Current and proposed federal benchmarks may not be adequate to meet the needs of the rise of precision agriculture, according to a new white paper from the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA), “Fiber-Rich Farming: Broadband Requirements for Precision AG Today and Tomorrow.”
The FBA noted that farmers are increasingly reliant on advanced telecommunications. Like the rest of society, farmers need higher upstream capacity, lower latency, greater reliability, and scalable connectivity. However, the Farm Bill, which passed the House of Representatives in early May, could throttle speeds back to as low as 50/25 Mbps.
“Precision agriculture flips the traditional broadband model,” said FBA Vice President of Research & Workforce Development Deborah Kish in a press release. “Farms are generating massive amounts of data at the edge from technologies which require robust, reliable upstream capacity to turn that data into actional insights. Without the right infrastructure, we risk limiting innovation in one of the most critical sectors of our economy.”
A Q&A provided with the report speaks to why upload capacity is such an important issue and why current standards are inadequate:
Upload capacity is vital because core precision agriculture systems rely on global positioning system/global navigation satellite system (GPS/GNSS)-based auto-steer, variable rate technologies, in-ground sensors, livestock monitors, yield monitors, and telematics platforms.
These systems continuously generate and transmit data between field equipment, farm management software, and cloud platforms. They require low-latency, high-upstream, and highly reliable broadband connections to function without interruption.
Current standards are inadequate because precision ag inverts the consumer model to which we are accustomed. Farms generate data at the edge and must continuously upload it to cloud systems for analysis and decision support. Data sources include drone imagery, machine and field logs, sensor streams, weather station data, livestock wearable telemetry, bin and yard monitoring, and remote support video calls.
The Proposed Farm Bill provisions set eligibility thresholds as low as 50 Mbps upstream and 25 Mbps downstream, whereas the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program defines broadband as 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload.
The FBA argues that if programs require the slower speeds to qualify as broadband service, large portions of rural America will be misclassified as connected. This would reduce federal funding eligibility and disincentivize investment in scalable infrastructure as farming demands grow.