Farmers and Rural Advocates Outline Benefits of 21st Century Connectivity for Rural Life and Urgent Need to Close the Digital Divide

Last week, the Connect Everyone Coalition (CEC) hosted a webinar, “Connecting the 21st Century Farm: Revolutionizing Agriculture with LEO Broadband.” Leading voices in agriculture and rural advocacy explored how expanded broadband access, including innovative low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite technology, is not just transforming agriculture and farming, but also strengthening healthcare, emergency response, access to educational opportunities and other important aspects of rural life.

See what our panelists had to say:

Jacquelyne Leffler, owner of Leffler Prime Performance and fourth-generation farmer:

“I have friends in Western Kansas who could be an hour or two from their healthcare provider, and they’re using telehealth. They’re calling in, they’re making those appointments that way instead of physically going to the office. I know for me personally, our provider provides telehealth, and we’re able to ask questions, text questions in and for us, that’s saving us an hour round trip just on the road. And so, for me it’s just more accessibility and that’s really important.”

Joy Sterling, CEO of Iron Horse Vineyards and second-generation vineyard owner:

“Just looking at the situation in Los Angeles, connectivity during the fire was absolutely essential, and that’s where satellites are so critical because that can be deployed instantly. So, when you have major emergencies, for me, the beauty of LEOs is the redundancy… I think that it takes an entire ecosystem of technologies to do everything that we’re talking about today, but that’s a safety belt. In agriculture, we can’t afford to drop signals. If you’re planting, you can’t just stop. So having that as a safety belt, I think is really important.”

Jacquelyne Leffler:

“If you take a minute, talk to any educator in rural America that went through COVID and how to teach kids at their homes through computers. I know my sister was a teacher and taught math, higher-level math at the local high school. And she had to teach from home, and she literally was having to drive to go get connectivity to teach her class for the day. And you weren’t allowed to go in anywhere. She literally sat in her vehicle for 7 hours a day to teach kids … And to me that was really eye-opening to see that in my little community who I feel like we take extremely good care of each other, but their kids are literally sitting in an SUV or some of them were sitting on the sidewalk doing their homework so they could get internet. I mean, that’s where our rural communities are and it’s really sad.”

Matt Peterson, member of The National Grange and member of the Federal Communications Commission’s Accelerating Broadband Deployment on Unserved Agricultural Lands Working Group:

“I mean we’ve made huge strides so far, and connectivity – whether it’s … all the way from nothing to the telegraph, to telephone dial up internet, to now we’re talking about whatever it might be – 5G cell service and LEOs and fiber. We’ve made huge strides. We just need to keep pushing forward and pushing, pushing ourselves and pushing each other to make it better and more affordable to everyone and obtainable.”

See more highlights from the webinar HERE and watch the full webinar HERE.

Read more about revolutionizing agriculture with precision technology HERE and learn more about the Connect Everyone Coalition HERE.