# Digital Agriculture Infrastructure in the USA and Germany +
## 3 Digital Agriculture Infrastructure
### Germany  
Citizens in Germany and Europe are increasingly demanding information on the product and process quality of their food. Smart farming is one way to satisfy these demands [3]. Data exchange is necessary for this. In Germany, the data rate between the farm and the Internet cloud is strongly influenced by the transmission technology. Germany is relatively densely populated and therefore has a historically good network infrastructure based on copper cables. In the meantime, however, significant problems can be observed with the upgrade to fiber-optic networks. The expansion rate is only 4.7% and is mostly limited to the conurbations [4]. In rural areas, the network infrastructure is therefore only weakly developed. The data rate for downloads in landline networks at the district level is relatively low, especially in rural areas. The median for the worst-served areas is 15.5 Mbps. Most rural areas are in the 35-55 Mbps range, but with sometimes large differences between providers. The available data download in the landline network is less than 15 Mbps for 20% of all users; in 50% of all users less, than 50 Mbps; and in 20% of all users, more than 100 Mbps [5].  
For the second area, field-to-farm data exchange, the quality of the mobile data networks is crucial. Although the 4G network is fairly widespread, there are still gaps in rural and sparsely populated northeastern Germany. The 5G network is mostly only developed in densely populated regions and along long-distance routes. There are still large gaps in rural regions [6]. Due to this structure, download rates between only 6.8-8 Mbps are possible in some districts. The majority of agricultural districts have a download rate of 8-18 Mbps. In large cities, on the other hand, 82 Mbps is possible. If one analyzes one level deeper and looks at agricultural areas and villages separately, data availability drops even further. Here, if a network is available at all, download rates of only 3 Mbps are usually possible. The available data download in the mobile network is less than 3.8 Mbps for 20% of all users, less than 14.3 Mbps for 50% of all users, and greater than 44.1 Mbps for 20% of all users. Since many smart farming applications in the field also require data to be uploaded to the cloud, the upload data rate is also important. The available data upload in the mobile network is less than 0.9 Mbps for 20% of all users, less than 4.4 Mbps for 50% of all users, and greater than 14.8 Mbps for 20% of all users.  
The analysis of the transmission technology favored in Germany shows that it is mostly oriented towards consumer applications in large cities and along long-distance traffic routes. In contrast, rural areas and fields still face selective availability of even 3G connectivity. However, the requirements of agriculture are more diverse. On the one hand, some mobile machinery requires a remote broadband connection from time to time. On the other hand, local wireless sensor networks prefer long functional life, low energy consumption, and transmission ranges typically closely related to the geographic extension of a farm, that can be provided by a local LPWAN gateway.