Source: Tim Johnson, MCCLATCHY DC, 4/10/19


Hundreds of thousands of American farmers wrestle with balky — or nonexistent — internet connections, the exasperating modern-day equivalent of the stubborn mule that wouldn’t pull a plow. Farmers who lack rural connectivity increasingly lag in a tech revolution that offers robots, drones, sensors and self-driving tractors to farms lucky enough to have robust broadband. It is a rural digital divide on America’s farms that threatens to grow wider. Some farmers scrap for whatever limited connectivity they can pull together. That is the case at Valley Wide Farm, a small dairy operation in Pennsylvania’s Centre County where Adam and Bethany Coursen deploy a milking robot.

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