overall quality of life, and enabling 

household expenditures for other purchases9

. 

The impact of Internet and information 

technology today followed a similar trajectory 

as portable power, and more universal access 

can continue to unlock the larger-scale, systemslevel change that will significantly transform 21st 

century industries, depending on access to the 

infrastructure and services that support necessary 

data flow. 
PAGE 11

FIGURE 1.

ANALOG OF PORTABLE POWER AND LABOR PRODUCTIVITY7

Just as it was not possible to predict 

electrification’s impacts through refrigeration, 

predictions of the exact effects of Internet access 

supported by broadband infrastructure are not 

possible. However, ubiquitous rural broadband 

infrastructure has immeasurable potential for 

facilitating innovation and ingenuity by America’s 

producers. Short of access to a full battery of 

exact data that could be used to calculate future 

economic benefits of broadband and Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture, USDA embarked 

upon an analysis using the following bestavailable approach. 

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940

180

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Index of Labor Output per Hour

 Portable Power IT
PAGE 12

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

APPROACH TO ANALYSIS

USDA conducted an in-depth analysis to attempt to 

understand and capture how the U.S. agriculture 

industry might be impacted by the 21st century 

digital technologies impacting other sectors. The 

analysis included review of academic and industry 

research as well as validation through site visits 

with producers and engagement with industry 

experts. A total of 34 technologies were evaluated, 

based on their applicability in the field today, as 

well as published research available to assess for 

scale for measurable impact. See Table 1 for a 

summary list of connected Precision Agriculture 

technologies, categorized by commodity type. 

Further detail on the calculations and assumptions 

for each connected technology can be found in the 

Appendix.

Market sizing baselined potential benefits (gross) 

by reviewing existing studies on value drivers, 

extrapolating across commodity groups (row 

crops, specialty crops, and livestock and dairy 

products) and to national production levels, 

determining the available market in the United 

States, and estimating the contribution of Internet 

connectivity. 

Review of existing studies. USDA cataloged the 

landscape of digital technologies in agriculture 

and surveyed academic, government, and industry 

studies that estimate the value created by each. 

Extrapolation. The relative value for similar crops 

within a commodity group—that is, those that 

use comparable production methods—were 

estimated using 2016 cost and production numbers 

for the studied and targeted commodities and 

extrapolated to a national scale based on overall 

production volume. The analysis focused on the 

highest-volume products in each category (row 

crop, specialty crop, and livestock and dairy 

products) which together equate to roughly 75 

percent of total U.S. agricultural annual production 

($254 billion of $340 billion total)10. The direct 

analysis of the 75 percent subset establishes the 

low end of the estimate range, while the upper 

limit is based on an assumption that similar gains 

can be realized for all production10.

Determine available market (scale). The national 

totals were pro-rated to reflect “available” market, 

an estimate that discounts national totals to reflect 

anticipated late-or non-adopters and existing 

users. Late-and non-adopters were factored out 

based on “diffusion of innovation” theory, which 

defines standard phases and rates by which 

a new idea or product has historically spread 

among users. This model estimates that roughly 

16 percent of users are “laggards” who will not 

adopt new technology in a time period in which the 

studied gains are meaningful. Therefore, discounts 

by this rate, and the maximum addressable market 

is considered 84 percent of U.S. production. 

Similarly, it is not certain technologies that enjoy 

less than 16 percent adoption will scale to mass 

adoption; therefore, the available market was 

further adjusted to reflect the lower probability 

of reaching mass market scale. Current rates of 

adoption were estimated for each technology and 

incorporated into the analysis. These rates were 

based on studies like Purdue University’s biannual 

survey of Precision Agriculture equipment.11

Percent of potential value attributable to 

broadband. Each technology was assigned a 

standard category for the contribution of Internet 

connectivity to the overall value, acknowledging 

that Internet infrastructure combines with sensors, 
PAGE 13

signals, software, and machines to realize the full 

value. The classifications were vetted by producers 

and industry leaders and assigned standard 

values: technologies classified as having “low” 

dependence on Internet were estimated at 10 

percent contribution; technologies classified as 

having “medium” dependence were estimated 

at 30 percent contribution; and technologies 

classified as having “high” dependence were 

estimated at 50 percent contribution. 

It is important to note that these are rough 

estimates of the contribution of broadband, 

relying on general, standard categories rather than 

precise calculations.

This market analysis has additional limitations 

that may be addressed in future research. 

Specifically, the model (1) does not consider input 

costs that would be required to realize the benefits 

stated; and (2) is based on a collection of available 

data and information sources that each have 

independent assumptions and varying baseline 

years.

Additionally, this market analysis is not dynamic, 

because it does not attempt to model interaction, 

network effects, or iterative impacts. Today, 

agricultural technologies are often framed as 

standalone tools, which does not capture the endto-end use of tech in agriculture. Currently, most 

producers plan, produce, and organize sales of 

their goods, using independent, and disassociated 

technologies. Use of Precision Agriculture will 

continue to increase as technologies begin 

working together interdependently, as an 

agriculture “Internet of Things” to transform the 

entire business of farming, regardless of which 

technology or design ultimately creates this 

value. This may be the most impactful effect of 

ubiquitous broadband on farms, enabling full 

and synergistic use of Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture technologies, yet it is the most difficult 

to predict and measure, and therefore was not 

attempted here. 

Site visits and industry roundtable. To 

benchmark the desk research against frontline 

user perspectives, experience, and results, we 

conducted research visits to 31 sites in seven 

agriculture-rich States: California, Illinois, Indiana, 

Iowa, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. To 

further validate assumptions and hypotheses, 

USDA’s anonymized results were shared with 

producer association leaders, agriculture 

technology executives, academic researchers, and 

telecommunication providers. The insights from 

these conversations reinforce and illustrate the 

analysis shared and are highlighted in quotations 

and case studies throughout this report.
PAGE 14

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

PATTERNS OF BUSINESS MODERNIZATION

Our nation’s agricultural producers are seeking to operate just as any other modern business does, with 

the benefits of technology driving operations, planning, and customer engagement. These broader 

patterns of digital transformation across other industries can offer insight into what is possible with 

access to e-connectivity.

Most industries experience a “second wave” of transformation as businesses begin to think digitally and 

are able to fully leverage real-time, interconnected devices—pointing to not only the types of impact 

created by today’s technologies but also the additional ways in which expanded Internet infrastructure 

might further drive new ways of working. 

By automating activities where possible, resources can be used more effectively and efficiently. Then, 

increases can be realized in the productivity of personnel who can be freed from more repetitive tasks 

in favor of new value-added tasks. The time and energy of managers are unleashed to expand business 

operations, allocate inputs more efficiently, decipher methods to streamline resource allocation, and 

increase access to more customers.

INTEGRATED DECISION-MAKING – BUSINESS MANAGEMENT 

e-Connectivity provides improved quality and higher quantity 

of information, allowing integration of data to improve business 

decisions

• Making information more actionable by increasing the quality and quantity 

of available data, as improved tools for data-centric decision-making can 

harness the power of a broader scope and larger scale of historical and recentlycollected data

• Enabling real-time decision-making by sensing information, organizing it, and 

providing opportunities to respond in the development and deployment of 

digital sensor networks allow producers to monitor crop or animal health and 

environmental conditions that can be used in decision support tools, resulting 

in better business decisions

• Expanding access to digital educational resources and business data, freeing 

up workers’ time for learning, and expanding the suite of tools available at the 

push of a button
PAGE 15

AUTOMATED PROCESSING AND RESOURCE ALLOCATION – 

DIGITIZATION 

e-Connectivity improves information capture, feeding data to the 

“Internet of Things,” and making it possible to automate activities

• Increasing productivity by eliminating manual rekeying and allowing for 

automation—particularly where precision and repetition are core needs of 

business

• Dramatically improving efficiencies and reducing the redundant manual tasks, 

enhancing capacity to organize and retrieve information and enabling machines 

to read, manipulate, and act on data

PRODUCTIVITY – LABOR EFFICIENCY

e-Connectivity offers real-time information that helps workers focus 

on the most pressing tasks and triage issues as they arise

• Technology can support human tasks to increase speed, improve accuracy, and 

reduce errors – examples are robotics and automation, such as distribution 

centers’ pick-to-light technologies 

• Reducing and—in some cases—eliminating the need to be physically present at 

the site of observation, thereby reducing travel and connecting workers across 

long distances by powering high-quality audio, video, and file sharing

EXTENDED REACH – GEOGRAPHIC ACCESS 

e-Connectivity reduces information asymmetries to make more 

efficient markets across geographies for both products and people

• Expanding communication and market access by enabling companies to enter 

new markets, better understand their markets, and better meet consumer 

preferences

• Creating online platforms with a reach not limited by geography

• Mitigating the effects of low unemployment, mismatched skills, or geographic 

remoteness by providing the option to recruit from other towns, cities, and 

States
PAGE 16

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

THE ADOPTION CURVE

An adoption curve, based on Rogers’ Diffusion 

of Innovation12, can model the typical phases/

rates with which a new idea or product spreads 

among users and gains market traction or scale. 

Many technologies within agriculture are at early 

stages of adoption today – suggesting greater 

potential economic benefits from increased 

access to connectivity to support these emerging 

applications. The adoption curve in Figure 2 

indicates that on average, the agriculture industry 

appears to be in the ‘early adoption’ phase of the 

diffusion curve, meaning there is potential for 

a large available market and unrealized future 

growth.

Increased e-connectivity can harness all the 

benefits of big data, including reduced costs and 

the removal of traditional barriers to business 

growth. New technologies can be adopted and 

unrealized potential can be unleashed within 

different types of agricultural production, enabling 

transformation of agriculture just as e-connectivity 

has modernized other industries.

FIGURE 2.

ESTIMATION OF AGRICULTURE ON THE TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION CURVE

 Specialty Crops & Livestock

 Sum of Agriculture Industry

 Row Crops

Innovators Early Adopters Early Majority Late Majority Laggards

Chasm
PAGE 17

HOW E-CONNECTIVITY WILL TRANSFORM

THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE

Across the agricultural production cycle, farmers and ranchers can implement digital 

technologies as other modern businesses are doing, enhancing agriculture by driving 

decision-making based on integrated data, automating processes to increase operational 

efficiency, improving productivity with tasks driven by real-time insights, augmenting the 

role of management in the business of farming, and creating new markets with extended 

geographic reach.

These patterns of digital transformation create 

fundamental shifts in agricultural production, 

developing new ways of working that make 

the industry more productive, attractive, and 

financially sustainable for farmers and ranchers. 

Tech companies which stand to benefit from 

industry transformation continue to capitalize on 

these shifts by developing new technologies, which 

according to one recent study, may help position 

themselves to capture a portion of an estimated 

$254 billion to $340 billion in global addressable 

digital agriculture market.13

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT shifts decisionmaking from instinct to integrated data 

Precision Agriculture is transforming the 

way producers collect, organize, and rely on 

information to make key decisions. Traditionally, 

producers’ long-term experiences have created 

a competitive advantage: years of experiments 

have produced insights and instincts about the 

land they have farmed and the animals they have 

raised. But the volume of data that is possible 

to collect today can accelerate that learning 

curve, helping producers learn faster and more 

rapidly adapt to market shifts—particularly on 

new fields and with new animals—and creating 

more nuanced insights, enabling them to act 

on leading indicators. This creates a disparity 

between producers who can utilize high-speed 

Internet service and those who cannot. Examples 

include the ability to do the following:

• create decision tools to help farmers and 

ranchers estimate the potential profit and 

economic risks associated with growing one 

particular crop over another

• decide which fertilizer is best for current soil 

conditions

• apply pesticides in targeted areas of the 

field, to control pests rather than applying 

pesticides over the entire field 

• use limited water resources more effectively

• respond to findings of sensors that monitor 

animal health and nutrition
PAGE 18

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

Better choices about what, where, and when to 

plant, fertilize, and harvest—or breed, feed, and 

slaughter—can drive above-average returns by 

removing unrecognized inefficiencies and scaling 

insights.

DIGITIZATION shifts supply chain 

management and resource allocation 

from generic to precise

Precision Agriculture helps make the business 

of farming more efficient by minimizing inputs—

such as raw materials and labor—and maximizing 

outputs.

For example, previous research has found that 

40 percent of fields are over-fertilized, which not 

only inflates the cost of inputs but also results 

in 15 percent–20 percent yield loss suffered 

from improper fertilizer application.14 Precise 

application of inputs, such as fertilizer, herbicides, 

and pesticides, allows farmers to adjust inputs 

to location-based characteristics and use exact 

amounts needed, which saves money and 

increases sustainability due to more efficient 

resource stewardship. Improved fertilizer, soil, and 

water use can significantly improve water quality 

with less runoff and reduce climate gas emissions, 

which is important since agriculture accounts for 

10-15 percent of worldwide emissions.15 Despite 

reductions in necessary inputs, Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture helps maintain or increase 

yields, leading to significant gains in efficiency14.

Real-time insights also improve logistics. When 

growing melons, for instance, real-time data can 

help farmers overcome challenges in storing 

and shipping their products. Melons should be 

stored in an optimal refrigeration environment to 

minimize spoilage, and real-time precision sensors 

can reduce spoilage by alerting staff to suboptimal 

variations in temperature and humidity, allowing 

the execution of remedies before major losses 

occur. When refrigerated storage is full or the 

market price is at a peak, the “Internet of Things” 

can provide real-time information about where 

trucks are located and locating customers to 

market products to help make the sale.

LABOR EFFICIENCY boosts productivity 

by automating routine processes and 

enabling real-time response 

Connected devices equip farmers with a clear 

picture of their operations at any moment, making 

it possible to prioritize tasks more effectively 

and triage the most pressing issues. While 

routine inspection and scouting has typically 

been a regular part of farm management and 

has increased farm profitability14, connected 

technologies can track, sense, and flag where a 

producer should focus their time and attention 

that day. Similarly, e-connectivity has allowed 

rural farms to access new training resources and 

high-skilled labor that has not been previously 

available. 

Real-time data and automation can radically 
PAGE 19

improve a producer’s peace of mind and 

performance under time constraints, especially 

because of reduced physical and mental stress 

(no longer struggling to keep the machine on 

a row line between 6 and 10 hours in the field 

during harvest or planting). On dairy farms, for 

example, automated devices that milk and feed 

animals can also track each cow’s activity and alert 

producers to potential problems. Because these 

tasks are traditionally done by the producer and 

farm personnel, e-connectivity can substantially 

reduce the amount of time and effort necessary 

to run farms. This leads to dramatic increases in 

flexibility, enabling time and talent to be directed 

to more advanced tasks. Farmers can use newly 

found time to re-invest in more high-value tasks 

like long-term planning and management of the 

operation. This shift towards farm management 

opens new possibilities for the way that farms 

conduct business.

GEOGRAPHIC ACCESS extends the reach 

of the supply chain and shifts marketing 

from standard to differentiated 

As explained in the previous section, as Precision 

Agriculture unlocks additional time and resources 

to explore new ways of doing business farmers 

are re-investing their time into identifying options 

to improve inputs, including better-trained labor 

and more effective types of inputs. New customers 

and markets can also be explored to increase sales 

volume and revenues.

THE RISE OF E-COMMERCE

E-commerce provides producers with the ability 

to access new customer channels, differentiate 

products, and shape demand.

ACCESS. Online platforms provide access to 

new customer channels. Web-enabled direct-toconsumer sales, for example, enable producers to 

shorten their supply chains, develop relationships 

with customers, and retain more revenue. Through 

online cattle auctions, cattlemen can save the cost 

of traveling to live auctions while still participating 

in transactions across wide geographies.16

Through MarketMaker, the largest online database 

connecting buyers, farmers, processors, packers, 

distributors, restaurants, and others, businesses 

can find suppliers, form more profitable business 

alliances, meet new customers, and locate quality 

products.17 These examples provide just a small 

sample of the many ways that e-commerce 

increases market access.

DIFFERENTIATION. With direct sales, producers 

can communicate key attributes about their 

products, helping them charge premium prices. 

Specifically, traceability technologies can help 

instill trust in origin and assure buyers that foods 

exhibit certain characteristics. An innovative 

technology company operating today, for instance, 

is combining blockchain technology with barcodes 

and Quick Response (QR) codes to provide instant 

information about food origination, nutrition, 

and quality, empowering the consumer with 

information to help choose which products to 

buy.18 Another company, an Internet-enabled grain 

marketplace, assures producers they can “get paid 

for the quality of their grain.”19
PAGE 20

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

THE POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF

E-CONNECTIVITY FOR 

U.S. AGRICULTURE

Together, new technologies and ways of working combine to improve yields, reduce costs, 

improve labor efficiency, and increase revenues through greater market access. Business 

impacts surface across three sets of activities.

Adoption rates for precision technologies have been higher to-date in row crops since they are already 

highly mechanized. However, because each specialty crop has unique planting, harvesting, and 

packaging processes, production operations have been difficult to modernize with process automation; 

market coordination opportunities may have more potential here. 

Accordingly, USDA’s analysis is reflected in Table 1 below. Though all farming businesses engage in 

planning, production, and market coordination activities, the application of and benefit from Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture technologies vary significantly by commodity type. For example, row 

crops gain more in the planning phase than do specialty crops; since row crops are planted every year, 

farmers have frequent opportunities to vary their planning decisions, whereas specialty crops, such as 

crops grown on orchards, are often planted less frequently, limiting the impact of additional data in 

the planning phase. Because row crops are often considered commodities—that is, products where the 

price is largely determined by national indices rather than by product quality—row crop farmers seem 

to have relatively less benefit to gain from market coordination phase technologies than specialty crop 

farmers. The most consistent gains across all subindustries and stages are found in the production stage, 

which reflects that farming is, at its core, a manufacturing business where accurate, timely information is 

invaluable. 
PAGE 21

FIGURE 3.

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES APPLIED TO STAGES OF AGRICULTURE MANAGEMENT

Digital Technologies Applied to 

Stages of Agriculture Management

STAGE 1 STAGE 2 STAGE 3

PLANNING

Data collection and 

decision support

 to make better choices 

about what, when and

 where to produce

 ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

Data analytics

Field prescriptions

Fertility planning

PRODUCTION

Monitoring the 

growth cycle, managing 

inputs, and optimizing 

the product’s health

 and harvest

ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

Real-time sensing

Algorithmic diagnosis

Automated harvesting 

MARKET 

COORDINATION

Creating access to 

new customers and 

channels, differentiating 

products, and shaping 

consumer preferences

ACTIVITIES INCLUDE:

Online sales

Targeted advertising

Optimizing distribution
PAGE 22

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

TABLE 1.

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES ANALYZED BY COMMODITY TYPE 

(basis for calculations can be found in Appendix) 

Connected Technologies in Row Crops and Specialty Crops (figures are rounded)

Commodity Type Business Function Technology

Potential 

Annual Gross 

Benefit 

of Next 

Generation 

Precision Ag

Potential 

Attributable to 

Broadband 

Percent 

Dependent 

on 

Broadband

ROW CROPS PLANNING MICROCLIMATE MODELING TECHNOLOGY $1,574,000,000 $787,200,000 50%

ROW CROPS PLANNING YIELD MONITORING TECHNOLOGY $1,771,000,000 $177,100,000 10%

ROW CROPS PLANNING PRECISION SEEDING $810,000,000 $162,000,000 20%

ROW CROPS PRODUCTION FIELD SCOUTING $1,423,000,000 $711,300,000 50%

ROW CROPS PRODUCTION VARIABLE RATE APPLICATION $1,715,000,000 $171,500,000 10%

ROW CROPS PRODUCTION CONNECTED EQUIPMENT $638,000,000 $191,300,000 30%

ROW CROPS PRODUCTION MACHINE LEARNING AND VISIONING $905,000,000 $452,500,000 50%

ROW CROPS PRODUCTION REMOTE DIAGNOSTICS & PREDICTIVE 

MAINTENANCE $1,981,000,000 $990,400,000 50%

ROW CROPS

ROW CROPS

MARKET COORDINATION

MARKET COORDINATION

STORAGE MONITORING or

SMALL PRODUCER COORDINATION

$1,580,000,000 or

$2,900,000,000

$474,700,000 or

$1,457,000,000

40%

SPECIALTY CROPS PLANNING WEATHER MODELING - TREE $961,000,000 $288,300,000 30%

SPECIALTY CROPS PLANNING WEATHER MODELING - GROUND $328,400,000 $98,500,000 30%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION MACHINE LEARNING AND VISIONING - TREE $414,500,000 $124,360,000 30%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION PEST PREVENTION AND MONITORING - 

TREE $846,700,000 $423,300,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION SMART IRRIGATION - TREE $133,500,000 $66,800,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION ROBOTIC HARVESTING - TREE $586,600,000 $293,300,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION INPUT USE AND MANAGEMENT - GROUND $11,100,000 $5,500,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION SMART IRRIGATION - GROUND $801,900,000 $240,600,000 30%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION FROST DETECTION - GROUND $278,500,000 $83,500,000 30%

SPECIALTY CROPS PRODUCTION ROBOTIC HARVESTING - GROUND $403,000,000 $201,500,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS MARKET COORDINATION FOOD WASTE MANAGEMENT $901,000,000 $90,100,000 10%

SPECIALTY CROPS MARKET COORDINATION DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER SALES - TREE $642,500,000 $321,240,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS MARKET COORDINATION DIRECT-TO-CONSUMER SALES - GROUND $6,400,000,000 $3,200,000,000 50%

SPECIALTY CROPS MARKET COORDINATION STORAGE MONITORING - GROUND $551,000,000 $275,500,000 50%
PAGE 23

Connected Technologies in Livestock and Dairy (figures are rounded)

Commodity Type Business Function Technology

Potential 

Annual Gross 

Benefit 

of Next 

Generation 

Precision Ag

Potential 

Attributable to 

Broadband 

Percent 

Dependent 

on 

Broadband

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PLANNING FERTILITY PLANNING $1,780,000,000 $177,800,000 10%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PLANNING INFANTICIDE PREVENTION $9,800,000 $4,900,000 50%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PLANNING LIVESTOCK RECORDS AND MANAGEMENT $623,100,000 $186,900,000 30%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION PRECISION FEEDING $4,100,000,000 $1,200,000,000 29%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION MASTITIS DETECTION $143,300,000 $14,300,000 10%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION AUDIO/VISUAL FACILITY MONITORING $240,700,000 $120,300,000 50%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION UNMANNED HERDING $470,000,000 $141,000,000 30%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION ROBOTIC MILKING $2,050,000,000 $613,400,000 30%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY PRODUCTION GENERAL HEALTH MONITORING $8,800,000,000 $4,400,000,000 50%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY MARKET COORDINATION AUTOMATED SORTING $391,200,000 $117,400,000 30%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY MARKET COORDINATION ONLINE CHANNELS $1,004,400,000 $502,200,000 50%

LIVESTOCK AND DAIRY MARKET COORDINATION TRACING AND MARKETING $990,000,000 $297,000,000 30%

While digital technologies are already creating value within the agriculture industry today, realizing 

the full potential of these technologies, according to USDA, could create approximately $47–$65 

billion annually in additional gross benefit for the U.S. economy. In other words, if broadband Internet 

infrastructure, digital technologies at scale, and on-farm capabilities were available at a level that 

met estimated producer demand, the U.S. could realize econonomic benefits equivalent to nearly 18 

percent of total production, based on 2017 levels.10

As the following table indicates, USDA estimates that rural broadband connectivity is the driver of 

more than one-third of the value or $18 billion to $23 billion per year, that digital technologies could 

create for our nation. 

It is important to note that such economic benefits would be realized over a long term and could not 

manifest during the course of one single year. This is because it will take many years to build all requisite 

infrastructure for broadband service, deploy all necessary equipment, and train all producers to fully 

utilize all of these Next Generation Precision Agriculture technologies. Therefore, these figures are being 

reported here to simply give a general scale of the potential future benefits, in today’s dollars.
PAGE 24

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

TABLE 2.

ANNUAL POTENTIAL GROSS ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE 

TECHNOLOGIES DERIVED FROM BROADBAND E-CONNECTIVITY

Commodity Type Row Crops Specialty 

Crops Livestock Total

Annual Value of the U.S. Market Studied * $110.6 B $30.1 B $113 B $254 B

 Precision Ag in Planning $4.2 B $1.3 B $2.4 B $7.9 B

 Precision Ag in Production $6.7 B $3.5 B $15.8 $25.9 B

 Precision Ag in Market Coordination $2.2 B $8.5 B $2.4 $13.1 B

Next Generation Precision Ag Potential Gross Economic 

Benefits Annually, For the Market Studied $13.1 B $13.3 B $20.6 $46.9 B

Annual Value of Total U.S. Market Production * $142.6 B $45.3 B $151.9 $340 B

Next Generation Precision Ag Potential Gross Economic 

Benefits Annually, Extrapolated to Total Market $16.8 B $19.9 B $27.7 $64.5 B

Next Generation Precision Ag Potential Gross Economic 

Benefits as a Percent of Total U.S. Production 12% 44% 18% 18%

Average Percent of Next Generation Precision Ag Benefits 

that Depend on Broadband 35% 43% 38% 36%

Potential Gross Economic Benefits of Ubiquitous 

Broadband Infrastructure and Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture Adoption:

$4.6 to

$5.9 B

or 4%

$5.7 B to

$8.6 B

or 19%

$7.8 B to

$10.5 B

or 7%

$18 B to

$23 B

or 7% of the total market

* Source: 2017 Production Values per 2019 reports of USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Access to reliable, affordable connectivity is a 

critical component to powering these technologies 

and contributes a significant portion of value. 

In this sense, Internet infrastructure performs a 

similar function as other types of infrastructure, 

such as roadway systems. Prior to the construction 

of the United States’ Interstate Highway System 

that began in 1956, trucks transported inputs to 

production sites and agricultural commodities to 

market on at-grade signalized roadways across 

the nation. However, with a complete system 

of interconnected high-performance, gradeseparated highways, trucks can carry freight 

across the country exponentially faster and using 

fewer resources. It has catapulted America’s 

productivity, redefined feasibility of manufacturing 

and distribution, opened up new markets, and 

transformed the way our nation’s economy runs. 

Similar to pre-1956 roadways, some Precision 

Agriculture technologies in use today may operate 

with basic functionality on limited Internet access. 

Only with the efficiencies of ubiquitous, modern 

high-speed e-connectivity—much like the United 

States’ Interstate Highway System—can producers 

unlock technology’s full potential for their farms 

and ranches, and for the industry and the nation as 

a whole.

The following pages explore how these functional 

differences across sub-industries equate to 

differences in the utility and application of Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture technologies 

and how the suite of technologies varies between 

commodities. Each section characterizes the 

landscape of digital technologies today, where 

they impact the value chain, and what this means 

for frontline users.
PAGE 25
PAGE 26

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

United States Department of Agriculture

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES 

IN ROW CROPS

9

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

ROW CROPS

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Row Crop Farming Could Add

$13–$17 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~33% ($5–$6 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

Precision Seeding: Locationtagged field data can be uploaded into 

planning software to optimize planting 

decisions and placement, which can 

save $6.53 per acre on seed expenses.

2 Remote Diagnostics and 

Predictive Maintenance: Connected 

hardware and software diagnose—

and even anticipate—needs for repair, 

saving $5 to $15 in costs per acre. 

5 Machine Learning and 

Visioning: Connected cameras and 

software can identify weeds, detect 

disease with 90% to 99% accuracy, 

and locate pests, facilitating treatment 

and reducing crop loss by 30%.

8 Small Producer Coordination:

Web platforms connect farmers directly 

to buyers, allowing them to earn 

premiums for meeting specific quality 

standards and bringing between $0.35 

to $0.51 more per bushel for corn, soy, 

wheat, and rice.

10

1 Yield Monitoring: Combinemounted monitors gather harvest 

data for business decisions, which can 

save $25 per acre in input costs for 

corn farmers.

Connected Equipment 

Guidance: Vehicles, including 

autonomous vehicles, use GPS to 

determine field boundaries for precise 

tending and save an estimated $15 

per acre on corn farms. 

4 Field Scouting: Drone imagery 

and software can collect nutritional 

and growth data used to calculate 

optimal inputs, saving $12 per acre on 

corn farms. 

7 Storage Monitoring: 

Temperature and moisture sensors 

can detect storage quality for 

harvested products, reducing crop loss 

and increasing sale price by $1 per 

hundredweight for grain sorghum.

9

Microclimate Monitoring:

Satellites or on-site weather stations 

can forecast local weather more 

accurately, avoid potential pest 

problems, and reduce crop loss by up 

to 80%.

3 Variable Rate Application: 

Technologies apply precise, optimal 

levels of raw inputs, saving $22 per 

acre for corn farms and increasing 

operating profit by 1.1%.

6

$4.3–$5.6 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$6.7–$8.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$2.2–$2.9 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

9

10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

ROW CROPS

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Row Crop Farming Could Add

$13–$17 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~33% ($5–$6 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

Precision Seeding: Locationtagged field data can be uploaded into 

planning software to optimize planting 

decisions and placement, which can 

save $6.53 per acre on seed expenses.

2 Remote Diagnostics and 

Predictive Maintenance: Connected 

hardware and software diagnose—

and even anticipate—needs for repair, 

saving $5 to $15 in costs per acre. 

5 Machine Learning and 

Visioning: Connected cameras and 

software can identify weeds, detect 

disease with 90% to 99% accuracy, 

and locate pests, facilitating treatment 

and reducing crop loss by 30%.

8 Small Producer Coordination:

Web platforms connect farmers directly 

to buyers, allowing them to earn 

premiums for meeting specific quality 

standards and bringing between $0.35 

to $0.51 more per bushel for corn, soy, 

wheat, and rice.

10

1 Yield Monitoring: Combinemounted monitors gather harvest 

data for business decisions, which can 

save $25 per acre in input costs for 

corn farmers.

Connected Equipment 

Guidance: Vehicles, including 

autonomous vehicles, use GPS to 

determine field boundaries for precise 

tending and save an estimated $15 

per acre on corn farms. 

4 Field Scouting: Drone imagery 

and software can collect nutritional 

and growth data used to calculate 

optimal inputs, saving $12 per acre on 

corn farms. 

7 Storage Monitoring: 

Temperature and moisture sensors 

can detect storage quality for 

harvested products, reducing crop loss 

and increasing sale price by $1 per 

hundredweight for grain sorghum.

9

Microclimate Monitoring:

Satellites or on-site weather stations 

can forecast local weather more 

accurately, avoid potential pest 

problems, and reduce crop loss by up 

to 80%.

3 Variable Rate Application: 

Technologies apply precise, optimal 

levels of raw inputs, saving $22 per 

acre for corn farms and increasing 

operating profit by 1.1%.

6

$4.3–$5.6 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$6.7–$8.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$2.2–$2.9 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

After implementing precision agriculture technologies enabled by internet connectivity, row crop farmers can 

enjoy benefits to their business management and quality of life.

ROW CROP FARMERS

BENEFITS OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE

Today is “fly day” for Jane, a Midwestern corn and 

potato grower. She heads outside and fires up her 

drone to do a pass over the fields she operates north 

of the office. She has her workers check on the fields 

throughout the week, of course, but they only check a 

fraction of what the drone’s camera does. While the 

drone is out flying, she checks her connected irrigation 

system on her phone; it takes 3 or 4 minutes to load, 

but then she adjusts the rate for each pivot based on 

the data as it streams in. 

The drone is mostly a scouting tool now, but she 

heard at last week’s Next Ag Leaders event that one 

company is developing some with 10-foot sprayers. 

That seems too small, but the manufacturer pointed 

out that “swarms” of ten drones could fly down a field 

and spray almost as much as a 120-foot boom. Even 

at $12,000 per drone with a spraying attachment, the 

total would still be half the cost of a new, quartermillion-dollar sprayer. Plus, there would not be any 

compaction or crop damage. 

Speaking of sprayers, it looks like she needs to apply 

more fertilizer in the new field she picked up this year. 

Without past years’ yield maps, she couldn’t set a 

prescription formula to program her variable-rate 

fertilizer application. She could probably approximate 

something based on her drone imagery, but the drone 

and larger machinery are from different manufacturers 

with proprietary software, so she can’t integrate and 

overlay the data. Drone imagery takes so much 

bandwidth that she has made it a habit to leave her 

laptop open overnight to upload and stitch images, 

once the rest of her staff has left, since her office WiFi 

isn’t fast enough while others use it. 

Jane pulls out the tractor and heads out to spray. 

Tractors mostly drive themselves these days, thanks to 

autosteer, allowing Jane to multitask from the driver’s 

seat. She does a little research into a few purchases 

she is considering, including connected scales for the 

grain loading dock. In reviewing last years’ haul data, 

the drivers had entered almost a third of it incorrectly! 

This kind of recordkeeping software is a gamechanger. In fact, as she pulls out of the field, she saves 

a record of the pesticide treatment applied, and shares 

a copy with the landowner. The cab is a lot less 

cluttered these days; it used to be jam-packed with 

coffee-stained notes trying to keep track of how much 

had been put on and where. Plus, Jane’s shoulders 

hurt a lot less at the end of the day than with her old 

tractor, and the extra time gives her more energy to 

focus on her business. 

Back at the office, Jane kicks aside a box of soil 

sensors under her desk; they had required constant 

“fixes” and tech support from the manufacturer. Still, 

they weren’t the most costly example of failed 

equipment: when a $2 sensor on her combine failed 

last year, she lost half a day of harvest time and 

incurred $1500 in repair costs. 

From her computer, Jane skims through message 

threads on the online discussion forum AgBlog. Jane is 

always searching for new practices and tech, but she’s 

extremely reluctant to share her own. Crops like corn 

and potatoes are—for the most part—commodities, 

and so her peers are also her competitors. Speaking of 

which, she flips over to check her marketing app to 

see where prices are today. With the price jump, it has 

reached the “sell” target she set this spring, so she 

commits 20% of her anticipated harvest at that value. 

In past years, she might gamble that the price will 

keep rising, but the data has given her the discipline to 

stick with pre-planned targets. 

She flips back to the forum and reads a post about a 

farm with a new side business offering Precision 

Agriculture services. Diversifying into other businesses 

seems like a good way to reduce risk. She still doesn’t 

have quite enough time to build up the skills she’ll 

need, but maybe one day she can become a full-time 

Precision Agriculture services provider. Maybe.

Name: 

Jane Dawson

State: 

Illinois

Products:

Corn, potatoes

Highlighted 

Technologies:

• Unmanned aerial 

vehicle (drone)

• Drone attachments 

for precision 

measurement and 

spraying

• Variable-rate 

irrigation

• Yield mapping

• Variable-rate fertilizer 

application

• Auto-guidance 

systems on tractors

• Recordkeeping 

software

• Online discussion 

forums

• Marketing mobile 

application

Jane’s story is a composite representation based on conversations with 13 real row crop farmers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, New York, and 

Texas. This story describes the everyday joys, frustrations, and experiences of farmers pioneering the adoption of Precision Agriculture 

technologies.

A ROW CROP FARMER’S PERSPECTIVE

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN PRACTICE

for new fields or crops help triage problems 

faster and improve 

decision making over 

time

through reduced 

hours and stress

to learn new skills, 

research and plan, 

multitask, or manage

over digital channels

Faster 

learning curve 

Better, realtime recordsPhysical health 

and peace of mind More time Peer learning

BENEFITS OF NEXT GENERATION PRECISION AGRICULTURE
PAGE 27

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN 

ROW CROPS

Producer Narrative: Row Crops

Today is “fly day” for Jane, a Midwestern corn and 

potato grower. She heads outside and fires up her 

drone to do a pass over the fields she operates 

north of the office. She has her workers check on 

the fields throughout the week, of course, but they 

only check a fraction of what the drone’s camera 

does. While the drone is out flying, she checks her 

connected irrigation system on her phone; it takes 

3 or 4 minutes to load, but then she adjusts the rate 

for each pivot based on the data as it streams in 

from thermal images and soil water sensors. 

The drone is mostly a scouting tool now, but she 

heard at last week’s Next Ag Leaders event that one 

company is developing some with 10-foot sprayers. 

That seems too small, but the manufacturer 

pointed out that “swarms” of 10 drones could 

fly down a field and spray almost as much as a 

120-foot boom. Even at $12,000 per drone with a 

spraying attachment, the total would still be half 

the cost of a new, quarter-million-dollar sprayer. 

Plus, there would not be any compaction or crop 

damage. 

Speaking of sprayers, it looks like she needs to 

apply more fertilizer in the new field she picked 

up this year. Without past years’ yield maps, she 

couldn’t set a prescription formula to program 

her variable-rate fertilizer application. She could 

probably approximate something based on her 

drone imagery, but the drone and larger machinery 

are from different manufacturers with proprietary 

software, so she can’t integrate and overlay the 

data. Drone imagery takes so much bandwidth that 

she has made it a habit to leave her laptop open 

overnight to upload and stitch images, once the 

rest of her staff has left, since her office WiFi isn’t 

fast enough while others use it. 

Jane pulls out the tractor and heads out to spray. 

Tractors mostly drive themselves these days, 

thanks to autosteer, allowing Jane to multitask 

from the driver’s seat. She does a little research 

into a few purchases she is considering, including 

connected scales for the grain loading dock.

In reviewing last years’ haul data, the drivers had 

entered almost a third of it incorrectly! This kind of 

recordkeeping software is a game-changer. In fact, 

as she pulls out of the field, she saves a record of 

the pesticide treatment applied, and shares a copy 

with the landowner. The cab is a lot less cluttered 

these days; it used to be jam-packed with coffeestained notes trying to keep track of how much had 

been put on and where. Plus, Jane’s shoulders hurt 

a lot less at the end of the day than with her old 

tractor, and the extra time gives her more energy to 

focus on her business. 

Back at the office, Jane kicks aside a box of soil 

sensors under her desk; they had required constant 

“fixes” and tech support from the manufacturer. 

Still, they weren’t the most costly example of failed 

equipment: when a $2 sensor on her combine 

failed last year, she lost half a day of harvest time 

and incurred $1,500 in repair costs. 

From her computer, Jane skims through message 

threads on the online discussion forum AgBlog. 

Jane is always searching for new practices and 

tech, but she’s extremely reluctant to share her 

own. Crops like corn and potatoes are—for the 

most part—commodities, and so her peers are also 

her competitors. Speaking of which, she flips over 

to check her marketing app to see where prices 

are today. With the price jump, it has reached the 

“sell” target she set this spring, so she commits 20 

percent of her anticipated harvest at that value. 

In past years, she might gamble that the price 

will keep rising, but the data has given her the 

discipline to stick with pre-planned targets. 

She flips back to the forum and reads a post 

about a farm with a new side business offering 

Precision Agriculture services. Diversifying into 

other businesses seems like a good way to reduce 

risk. She still doesn’t have quite enough time to 

build up the skills she’ll need, but maybe one day 

she can become a full-time Precision Agriculture 

services provider. Maybe.
PAGE 28

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

United States Department of Agriculture

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN 

SPECIALTY CROPS

1

2

3

7

4

5

6

10

9

8

SPECIALTY CROPS

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Specialty Crop Farming Could Add

$13–$22 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~45% ($6–$9 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

Pest Prevention and 

Monitoring: Connected drones and 

software can prevent or identify pest 

problems, reducing spray loss on the 

ground by 68% to 93%.

3 Frost Detection: Wireless 

sensors can help identify frost patterns 

and alert producers, improving 

forecasts by 50% and increasing 

relative crop value by an average of 

18%.

6 Direct-to-Consumer Sales: 

Digital platforms can shorten the supply 

chain and increase producer revenue by 

50% per unit of apples, 649% per unit of 

salad mix, and 183% per unit of 

blueberries.

9

1 Weather Modeling: On-site 

stations can forecast and detect local 

problems, saving users $19,500 per 

year in spray costs and preventing 

$264,000 per year in crop loss.

Machine Learning: Software 

and field imagery can identify 

overgrown or foreign plants and 

inform fungicide application, reducing 

labor costs by 20% to 25%. 

2 Smart Irrigation: Soil-based 

plant sensors can help control 

irrigation systems to improve water 

efficiency by 20% to 25%, increase 

yields by 17.5%, and cause 10-20% less 

tip burn, increasing profitability by 

$500-$4,000 per acre.

5 Food Waste Management: 

Online platforms can help sell 

perishable food that might otherwise 

go to waste, increasing market access 

and creating $10,651 in additional 

revenue per producer.

8

Input Use and Management: 

Decision support software can enable 

data-driven decision making to 

maximize yield while reducing inputs, 

like fungicide use by 50%.

4 Robotic Harvesting: 

Autonomous pickers using vacuums or 

pincers for harvesting and picking can 

reduce overall harvest costs to 35% to 

45% of total production costs.

7 Storage Monitoring: Remote 

sensor systems can manage 

containers and send alerts, to avoid 

temperatures and pressures causing 

perishable good prices to drop 10% 

per hour.

10

$1.3–$2.1 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$3.6–$5.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$8.5–$13.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

1

2

3

7

4

5

6

10

9

8

SPECIALTY CROPS

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Specialty Crop Farming Could Add

$13–$22 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~45% ($6–$9 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

Pest Prevention and 

Monitoring: Connected drones and 

software can prevent or identify pest 

problems, reducing spray loss on the 

ground by 68% to 93%.

3 Frost Detection: Wireless 

sensors can help identify frost patterns 

and alert producers, improving 

forecasts by 50% and increasing 

relative crop value by an average of 

18%.

6 Direct-to-Consumer Sales: 

Digital platforms can shorten the supply 

chain and increase producer revenue by 

50% per unit of apples, 649% per unit of 

salad mix, and 183% per unit of 

blueberries.

9

1 Weather Modeling: On-site 

stations can forecast and detect local 

problems, saving users $19,500 per 

year in spray costs and preventing 

$264,000 per year in crop loss.

Machine Learning: Software 

and field imagery can identify 

overgrown or foreign plants and 

inform fungicide application, reducing 

labor costs by 20% to 25%. 

2 Smart Irrigation: Soil-based 

plant sensors can help control 

irrigation systems to improve water 

efficiency by 20% to 25%, increase 

yields by 17.5%, and cause 10-20% less 

tip burn, increasing profitability by 

$500-$4,000 per acre.

5 Food Waste Management: 

Online platforms can help sell 

perishable food that might otherwise 

go to waste, increasing market access 

and creating $10,651 in additional 

revenue per producer.

8

Input Use and Management: 

Decision support software can enable 

data-driven decision making to 

maximize yield while reducing inputs, 

like fungicide use by 50%.

4 Robotic Harvesting: 

Autonomous pickers using vacuums or 

pincers for harvesting and picking can 

reduce overall harvest costs to 35% to 

45% of total production costs.

7 Storage Monitoring: Remote 

sensor systems can manage 

containers and send alerts, to avoid 

temperatures and pressures causing 

perishable good prices to drop 10% 

per hour.

10

$1.3–$2.1 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$3.6–$5.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

$8.5–$13.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) to 

the U.S. agriculture industry

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

After implementing precision agriculture technologies enabled by internet connectivity, specialty crop 

farmers can enjoy benefits to their business management and quality of life.

SPECIALTY CROP GROWERS

BENEFITS OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE

As the CTO for a 2,000-acre specialty crop farm, José 

keeps a constant pulse on his crops. From a couple of 

digital dashboards on his iPad, he checks the final 

numbers on yesterday’s broccoli and lettuce yields and 

double-checks the settings of the remote-controlled 

refrigeration lockers, which help minimize spoilage 

before crops are shipped out. On his drive to the next 

site, he listens to a podcast from a regional innovation 

center explaining some of the new ag tech projects 

they’re incubating. He’s consistently been an innovator 

in this area, building many of his own technologies for 

specialized production of each crop. He now hosts his 

own peer groups to share what he has learned and 

show off his latest tech. 

His drive is interrupted by a call from Tom, who’s been 

experimenting with irrigation systems on iceberg 

lettuce fields, as part of an effort to reduce water 

usage due to rising water prices. A few years ago, Tom 

had pitched and implemented a variable-rate 

irrigation system to replace the farm’s flood irrigation 

system and reduce overwatering. Estimates were that 

precision irrigation could reduce inputs by up to 20% 

while maintaining—or improving—yield per acre, and 

the results have more than delivered. José asks about 

the new autonomous irrigation pilot that Tom has 

been running. During the lettuce harvest, they’ll record 

conclusive results, Tom says, but so far, it appears that 

the water sprayers are automatically adjusting based 

on continuous water and soil sampling.

José hangs up and pulls up to the broccoli field to 

check on his favorite project: a custom-built broccoli 

harvester. Automated harvesters are commonplace for 

row crops like corn, but specialty crops are usually 

picked by hand, since they’re too delicate or 

inconsistently shaped for machines to handle. Due to 

rising wages, the owners had asked José to think 

about ways to reduce dependence on seasonal labor. 

José had seen a similar machine at a trade show in 

Spain, and the big U.S. manufacturers didn’t seem 

focused on specialty crops, so he decided to engineer 

the first broccoli harvester in the country. He actually 

outsourced production to Canada, in order to keep 

American competitors from swiping his design. José 

pulls up to the harvester and walks around it a couple 

times, admiring his work.

A few yards away, a field crew packs romaine into 

bags. José helped implement barcode scanners and 

in-field label printers, although spotty service 

constantly interrupts the data stream, and he has to 

cross-check against shipping records. Last week the 

cell service was so bad, José had to manually input half 

the barcodes. The tracking increases traceability and 

insulates the operation a little from outbreaks and 

scares. José suspects consumers will continue wanting 

to know more about where their food comes from and 

how it’s grown, so he invested early. 

As he returns to the office for a chat with the Deputy 

CTO, José glances at his phone and scans an email 

from the aerial imagery service he hired. Three times a 

week, for a reasonable fee, they fly over his fields in 

their special drone, equipped with an expensive 

multispectral camera, to generate maps of chlorophyll 

levels, temperature, and water density in the soil. The 

maps they send take so much bandwidth to download, 

José usually needs to drive to his equipment dealer’s 

office to view them. He archives the email for later.

When hiring for the Deputy CTO job last year, José 

struggled to find good applicants who were in—or 

willing to relocate to—the area. Rather than lowering 

his standards, he hired Jenny, who lives in San 

Francisco. She lives close enough to visit the farm 

every week or two while doing most of her work on 

the systems remotely. José is very pleased with her 

work and feels proud to have hired top-tier talent. It 

gives him even more time to plan for future 

investments; he’s looking forward to reading the latest 

Fresh Produce Growers newsletter on his iPad, where 

he’d seen a teaser for an article about next-gen 

autonomous harvesters. 

Name: 

José Gutierrez

State: 

California

Products:

Broccoli, lettuces

Highlighted 

Technologies:

• Mobile applications 

& dashboards

• Remote-controlled 

refrigerators

• Variable-rate 

irrigation systems

• Autonomous 

irrigation systems

• Precision water and 

soil sensors

• Automated specialty 

harvester

• Internet-enabled 

traceability scanners 

and printers

• Drones with 

multispectral cameras

• Autonomous 

harvesters

José’s story is a composite representation based on conversations with 6 real specialty crop farmers in California and Texas. This story 

describes the everyday joys, frustrations, and experiences of farmers pioneering the adoption of Precision Agriculture technologies.

A SPECIALTY CROP GROWER’S PERSPECTIVE

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN PRACTICE

facilitating recruitment

of top-tier talent

as a result of reducing

raw inputs like water

through automation, 

addressing shortages 

and premiums on 

labor

and compliance with 

federal requirements

to test new tech and 

customize based on 

farm-specific needs

Remote 

work

Resource 

sustainability

Decreased 

reliance on labor

Improved 

food safety Experimentation

BENEFITS OF NEXT GENERATION PRECISION AGRICULTURE
PAGE 29

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN 

SPECIALTY CROPS

Producer Narrative: Specialty Crops

As the CTO for a 2,000-acre specialty crop farm, 

José keeps a constant pulse on his crops. From a 

couple of digital dashboards on his iPad, he checks 

the final numbers on yesterday’s broccoli and 

lettuce yields and double-checks the settings of the 

remote-controlled refrigeration lockers, which help 

minimize spoilage before crops are shipped out. 

On his drive to the next site, he listens to a podcast 

from a regional innovation center explaining some 

of the new ag tech projects they’re incubating. 

He’s consistently been an innovator in this 

area, building many of his own technologies for 

specialized production of each crop. He now hosts 

his own peer groups to share what he has learned 

and show off his latest tech. 

His drive is interrupted by a call from Tom, who’s 

been experimenting with irrigation systems on 

iceberg lettuce fields, as part of an effort to reduce 

water usage due to rising water prices. A few 

years ago, Tom had pitched and implemented a 

variable-rate irrigation system to replace the farm’s 

flood irrigation system and reduce overwatering. 

Estimates were that precision irrigation 

could reduce inputs by up to 20 percent while 

maintaining—or improving—yield per acre, and the 

results have more than delivered. José asks about 

the new autonomous irrigation pilot that Tom has 

been running. During the lettuce harvest, they’ll 

record conclusive results, Tom says, but so far, it 

appears that the water sprayers are automatically 

adjusting based on continuous water and soil 

sampling.

José hangs up and pulls up to the broccoli field 

to check on his favorite project: a custom-built 

broccoli harvester. Automated harvesters are 

commonplace for row crops like corn, but specialty 

crops are usually picked by hand, since they’re too 

delicate or inconsistently shaped for machines to 

handle. Due to rising wages, the owners had asked 

José to think about ways to reduce dependence 

on seasonal labor. José had seen a similar 

machine at a trade show in Spain, and the big U.S. 

manufacturers didn’t seem focused on specialty 

crops, so he decided to engineer the first broccoli 

harvester in the country. He actually outsourced 

production to Canada, in order to keep American 

competitors from swiping his design. José pulls up 

to the harvester and walks around it a couple of 

times, admiring his work.

A few yards away, a field crew packs romaine into 

bags. José helped implement barcode scanners 

and in-field label printers, although spotty service 

constantly interrupts the data stream, and he has 

to cross-check against shipping records. Last week 

the cell service was so bad, José had to manually 

input half the barcodes. The tracking increases 

traceability and insulates the operation a little from 

outbreaks and scares. José suspects consumers 

will continue wanting to know more about where 

their food comes from and how it’s grown, so he 

invested early. 

As he returns to the office for a chat with the 

Deputy CTO, José glances at his phone and scans 

an email from the aerial imagery service he hired. 

Three times a week, for a reasonable fee, they fly 

over his fields in their special drone, equipped with 

an expensive multispectral camera, to generate 

maps of chlorophyll levels, temperature, and water 

density in the soil. The maps they send take so 

much bandwidth to download, José usually needs 

to drive to his equipment dealer’s office to view 

them. He archives the email for later.

When hiring for the Deputy CTO job last year, José 

struggled to find good applicants who were in—

or willing to relocate to—the area. Rather than 

lowering his standards, he hired Jenny, who lives 

in San Francisco. She lives close enough to visit the 

farm every week or two while doing most of her 

work on the systems remotely. José is very pleased 

with her work and feels proud to have hired toptier talent. It gives him even more time to plan for 

future investments; he’s looking forward to reading 

the latest Fresh Produce Growers newsletter on his 

iPad, where he’d seen a teaser for an article about 

next generation autonomous harvesters.
PAGE 30

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

United States Department of Agriculture

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES 

IN LIVESTOCK & DAIRY PRODUCTS

1 794 2

3

4

8

6 7

5

9

10

11

12

LIVESTOCK & DAIRY

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Livestock and Dairy Could Add

$20–$25 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~40% ($7–$10 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

Infanticide Prevention: 

Sensors can listen for sounds of 

distress and stimulate sows to reposition, reducing these preventable 

animal deaths by 75%.

2 Mastitis Detection: 

Automated monitoring systems can 

detect early signs of mastitis and help 

avoid $316 in indirect costs per 

infected cow per year.

5 Robotic Milking: Robots can 

sanitize and stimulate teats, self-attach 

to utters, and catch milk, increasing 

the frequency of milkings and 

increasing production by 8%.

8 Online Channels: Channels like 

online cattle auctions can return 65% 

more revenue per unit of beef, 

compared to mainstream supply chains.

11

1 Fertility Planning: Biosensors 

can track ovulation cycles and detect 

estrus with a 95% to 97% success rate, 

helping to boost pregnancy rates.

Precision Feeding: Sensors 

can calibrate and distribute optimal 

amounts of feed, decreasing costs by 

$0.12 per day per cow.

4 Unmanned Herding: 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can 

monitor and herd, reducing by 20% 

the cost of searching for lost cattle.

7 Automated Sorting: Visual 

inspection, weighing, and quality 

sorting can optimize product pricing 

and return an additional $27 per day 

or $10,000 per year for a farm.

10

Livestock Records and 

Management: Software can keep 

records and make decisions based on 

real-time herd data to reduce costs by 

$6 per 20kg of production.

3 Audio/Video Facility 

Monitoring: Cameras and AI can help 

avoid or track lost animals, reducing 

labor time by 2.27 labor hours per 

1000 pounds and two hours per 

broiler house per day.

6 Tracing and Marketing: 

Technology can communicate key 

product attributes so consumers make 

informed purchases and, for farmers, 

unlock 15% premiums compared to 

retail prices of commodity beef.

12 General Health Monitoring: 

Bluetooth-enabled animal wearables 

can monitor activity and detect 

anomalies, reducing medication by 

15% per animal and shortening the 

cattle finishing process by 4 to 6 

weeks.

9

$2.4–$3.1 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

$15.7–$20.4 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

$1.4–$1.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

1 794 2

3

4

8

6 7

5

9

10

11

12

LIVESTOCK & DAIRY

Reference final USDA report title

Precision Agriculture in Livestock and Dairy Could Add

$20–$25 BILLION IN POTENTIAL BENEFIT (GROSS) FOR THE U.S. AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY,

OF WHICH ~40% ($7–$10 BILLION) DEPENDS ON INTERNET E-CONNECTIVITY

Reference that all sources are in Appendix A

Infanticide Prevention: 

Sensors can listen for sounds of 

distress and stimulate sows to reposition, reducing these preventable 

animal deaths by 75%.

2 Mastitis Detection: 

Automated monitoring systems can 

detect early signs of mastitis and help 

avoid $316 in indirect costs per 

infected cow per year.

5 Robotic Milking: Robots can 

sanitize and stimulate teats, self-attach 

to utters, and catch milk, increasing 

the frequency of milkings and 

increasing production by 8%.

8 Online Channels: Channels like 

online cattle auctions can return 65% 

more revenue per unit of beef, 

compared to mainstream supply chains.

11

1 Fertility Planning: Biosensors 

can track ovulation cycles and detect 

estrus with a 95% to 97% success rate, 

helping to boost pregnancy rates.

Precision Feeding: Sensors 

can calibrate and distribute optimal 

amounts of feed, decreasing costs by 

$0.12 per day per cow.

4 Unmanned Herding: 

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles can 

monitor and herd, reducing by 20% 

the cost of searching for lost cattle.

7 Automated Sorting: Visual 

inspection, weighing, and quality 

sorting can optimize product pricing 

and return an additional $27 per day 

or $10,000 per year for a farm.

10

Livestock Records and 

Management: Software can keep 

records and make decisions based on 

real-time herd data to reduce costs by 

$6 per 20kg of production.

3 Audio/Video Facility 

Monitoring: Cameras and AI can help 

avoid or track lost animals, reducing 

labor time by 2.27 labor hours per 

1000 pounds and two hours per 

broiler house per day.

6 Tracing and Marketing: 

Technology can communicate key 

product attributes so consumers make 

informed purchases and, for farmers, 

unlock 15% premiums compared to 

retail prices of commodity beef.

12 General Health Monitoring: 

Bluetooth-enabled animal wearables 

can monitor activity and detect 

anomalies, reducing medication by 

15% per animal and shortening the 

cattle finishing process by 4 to 6 

weeks.

9

$2.4–$3.1 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

$15.7–$20.4 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

$1.4–$1.8 Billion

in potential benefit (gross) for 

the U.S. agriculture Industry

MARKET 

PLANNING PRODUCTION COORDINATION

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN USDA Logo

After implementing precision agriculture technologies enabled by internet connectivity, livestock and dairy 

farmers can enjoy benefits to their business management and quality of life.

LIVESTOCK & DAIRY PRODUCERS

BENEFITS OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE

Dave’s alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., two hours later 

than it used to. Out of habit, he swings by the barn 

before breakfast and checks on the dairy cows lining 

up to get into the robotic milking stalls. All 180 will be 

milked 2 to 3 times today, compared to before the 

robots when three people milked twice daily. 

When his four kids still lived at home, the family could 

easily get by with a parallel milking system, but as the 

kids moved out, he realized that they needed to make 

a change to stay in business. His son, Will, is pretty 

tech-savvy and had begged him to consider 

automating the operation with the robotic milkers

he’d read about. Dave was skeptical at first, but after 

penciling out the cost of hiring 3 new laborers versus 

outfitting the barn with robotic milkers, the financial 

cost-benefits were pretty similar. Plus, with this new 

tech, he has scaled from 60 dairy cows to 180 in 3 

years, without new hiring. This automated system has 

made his cost structure more similar to much larger 

operations; as Will puts it, “less time milking, more 

time managing.”

Dave walks to the small office attached to the side of 

the barn, from which he runs much of the operation, 

and checks the system dashboard from his computer. 

As each cow enters the stall, its RFID tag pulls up its 

record from the livestock management software, 

flashing its recent stats across the screen (including 

feed, medications, milk yield, and fertility cycle). This 

data is used to set cows’ feeding regimen in the stall, 

and the software increasingly enables personalized 

precision feeding, varying the type and amount of 

feed based on yields and other factors. He suspects 

these records will one day make it easier to meet food 

safety and traceability regulations, and he’s heard 

some producers are experimenting with using 

blockchain applications to share stats with customers 

who want more information about their food.

The herd-level dashboard loads pretty quickly, but 

pulling up an individual cow’s trends means sitting for 

15 to 20 seconds each time. Because the metal barn 

blocks cell signals, Dave has 14 different cellular plans 

for full coverage, costing about $1900 per month. 

Dave’s smartphone chimes with a mobile alert. Cow 

#138 is eating and drinking less, a classic early warning 

sign of mastitis. He walks back to the barn to inspect, 

making a mental note to check the data from the 

activity tracking collars, too. They’re like “fit bits” for 

cows, in that they record each animal’s movements 

and digestive habits (although, annoyingly, they 

operate with a separate software from the robotic 

milking system). It took Dave a while to trust the data; 

he grew up around cows and jokes that he has a sixth 

sense for when they’re in heat or getting sick. But the 

data reports have been alerting Dave to health issues 

12 to 24 hours earlier than his gut was telling him and 

improving his breeding practices too. He’s heard that 

swine and poultry facilities have started using artificial 

intelligence in cameras and audio recorders to flag 

signs of illness based on animal breathing or signs of 

duress. He wonders if similar tech exists for cows. The 

real value, of course, would be in streaming all this 

data to his vet, offloading some health management 

duties and getting recommendations faster and more 

consistently. 

He checks his schedule for the day as he heads back to 

the house for lunch. He has a call set up with his 

contact at a meal kit startup, one of the direct-toconsumer marketing channels he’s trying. With more 

time on his hands, he’s been testing the idea of a 

dual-purpose herd, instead of selling his bulls to 

someone else. Before, he lacked the volume to make it 

economical, but this startup likes small, nontraditional 

suppliers. Plus, they provide recipes to buyers, shaping 

consumer tastes. He is able to sell more of each 

animal, which reduces waste to increase profitability. 

Dave is looking forward to this evening when the 

whole family is coming over for dinner at 5 p.m., since 

the young grandkids have an early bedtime. For most 

of his life, Dave couldn’t attend many family events 

because of his hours. Not anymore, and not tonight. 

Name: 

Dave McGrory

State: 

Pennsylvania

Products:

Dairy milk, 

some beef

Highlighted 

Technologies:

• Robotic milking 

system

• RFID tags

• Livestock 

management 

software

• Precision feeding 

• Mobile alerts

• Activity tracking 

collars

• Artificial intelligence 

cameras/audio 

recorders

• Direct-to-consumer 

marketing

Dave’s story is a composite representation based on conversations with 8 real livestock/dairy farmers in California, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, 

New York, and Pennsylvania. This story describes the everyday joys, frustrations, and experiences of farmers pioneering the adoption of 

Precision Agriculture technologies.

A LIVESTOCK & DAIRY PRODUCER’S PERSPECTIVE

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN PRACTICE

of illness, fertility 

cycle, and digestive 

issues in animals

with diversifying 

business models a new 

selling channels

by reducing manual 

labor and allowing 

for flexible scheduling 

of daily activities

over gut instinct 

results in quicker, 

more accurate 

business management

through direct 

marketing channels 

and transparency

Early 

detection

Eroding 

advantages of scale

Physical health 

and peace of mind

Data-driven 

decisions 

Meeting 

consumer demands 

BENEFITS OF NEXT GENERATION PRECISION AGRICULTURE
PAGE 31

CONNECTED TECHNOLOGIES IN 

LIVESTOCK & DAIRY PRODUCTS

Producer Narrative: Livestock & Dairy Products

Dave’s alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., two hours later 

than it used to. Out of habit, he swings by the barn 

before breakfast and checks on the dairy cows 

lining up to get into the robotic milking stalls. All 

180 will be milked 2 to 3 times today, compared to 

before the robots when three people milked twice 

daily. 

When his four kids still lived at home, the family 

could easily get by with a parallel milking system, 

but as the kids moved out, he realized that they 

needed to make a change to stay in business. His 

son, Will, is pretty tech-savvy and had begged him 

to consider automating the operation with the 

robotic milkers he’d read about. Dave was skeptical 

at first, but after penciling out the cost of hiring 3 

new laborers versus outfitting the barn with robotic 

milkers, the financial cost-benefits were pretty 

similar. Plus, with this new tech, he has scaled from 

60 dairy cows to 180 in 3 years, without new hiring. 

This automated system has made his cost structure 

more similar to much larger operations; as Will 

puts it, “less time milking, more time managing.”

Dave walks to the small office attached to the 

side of the barn, from which he runs much of the 

operation, and checks the system dashboard 

from his computer. As each cow enters the stall, 

its RFID tag pulls up its record from the livestock 

management software, flashing its recent stats 

across the screen (including feed, medications, 

milk yield, and fertility cycle). This data is used 

to set cows’ feeding regimen in the stall, and 

the software increasingly enables personalized 

precision feeding, varying the type and amount of 

feed based on yields and other factors. He suspects 

these records will one day make it easier to meet 

food safety and traceability regulations, and he’s 

heard some producers are experimenting with 

using blockchain applications to share stats with 

customers who want more information about their 

food.

The herd-level dashboard loads pretty quickly, but 

pulling up an individual cow’s trends means sitting 

for 15 to 20 seconds each time. Because the metal 

barn blocks cell signals, Dave has 14 different 

cellular plans for full coverage, costing about $1900 

per month. 

Dave’s smartphone chimes with a mobile alert. 

Cow #138 is eating and drinking less, a classic early 

warning sign of mastitis. He walks back to the barn 

to inspect, making a mental note to check the data 

from the activity tracking collars, too. They’re like 

“fit bits” for cows, in that they record each animal’s 

movements and digestive habits (although, 

annoyingly, they operate with a separate software 

from the robotic milking system). It took Dave a 

while to trust the data; he grew up around cows 

and jokes that he has a sixth sense for when they’re 

in heat or getting sick. But the data reports have 

been alerting Dave to health issues 12 to 24 hours 

earlier than his gut was telling him and improving 

his breeding practices too. He’s heard that swine 

and poultry facilities have started using artificial 

intelligence in cameras and audio recorders to 

flag signs of illness based on animal breathing 

or signs of duress. He wonders if similar tech 

exists for cows. The real value, of course, would 

be in streaming all this data to his vet, offloading 

some health management duties and getting 

recommendations faster and more consistently. 

He checks his schedule for the day as he heads 

back to the house for lunch. He has a call set up 

with his contact at a meal kit startup, one of the 

direct-to-consumer marketing channels he’s trying. 

With more time on his hands, he’s been testing 

the idea of a dual-purpose herd, instead of selling 

his bulls to someone else. Before, he lacked the 

volume to make it economical, but this startup 

likes small, nontraditional suppliers. Plus, they 

provide recipes to buyers, shaping consumer 

tastes. He is able to sell more of each animal, which 

reduces waste to increase profitability. 

Dave is looking forward to this evening when the 

whole family is coming over for dinner at 5 p.m., 

since the young grandkids have an early bedtime. 

For most of his life, Dave couldn’t attend many 

family events because of his hours. Not anymore, 

and not tonight.
PAGE 32

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

20

40% less fuel burned, due to VRT 

technologies22

7.5% fewer people at risk of 

hunger in developing countries20

2 seconds to trace food products’ 

journey, using blockchain-enabled records21

20–50%+ lower water usage22,23

up to 80% reduction in chemical

application24

SUSTAINABILITY SECURITY HEALTH

SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF PRECISION 

AGRICULTURE

20

40% less fuel burned, due to VRT 

technologies22

7.5% fewer people at risk of 

hunger in developing countries20

2 seconds to trace food products’ 

journey, using blockchain-enabled records21

20–50%+ lower water usage22,23

up to 80% reduction in chemical

application24

SUSTAINABILITY SECURITY HEALTH

SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF PRECISION 

AGRICULTURE

United States Department of Agriculture

SOCIETAL BENEFITS OF 

PRECISION AGRICULTURE
PAGE 33

OTHER BENEFITS OF E-CONNECTIVITY 

FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Next Generation Precision Agriculture 

technologies have the potential to generate a 

“killer application”25 that leads to a demand for 

more or quicker expansion of rural broadband 

infrastructure and services. Such expansion of 

broadband throughout America’s rural areas, 

would also enable Internet service access for 

other uses. Rural based industries like mining and 

forestry will find effieciencies and quality of life 

measures can increase access to health care and 

improved education facilities for rural citizens. A 

similar analysis can be done in these industries 

and quality of life measures.

FORESTRY. The forest products industry is 

among the top ten manufacturing sectors in 

the continental United States, by population 

employed, and generates billions of dollars in 

annual sales.26 The largest gains can be found 

in monitoring forest growth through smart pest 

management, drone planting, and connected fire 

prevention technologies. Real-time information 

provides significant value where delayed 

information transmission or imprecision in the 

early stages of planting can result in long-term and 

consequential loss.

TELEMEDICINE. Demographic, environmental, 

economic, and social factors put rural residents at 

higher risk of preventable death from conditions 

like cancer, heart disease, unintentional injuries, 

and stroke.27 Mental health issues, including opioid 

dependency, have become a focus for rural health 

interventions.28 Connected technologies enable 

constant information streaming that can improve 

care quality, resource use, and diagnosis, reducing 

missed cases and medical waste. 

Non-emergency treatment technologies can 

improve the management of chronic conditions, 

ensuring adherence of medication and preventing 

costly, unnecessary interventions. Telemedicine 

applications often require higher speeds, reliability 

and capacity, and if available could expand 

treatment access to rural residents who may 

be too remote for needed access to providers 

and could enable local hospitals to continue 

financially-sustainable operations.29 

DISTANCE LEARNING. Connected technologies 

can benefit student retention, including increasing 

education accessibility for disabled students. 

Technologies enable tailored learning directed 

to the individual student or for teacher support. 

Digital learning, such as coding skills for postgraduates, expands educational access for adults. 
PAGE 34

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

TODAY’S CHALLENGES TO

SCALING ADOPTION 

OF NEXT GENERATION 

PRECISION AGRICULTURE

If Next Generation Precision Agriculture adoption fueled by a strong rural Internet 

infrastructure is so transformative, then why are we not yet causing wide-scale change?

Farmers currently face challenges in adoption 

and deployment of advanced technologies in 

the field, limiting the extent to which the U.S. 

agriculture industry can realize the potential 

economic impact. A 2017 Purdue University survey, 

for example, found that one-third of Precision 

Agriculture technology dealers believed that 

interpreting and making decisions with Precision 

Agriculture information took too much of their 

customers’ time. These dealers also expressed 

that producers might be shying away from use of 

Precision Agriculture tech because of affordability 

(65 percent), soil type (23 percent), a lack of 

confidence in data (23 percent), topography (21 

percent), and limited time to interpret data (21 

percent).11 Broadly speaking, these trends are 

classic industry challenges to adoption for any new 

practice, product, or service and are not unique to 

the digitization of agriculture. 

As demonstrated by the following figure, Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture incorporates 

technologies of varying maturities, with some 

of the most transformative technologies still 

nascent or requiring new capabilities for full 

deployment across the industry. Technologies that 

can integrate with existing machines in highlymechanized production, like GPS guidance in 

combines, for example, are a popular technology 

that is widely used but may not have capacity to 

significantly modernize business beyond current 

practice. On the other hand, technologies like 

image and video recognition may dramatically 

change detection and diagnosis of issues in 

livestock facilities or produce fields, requiring large 

datasets to train machines and causing significant 

changes in business.

Between these two factors, user characteristics and 

technology maturity, Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture brings several new or more nuanced 

challenges to adoption that may necessitate new 

roles within the industry ecosystem and new 

strategies for action.

Specialized Transformative

Emergent Conventional

Low High

Narrow Broad

POTENTIAL BENEFIT

APPLICABILITY
PAGE 35

A lack of ubiquitous, reliable broadband service 

undermines potential benefits.

E-connectivity is the backbone of digital 

technology and drives much of the value by 

making it possible to aggregate, analyze, and 

act on the data collected. When the Internet isn’t 

reliable enough to support connected devices, 

the benefits derived from precision technologies 

are substantially diminished. Some farmers, 

therefore, dedicate significant time and effort 

to find workarounds to insufficient Internet 

service, which takes time away from managing 

their businesses and serving their customers. 

Some of the more innovative and risk-tolerant 

rural telecommunications providers and co-ops 

are deploying nontraditional, creative methods 

to help local farmers gain internet connectivity, 

highlighting an untapped customer base for largerscale providers willing to understand and tailor 

their services to rural communities’ needs.

Some Next Generation Precision Agriculture 

technologies function with basic Internet 

connections, so even slow speeds are better than 

no connections at all. But many require a more 

reliable and high-speed Internet connection as 

a minimum requirement. Additionally, without 

access to online learning and peer sharing 

platforms, farmers are less likely to succeed 

with technology implementation, having wasted 

money, time, and effort without realizing complete 

benefits.

Farms may not be able to access the full value of 

the technologies they are purchasing. 

New, high-tech features can drive more equipment 

sales and higher usage, but purchases can be 

expensive for producers, and obtaining the 

greatest value from devices requires overcoming a 

steep learning curve by farmers.

A grain farmer, for example, might use the basic 

functionality of a yield monitor but may not realize 

its full potential by analyzing year-over-year 

patterns. Similarly, many livestock operations use 

livestock management systems to record daily 

activity but rely on analog clipboards for real-time 

recordkeeping, due to clunky interfaces that differ 

from their actual protocols.

The complexity of managing and interpreting 

large datasets requires advanced technical skills 

and overwhelming amounts of information that 

can make it hard to, in practice, integrate insights 

into daily operations. For early adopters, these 

problems are complicated by a relative lack of 

educational resources about new technologies, 

and they are left shouldering a heavy burden of 

exploration. Farmers who do maximize the use 

of their investments are learning how to do so 

through self-education or peer learning, which 

are both time-intensive and inefficient to scale 

naturally. Broadband use could help expand the 

reach of these specialist staff members and justify 

higher pay.

Crowd-sourced, cloud-based data sharing and 

aggregation services are emerging, yet remain 

limited when considering the full scale and scope 

of American agriculture. Such services are not 

readily available to all producers, especially to 

those in the specialty crops and livestock and 

dairy industry, who might be able to benefit more 

from market coordination and production than 

“90 percent of people 

do nothing with the 

data they collect. 

They don’t know 

what to do with it.”

- Row crop producer, Midwest
PAGE 36

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

row crop applications. USDA has taken significant 

steps to improve its data analytics capabilities 

but still primarily relies upon traditional data 

collection methods, which limit the types of 

analyses that can be performed to support 

farm program administration and to improve 

small producers’ profitability and sustainability. 

Enhanced technical assistance and modernized 

Extension Services are only possible with more 

ubiquitous deployment of broadband to farms and 

ranches along with expanded use of Precision Ag 

technologies. 

Values in the data economy, such as openness 

and sharing, can seem contrary to traditional 

farming culture that is grounded in proprietary 

practices. 

Farmers are often hesitant to share data because 

of competition, privacy, and ownership concerns. 

But the ability to tailor services, benchmark 

performance, and discover new connections relies 

on exchanging information with providers and 

peers. Attitudes toward peer data sharing run the 

full spectrum from (a) farmers who believe in full 

transparency to (b) those who are open to sharing 

transactionally or with people they know to (c) still 

others who, as a rule, decline to share their data. 

Many farmers acknowledge discomfort with 

sharing data with suppliers but are willing to make 

a tradeoff to realize the benefits of technology. 

This points to the importance of informed consent 

on the ways in which farmers’ data may be used 

and to what extent they wish to participate in 

various data-sharing activities.

The value of many connected technologies 

comes from interoperability, but the industry 

lacks standards to drive compatibility between 

Precision Agriculture technologies. 

Different technology systems create a need for 

interoperability and a “common language” for 

agriculture tech devices, but data integration has 

so far been disappointing: “many companies claim 

they can do it until [you] sit down and discuss the 

... data sources and system requirements.”13 A 

tech-sophisticated farmer, for example, might wish 

to predict year-end water usage by connecting 

data from GPS field maps, drone images, variablerate irrigation systems, and farm management 

software; however, these technologies might 

not be compatible with each other. Technology 
PAGE 37

“It’s a major victory in my 

career to establish a WiFi 

connection on this farm.”

- Hog producer, Midwest

by different companies often cannot interface, 

sometimes resulting in manufacturer-dependent 

purchasing decisions.

Without interoperable software, farmers have 

a difficult time getting a top-level view of their 

operations, limiting their ability to use devices to 

their full potential. Manufacturers often do not use 

open standards, and some farmers are improvising 

solutions or even “hacking” their equipment to 

generate more automation or deeper, real-time 

insights. Innovations that are possible in batch 

processing, interpreting, and archiving data onfarm or near-farm are constrained because of the 

lack of data standards.

Taken together, siloed products reinforce a view of 

new ag technologies as standalone tools, making it 

hard to get a full picture of on-farm data, generate 

the new insights that are possible, and unlock the 

full potential of digital production systems.

New and beginning farmers often seek or 

advocate for technological innovation, but 

fewer people are returning to farms.

According to research by USDA’s Economic 

Research Service, 65 percent of beginning farmers 

are under 54 years old, including 17 percent under 

35 years old, and these new farmers are more 

likely to be digital natives, who have comfort and 

experience using technologies.30 They tend to have 

a passion and interest in tech jobs or using digital 

skills in their work. These individuals who are 

interested in agriculture are attracted to the ways 

that technology can bring value to the industry and 

often take it upon themselves to make the case for 

ag tech investment. Today, however, the reality is 

that many people are less attracted to careers in 

production agriculture and are more interested in 

jobs with less manual labor or with higher pay. 

This may, in part, explain the net outmigration 

of people from some rural areas, with annual 

population losses recorded between 2010 and 

2016.31 Engaging digital natives is critical to 

accelerating adoption of ag tech; in fact, by 

expanding broadband e-connectivity to farmland 

and ranchland, this would improve the ability of 

technology growth in technology applications on 

farms to slow the outflow of tech-savvy people 

from rural areas.
PAGE 38

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

INTERNATIONAL BENCHMARKS FOR

NEXT GENERATION 

PRECISION AGRICULTURE

Many countries are embracing new agriculture technologies, including Precision Agriculture, with 

partnerships, policies, and targeted investment strategies designed to transform farms, businesses, 

and local economies. These developments promise to improve agricultural sustainability and the 

world’s capacity to meet demand but also raise questions about the United States’ ability to remain 

internationally competitive with other leaders in ag tech.

Here’s a brief snapshot of how Next Generation Precision Agriculture is driving productivity and 

profitability internationally—as well as what adoption looks like around the world.

AUSTRALIA

Rural communities in Australia—

much like those in the United 

States—often lack Internet 

connectivity, due to the challenges 

of an expansive land mass.32

To help spur innovation and 

technological adoption, the 

government created a AU$60 

million ($43.3 million USD) grant 

program for individuals and 

organizations interested in testing 

and implementing sustainable land 

management practices.33 Grant 

recipients at research centers and 

connected farms are now validating 

innovative technologies such as 

virtual fencing, drones that muster 

(corral) sheep, remote solar pump 

monitoring,34 and sensors.35 Due in 

part to the rise of Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture, production 

in Australia is expected to increase 

by AU$20.3 billion ($14.9 billion 

USD) in gross value by 2030, up 25 

percent from 2015 levels.36

CHINA

China has begun to embrace the 

use of Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture as one solution to its 

constantly expanding population’s 

demand for food and shrinking 

amount of arable land, due to 

degradation from pollution. The 

government has launched a pilot 

program to test autonomous 

technologies in Jiangsu Province,37

and companies are developing 

technologies such as artificial 

intelligence (AI),38 wearables,39 and 

blockchain21 to track livestock and 

monitor their health. Gains from 

the technology have been seen 

at the microeconomic level, such 

as a 25 percent increase in milk 

yield due to livestock wearables,39

but have not yet been significant 

country-wide due to the small 

size of most farms. Productivity 

can be expected to increase with 

continued consolidation and 

modernization of Chinese farms.40

THE NETHERLANDS

Despite its small size, the 

Netherlands invests heavily 

in innovative and sustainable 

agricultural practices to help 

farmers and technology companies 

remain competitive.41 Its adoption 

of Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture has led to notable 

successes in agriculture leadership 

through the use of pioneering 

technologies: drones that measure 

soil chemistry, water content, and 

nutrients of individual plants; hightech broilers; and LED-lit, climatecontrolled greenhouse complexes. 

The Netherlands produces the 

largest tomato, chili, and cucumber 

yield globally, has reduced its 

water dependence by almost 90 

percent for key crops, and has 

reduced antibiotic use in poultry 

and livestock by 60 percent. The 

Netherlands is the world’s number 

two exporter of food, in terms 

of value, behind only the United 

States, despite being 270 times 

smaller in landmass.42
PAGE 39

CONNECTING RURAL AGRICULTURE:

STRATEGIES FOR ACTION

Connected technologies can improve profitability for producers, prosperity for agricultural 

communities, and boost national competitiveness for the industry, especially for small 

producers and those in specialty crops and livestock who could benefit most from 

understanding and utilizing all the data their farms and ranches generate. This will take 

dedicated efforts to unlock the potential value for stakeholders. Harnessing the promise of 

e-connectivity, digital technologies, and data will require new ways of working, new skills, 

and new tools, and additional action can accelerate their development, at USDA, in landgrant universities, and within industry.

As explained in the following call-out, greater 

access to e-connectivity is at the core of 

this opportunity and opens up additional 

opportunities within healthcare, forestry, distance 

learning, and other rural industries. Discussions on 

e-connectivity that focus primarily on equity and 

quality of life—while accurate—continue to focus 

on dynamics of population, such as density, and 

may miss new technologies to deploy the speed 

and scale required by the agriculture industry to 

reap the potential economic and societal benefits. 

Realizing these results, therefore, will require 

coordinated action focused on six key priorities:

1. Tailor deployment of Internet infrastructure 

to communities

One of the most basic challenges is the variability 

between communities—the differences in the 

challenges each face and the unique assets to 

address them. In many cases community-based 

groups may be best positioned to aggregate 

demand for connectivity and realize substantial 

benefit from deployment. Local utility co-ops, for 

example, are able to tap into existing customer 

bases, while local business and industry groups 

could potentially serve as intermediaries or 

resellers who cover a greater portion of the cost 

of deployment. Aggregating local voices and 

developing applicable strategies to connect supply 

with demand can create sustainable strategies for 

deploying Internet infrastructure.

2. Incentivize development of innovative 

technologies and solutions, both for scaling 

connectivity and improving agricultural 

production

There is a revolution underway in how farmers 

interact with off-farm service providers, suppliers, 

and customers, offering the opportunity to bring 

United States leadership in innovation and digital 

technology to bear on the challenges of agriculture 

and rural connectivity. Both the agricultural and 

telecommunications industries are complex and 

specialized, and it is not always easy to identify 

which solutions might provide the most effective 

and long-term success, but identifying innovative 

ideas, providing seed funding for promising 

ventures, and supporting technologies through 

proof of concept can accelerate advancements 
PAGE 40

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

from single-operation “tinkering” to mass market 

research and development. Tapping into a farm’s 

digital assets is a huge opportunity for equipment 

retailers, agronomic consultants, or input dealers 

that in turn feed the continuing development of 

digital tools for agricultural production.

3. Create the conditions that allow, encourage, 

and reward innovation, including identifying 

the statutory or regulatory obstacles that 

hinder new, innovative providers

Where laws are inconsistent across jurisdictions, 

policymakers can help align requirements at 

various levels of government and ease the path to 

growth and profitability. The Federal Government, 

under the leadership of President Trump and 

his Cabinet, has set forth on a concerted effort 

through the American Broadband Initiative, to 

reduce barriers in Federal processes to access 

Government assets for broadband deployment 

and coordinating public programs, with the goal 

of filling broadband connectivity gaps in America. 

More information can be found in the American 

Broadband Initiative’s Milestone Report, published 

in February 2019, at https://www.whitehouse.

gov/articles/high-speed-broadband-unlocksopportunities-americans. 

Moreover, issues around use of spectrum 

frequencies and interoperability limit the 

effectiveness of new technologies and keep them 

from working together everywhere, and the 

agriculture industry could benefit from shared 

agreement and standards. Without them, new 

providers will remain with suboptimal access to 

key resources needed to create greater value. 

In order that the nationwide spectrum strategy 

can best address the future needs of the Federal 

Government as well as those of the private 

sector, President Trump issued a Presidential 

Memorandum on October 25, 2018, directing 

the Executive Branch to evaluate current and 

future spectrum needs to devise a national 

strategy, including reporting on “emerging 

technologies and their expected impact on nonFederal spectrum demand”43. These activities are 

currently underway, including USDA’s review of the 

comments received through the Notice of Inquiry 

issued in the Federal Register in March 2019.

4. Coordinate across public programs to 

effectively use taxpayer funds and develop new 

partnerships

Access to capital can support commercialization 

and help new solutions scale to all communities, 

offsetting high up-front costs through direct 

funding, coordination of existing sources of 

public plus new private funds, and development 

of partnerships to share the cost of deploying 

new solutions. In some cases, equipment 

manufacturers or telecommunications co-ops 

may partner to offset the costs of infrastructure 

investments, since they realize added benefits 

in a specific community. Similarly, agricultural 

producers may be able to more quickly adopt new 

production technologies with the help of costsharing programs—particularly in cases where the 

technologies not only increase profitability but 

drive greater societal benefits.
PAGE 41

5. Build capability to scale adoption and realize 

value

An additional priority is building the capability 

to take advantage of these assets, increasing 

awareness of new developments, insight into the 

expected return on investment, and access to the 

skills needed to generate this value. To harness 

this revolution, farmers need opportunities 

for knowledge transfer to develop new skills, 

utilize relevant services, and receive training 

on digital assets. In some cases, these services 

may be coordinated and shared, driven by local 

production cooperatives. Borrowing from the 

co-op model, in fact, one Texas-based data 

cooperative offers access to benefits such as data 

analysis tools and aggregated insights.44 Local 

universities and colleges may also provide test 

sites, demonstrations, courses, and certifications 

in new, high-value technologies. Ideally, 

farmers and ranchers would be able to invest in 

technology-neutral technologies that run on WiFi, 

600MHz, or multiple bands of spectrum, enabling 

the producer and the farm’s data to move freely 

between satellite coverage to a mesh WiFi network 

(or vice versa).

Each of these priorities needs key players to own 

them and will require a broad set of partners to 

achieve these outcomes: advocates who can 

mobilize support, policymakers who create 

the right conditions, incubators to accelerate 

innovation and new solutions, planners to help 

communities adapt it to their context, funders 

and financers who address resource gaps, and 

researchers and educators who help build the 

awareness and capability to get the most from 

those resources. The combination is beyond the 

resources of any one organization or actor and will 

require shared commitment over years to realize 

the benefits to country, communities, and citizens.

6. Clarify and emphasize the importance of rural 

connectivity to all consumers of agriculture 

commodities

E-connectivity is not simply a rural issue; 

Internet expansion, economic productivity, 

and food security contribute to each citizen’s 

quality of life, regardless of where they live. The 

benefits of broadband e-connectivity accrue 

not only to the producers using Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture technologies, but also to 

consumers throughout America and the world 

who value a safe and efficient food supply. Plus, 

more universal access to e-connectivity opens 

up economic opportunity to more Americans 

through improvements in quality of life, including 

education, health, and leisure activities. However, 

citizens of urban and suburban areas may not have 

awareness of the importance of e-connectivity for 

rural areas and the paucity of Internet services 

available there. Therefore, it is important to 

continue educating and energizing the public and 

policy makers to grow the basis of support for 

deploying broadband infrastructure in farmland 

and ranchland, as well as enhancing knowledge of 

agriculture technology’s potential for the nation’s 

entire economy and prosperity.
PAGE 42

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

Broadband and Next Generation Precision Agriculture are critical components to creating a rural America 

with access to world-class resources, tools, and opportunity, and USDA is committed to tackling the 

challenges that limit full realization of this potential. 

In many cases, the strategies outlined above can be utilized by industry associations, community groups, 

private companies, or other coalitions, and USDA’s best role will often be as a convener and integrator. 

USDA is taking early action to see where incisive government support can accelerate impact. USDA has 

launched an internal working group of relevant Mission Areas to analyze opportunities across programs 

and support coordination and action for the specific initiatives:

POLICY

USDA will work with other Federal agencies to remove barriers to broadband deployment and precision 

technology adoption and advocate for standards that facilitate scale.

• Documenting Spectrum Requirements for Precision Agriculture. On October 25, 2018, the White 

House issued a Presidential Memorandum on Sustainable Spectrum Strategy, which will inventory 

spectrum needs for U.S. industries. USDA will support this process through industry engagement and 

policy analysis on agricultural spectrum requirements and engage with stakeholders to advise other 

Federal offices as spectrum strategy is developed. 

• Standards for Data Sharing and Access. USDA will support industry discussions on equipment 

interoperability and data communication standards, making it easier for producers to aggregate and 

use the data they collect. 

• Reducing Barriers to Ag Tech Innovation. USDA continues to help streamline Federal permitting 

processes as part of the American Broadband Initiative and will similarly coordinate across federal 

agencies to reduce regulatory burden and barriers to use of digital technologies in agriculture. 

WHAT USDA IS COMMITTED TO DOING
PAGE 43

FUNDING AND FINANCING

USDA will continue to play its traditional role in improving access to capital where private markets 

are unable to do so at sustainable rates or levels. USDA is coordinating with, and providing technical 

assistance to, other Federal agencies making investments in rural broadband. In particular, USDA plans 

to launch already appropriated infrastructure funding and will adjust existing programs, to the extent 

allowed by law, to recognize and encourage Precision Agriculture adoption.

• ReConnect Broadband Funding Pilot Program. Beginning in 2019, an innovative funding program 

for rural broadband will expand communities’ and providers’ eligibility for Federal funding, increase 

access to capital, and incentivize public-private funding and partnerships. For the first time ever, 

USDA will be encouraging Internet service providers to connect farms and ranches with modern 

Internet infrastructure. 

• Farm Production Financing. USDA’s conservation mission offers opportunity to incentivize tech trials 

through cost-sharing options, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will explore 

opportunities to finance digital technologies that improve water and soil management, starting 

with a pilot for water control measures. Similarly, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) will evaluate 

opportunities to incorporate Next Generation Precision Agriculture into existing FSA farm program 

funding or loans, such as those for storage facilities.

INCUBATING

USDA will look for opportunities to test and scale the use of precision technologies where they can 

improve delivery of existing mission areas.

• Agriculture Data Strategy. USDA will support accelerated innovation through open data 

and/or research insights from aggregate data. The increased volume of data creates new questions 

about data use and protection as well as new opportunities to improve services and outcomes for 

producers. USDA will explore how anonymized data sets might offer new agronomic insights or 

impact measurement for conservation or other programs.
PAGE 44

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

• Blockchain for Major Retailers and Organics. USDA will perform short-term demonstration projects 

to test the applications of traceability within the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), helping to 

potentially certify specialized production practices such as organics.

• Integrated Reporting. Seek opportunities to ease the burden for producers interacting with USDA by 

offering integration with precision technologies (like yield monitors) and allowing digital reporting. 

In particular, the recently launched Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative offers a first test 

case for this potential.

PLANNING 

USDA will help local communities understand how specific resources and strategies fit their context, 

identifying patterns and models that can help accelerate deployment and adoption.

• The e-Connectivity Resource Handbook. This document outlines all USDA programs that support 

broadband deployment and adoption of e-connectivity technologies in the agriculture industry. This 

new tool will support communities seeking to deploy high-speed, reliable broadband. 

• The Rural Economic Development Initiative (REDI). Under this initiative, Rural Development has 

offered technical assistance to communities for strategic asset-based planning, including assessment 

of and strategies for e-connectivity infrastructure.

RESEARCHING & EDUCATING

USDA will engage producers and other constituents to provide access to resources and local support at 

USDA offices and assets.

• Assess Standards and Options for Production Models. USDA’s Agriculture Research Service (ARS) 

will be on the forefront of conducting fundamental Next Generation Precision Agricultural research, 

developing standards, evaluating new technologies, creating production models that can be used 

in decision support tools, and developing a publicly available dataset that will be used in Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture applications.

• Examine Constraints to Adoption. Conduct research to uncover barriers to producers’ adoption that 

are impeding more broad utilization of Next Generation Precision Agriculture applications.

• Evaluate Options for Federal Investment Priorities. Collect and analyze data on USDA’s program 

performance and further quantify the societal and financial impacts of Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture to improve the effectiveness of Federal funds.

• Extension Offices. USDA will develop methods and protocols within Extension Services, creating 

capabilities to promote or scale Precision Agriculture use by advising producers on relevant 

technologies and potential financial benefits once applied. 

• New and Beginning Farmers. USDA’s Office of Public Partnerships and Engagement (OPPE) will 

include Precision Agriculture elements in its New and Beginning Farmer programs.
PAGE 45

PROPOSAL FOR PARTNERSHIPS

The call to action extends well beyond USDA, 

and both public and private actors have roles 

to play. Expanding rural broadband Internet 

infrastructure and spreading Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture to farms across America 

are herculean tasks that will require sustained 

engagement from influential entities, innovators, 

partners, investors, and more.

All hands are needed to help lead the nation 

towards digital transformation and greater 

economic prosperity.

Sitting at the intersection of infrastructure and 

adoption, catalyzing this economic revolution will 

depend on agriculture technology companies, 

Internet service providers, community leaders, 

producers, as well as the associations that 

represent these interests. Each stakeholder group 

can fill multiple roles to realize the benefits of 

digital transformation.

ADVOCATING

Making infrastructure and adoption a national 

priority is a job for all involved stakeholders 

and beneficiaries, by building exposure to the 

challenges and awareness of the importance 

of solving them. Researchers can measure and 

communicate the impact of broadband and Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture expansion as 

well as evaluate methods to tackle challenges 

to deployment. Technology companies, Internet 

service providers, and rural electric cooperatives 

can highlight and prioritize the challenges of 

rural communities and producers for talented 

technologists to solve. Additionally, best practices 

should be promoted to address cybersecurity 

and privacy concerns in coordination with other 

Federal agencies and external stakeholders.

FUNDING AND FINANCING

Public funding can play a role to address the scale 

of the challenge for broadband infrastructure and 

Next Generation Precision Agriculture technology 

deployment, because the nation needs publicprivate partnerships to share costs and risks. 

Agribusiness companies and manufacturers 

could consider offsetting high initial costs of 

infrastructure with the opportunity to gain users 

and long-term revenue streams. New crossindustry partnerships with other companies 

that have business interests in expanding rural 

connectivity, such as transportation or shipping, 

could also offer a regional corridor play.

INCUBATING

Innovation will be at the core of efforts to 

break through the tradeoffs inherent in scaling 

infrastructure as well as developing compelling 

tools that are practical and profitable for 

producers to put to use. Associations can help 

provide a platform with easy access to frontline 

users (producers) for rapid testing of new 

technologies. Similarly, universities 

and/or USDA’s ARS can create hubs of talent 

and expertise focused on these challenges, 

bringing together multiple disciplines to solve 

tough challenges. Technology companies can 

help encourage and support innovation not only 

from their research and development pipeline, 

but also from small players embedded in rural 

communities, providing channels to scale 

success.

PLANNING

Communities can draw on their strengths and 

assets to both attract infrastructure providers 

and support technology deployment. Local coops, including telecom, electric, and agriculture, 

can help aggregate demand for connectivity and 
PAGE 46

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

figure out how to invest to meet the demand. 

Producers and farming associations can 

crowdsource more accurate connectivity maps by 

canvassing and sending surveys to local producers. 

They can also clarify the local community’s 

business case for broadband implementation 

using local connectivity knowledge and peer 

groups. Internet Service Providers can collaborate 

with community leaders to set expectations and 

explicitly lay out requirements needed to deploy 

broadband to specific communities in response 

to their unique needs. In technology adoption, 

community organizations can identify methods 

to pool high-demand support services, similar to 

some local cotton gins that have experimented 

with offering data services.

RESEARCHING AND EDUCATING

The economic return of U.S. Federal investment in 

agricultural research is estimated at 45 percent, 

with widespread benefits to society that are 

realized for generations.45 Communities need 

access to the best knowledge resources and tools 

to support deployment and adoption, spreading 

insight around what is possible, efficacy, and 

expected return on investment. Producers’ 

associations, as well as agribusiness companies 

and manufacturers, can leverage their access 

to producers to encourage knowledge sharing 

through peer learning groups and/or 

regional networks. Today, USDA extension 

specialists conduct symposia and field days 

where technologies are demonstrated and 

the management “how to” and scenarios are 

shown. Researchers and extension specialists 

can establish courses and accelerators to help 

translate knowledge into action or conduct 

return-on-investment studies and testbeds 

to ease the burden of analysis for producers. 

Agriculture technology companies can broaden 

their support and package all the components 

for the end user, just as one cloud-based artificial 

intelligence company has started to deploy WiFi 

networking kits that provide the backbone for data 

aggregation and cloud access.

“We can make 

America great again 

with broadband 

e-connectivity 

accessible to all 

Americans”

- U.S. Secretary of Agriculture 

 Sonny Perdue
PAGE 47

Rural broadband has become a national priority to address the e-connectivity gap and 

deliver increased economic and societal benefits. The American economy stands to 

capture substantial gains from e-connectivity through adoption of Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture. USDA’s analysis estimates that connected technologies are poised 

to transform agricultural production and create a potential $47-$65 billion in annual gross 

benefit for the United States.

CONNECTIVITY FOR THE FUTURE

CONCLUSION

If Internet infrastructure, digital technologies at 

scale, and on-farm capabilities become available 

at a level that met estimated producer demand, 

the U.S. agriculture industry would realize benefits 

equivalent to nearly 18 percent of total production, 

based on 2017 levels. 

Unlocking this potential value requires America 

to scale adoption of connected Next Generation 

Precision Agriculture technologies and expand its 

rural broadband Internet infrastructure. Greater 

adoption of these 21st century advancements 

will depend on equipping producers, expanding 

equipment interoperability, attracting new talent, 

and increasing access to reliable broadband 

e-connectivity as a key prerequisite. 

The Trump Administration is taking advantage 

of this unique opportunity by facilitating rural 

broadband and Next Generation Precision 

Agriculture and establishing government, industry, 

and academic partnerships. Sustained leadership 

and coordinated action by public and private 

players can help address these challenges—

specifically, by building national support, 

creating the conditions conducive to innovation, 

accelerating development of practical solutions, 

tailoring deployment for rural communities, and 

providing access to capital to simultaneously build 

out broadband infrastructure.

USDA is committed to answering this call to action 

with concerted efforts across Mission Areas, as well 

as implementation of an intradepartmental Next 

Generation Precision Agriculture working group. 

We invite our partners to address the challenge 

as well, so that together, we can deliver lasting 

prosperity for all Americans.
PAGE 48

RURAL BROADBAND

A CASE FOR

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PAGE 53

FURTHER READING

1. Dalton, David; et al. “Beefing up Blockchain.” 

Deloitte Insights. 2018. 

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/

Deloitte/ie/Documents/Technology/Deloitte_

Beefing%20up%20Blockchain_how%20

blockchain%20can%20transform%20the%20

beef%20supply%20chain_Oct%202018%20

(003).pdf

2. Erickson, Bruce. “2017 Precision Agriculture 

Dealership Survey”. Purdue University. 2017. 

http://agribusiness.purdue.edu/files/file/

croplife-purdue-2017-precision-dealer-surveyreport.pdf

3. Giles, Frank. “Realizing the Benefits of 

Precisions Agriculture.” Growing Produce. 

2018. 

https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/

realizing-benefits-precision-agriculture

4. Hemken, Melissa. “Storage Allows a Market 

Waiting Game.” Western Farmer-Stockman. 

2018. 

https://www.westernfarmerstockman.com/

crops/storage-allows-market-waiting-game

5. “How Artificial Intelligence and Machine 

Learning Can Help Farmers Diagnose Crop 

Diseases?” AI.Business. 2017. 

http://ai.business/2017/01/30/how-artificialintelligence-and-machine-learning-can-helpfarmers-diagnose-crop-diseases

6. Kite-Powell, Jennifer. “Why Precision 

Agriculture Will Change How Food Is 

Produced.” Forbes. 2018. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/

jenniferhicks/2018/04/30/why-precisionagriculture-will-change-how-food-isproduced/#1f9487416c65

7. Lowenberg-Deboer, Jess. “The Precision 

Agriculture Revolution.” Foreign Affairs. 2015. 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/

united-states/2015-04-20/precisionagriculture-revolution

8. Margaritoff, Marco. “Drones in Agriculture: 

How UAVs Make Farming More Efficient.” The 

Drive. 2018. 

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/18456/

drones-in-agriculture-how-uavs-makefarming-more-efficient

9. Molteni, Megan. “Wearables Reveal the Secret 

Lives of Farm Animals.” Wired. 2017. https://

www.wired.com/2017/06/wearables-revealsecret-lives-farm-animals

10. Ray, Brian. “An In-Depth Look At IoT In 

Agriculture & Smart Farming Solutions.” Link 

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A CASE FOR

11. Revich, Jerry; Koort, Robert; Archambault, 

Patrick; Samuelson, Adam; Nannizzi, Michael; 

Moawalla, Mohammed; Bonin, Andrew. 

“Profiles in Innovation: Precision Farming.” 

Goldman Sachs. 2016. 

https://docdrop.org/static/drop-pdf/GSR_

agriculture-N1sH6.pdf

12. “Robust New Technology Driving a New Future 

for Pork Production.” National Hog Farmer. 

2018. 

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buildings/robust-new-technology-drivingnew-future-pork-production

13. Sarni, Will; et al. “From Dirt to Data.” Deloitte 

Review (Issue 18). 2016. 

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en/deloitte-review/issue-18/second-greenrevolution-and-internet-of-things.html 

14. Schimmelpfennig, David. “Cost Savings From 

Precision Agriculture Technologies on U.S. 

Corn Farms,” Amber Waves, USDA. 2016. 

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may/cost-savings-from-precision-agriculturetechnologies-on-us-corn-farms

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17. Thomasson, Alex. “Identifying Obstacles to 

Applying Big Data in Agriculture Conference.” 

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Cows Without Any Humans Involved, and the 

Cows Seem Into It.” Business Insider. 2017. 

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19. Wilson, Philip; et al. “Deep Deployment of 

Fiber Optics is a National Imperative: The 

Success of 5G Wireless Will Hinge on Deep 

Fiber.” Deloitte Insights. 2018. 

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consulting/articles/communicationsinfrastructure-upgrade-deep-fiber-imperative.

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20. Wolfert, Sjaak; et al. “Big Data in Smart 

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21. West, Darrell M.; Karsten, Jack. “Rural and 

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