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Rural America has lost over half a million farms in the past 40 years, increasing the need for connectivity to support the nation’s agriculture.
By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities
Connectivity is crucial for agricultural communities in the U.S., where almost nine in ten American farms rely on a secondary source of income, according to Andy Berke, the administrator of the Rural Utilities Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Berke, who delivered a keynote address Wednesday at the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston, said the need for high-speed internet is a common theme he heard when touring rural swaths of the country.
“When I was in Iowa, one of the things that people told me about living on the farm is, ‘if I want to live on the farm, my spouse wants to have a good job,'” he said.
Berke said he commonly heard that secondary sources of income, like a job held by the spouse of a farmer, help to support farms.
According to Berke, the need to connect rural America, especially the agricultural community, is pressing. He said that rural America has lost 557,000 farms since 1981.
Berke, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, said America succeeds in keeping its national security and economic security through its food sources.
“We want to ensure that rural communities thrive because farms support the diner, and the hardware store, and everything else that happens in rural America,” he said.
Berke, who previously served as the Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee from 2013 to 2021, said he has seen first-hand the impact connectivity can have on a community. Chattanooga, which became America’s first gigabit city in 2010, experienced “one of the best economic stories of the decade,” according to Berke.
He shared two stories, one of a rural island off the coast of Maine, and another from Oklahoma, where connectivity has been a game changer.
The island, known as Isle au Haut, has a total population of less than 100, and needed high-speed internet to support local businesses.
“They needed to take credit cards and they always had trouble making sure that they had the connection they needed to take credit cards,” he said. “Just getting high-speed internet was going to chance that piece.”
Another story shared by Berke revolved around an elderly woman from Pawnee, Oklahoma who began selling traditional garments on Etsy when her town became connected.
“This is what economic development looks like in 2024,” he said.
Berke shared the president’s message that the country’s massive investment in infrastructure is happening because it’s something that the country must do.
“This is critical to our country,” he said. “We are making a difference in a very fast manner and I’m so excited for what it’s going to do for our country.”
