California County Tries to Roll Out Wireless Broadband to Farms

Though connecting all rural areas with broadband is a national priority, why would anyone get fired up about blanketing California’s Fresno County with wireless broadband?

For Fresno CIO Carolyn Hogg, the answer has to do with olive trees as wireless subscribers, tracking tomatoes from vine to dinner plate, self-driving tractors, and agricultural research and education that could boost the state’s economy and help feed the world. Hogg, along with a coalition of federal, state, private-sector and local interests, are working to secure high-speed wireless broadband to take the region’s agriculture to the next level. Although farmers have grown food and fodder for thousands of years without wireless broadband, times have changed. The world’s population is expected to grow from 7 billion today to 9.3 billion in 2050, according to Robert Tse, a community planning and development specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). But the Earth has only 12 percent more arable land available for crop production. And, as millions of people in Asia enter the middle class, diet staples like rice are being replaced with fruits, vegetables and meat.