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How the infrastructure bill will enable more sustainable farming

The new infrastructure bill doesn't directly address sustainable farming but funding for increased internet access, EV charging ports and water infrastructure will help farmers make moves in this direction. Read More

(Updated on September 16, 2024)

More reliable internet will help farmers digitize their operations and hopefully make more sustainable changes. 

Earlier this year, my colleague Jim Giles wrote about the importance of viewing soil as infrastructure. So when the Senate passed its $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act last week, I was curious to see if this monumental bill shared Jim’s view. 

Unfortunately not is the short answer. The bill is using an old-school definition of infrastructure that doesn’t include agriculture. 

Nonetheless, a few components of the bipartisan bill, by far the largest infrastructure package in decades, support sustainable agriculture. The expansion of rural broadband is the most notable improvement for American farmers. Although more indirectly, investments in transportation, water and wildfire risk reduction will also benefit them. So what do these investments look like? 

Broadband will finally be a reality for rural America

According to the White House, “more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds.” This is especially true for rural communities. The infrastructure bill aims to change this for good by investing $65 billion in new broadband, narrowing the digital divide. 

Reliable high-speed internet will be meaningful for farming communities in several ways. On the most basic level, it will make them citizens of the 21st century, allowing many to do seemingly simple things such as ordering farm inputs online, digitizing business transactions or granting their kids access to online school. Eric Deeble, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, sees the broadband investment as equivalent to rolling out electricity across the country in the 1920s and ’30s. 

This won’t only make farmers more efficient entrepreneurs, it might also make rural life more attractive to a larger variety of operators and workers which the sector desperately needs. In addition, better internet access will grant farmers more educational opportunities and allow for a new era of technical assistance and peer learning (especially on the sustainability side) that can extend far beyond their local coffee shops. 

Big data unlock more sustainable farming practices

Beyond this basic support, internet access will enable farmers to make significant strides in terms of growing efficiency and productivity. This will be essential for the sector to make good on its net-zero commitments, serving as a climate solution for the country. Precision agriculture tools measure how fertilizer and pesticide application, the use of cover crops, or irrigation schedules affect yields or soil health. Such tools can already bring about improvements when used individually on farms. But when these measurements can be aggregated in shared data platforms, collectively analyzed and returned to the farmers in the form of custom growing recommendations, they can catalyze an entirely new level of innovation. 

Steele Lorenz, head of sustainable business at Farmers Business Network, a company using data science and machine learning for farmer-to-farmer agronomic information, is excited about this new opportunity: “Farm analytics become much more informative when you have a collective body of information shared between all members for the collective good. Then the power of data can be put back in the hands of farmers to be better stewards of their land.” 

 

But he also acknowledges that improved broadband itself won’t suffice to enable this change. Additional investment in data collection and research is necessary to pave the way for smarter agriculture and, crucially, for farmers to get rewarded for their environmental stewardship via conservation programs or carbon markets. 

When these new technologies get rolled out and adopted, it will be key to keep a close eye on data transparency and ownership. While not questioning the overwhelming benefits of the broadband investments, Deeble notes that “there is a real risk for farmers losing control of the data they generate through proprietary software and equipment.” He fears that farmers might face increased pressure to collect data and hand them over to input and machinery companies, leading to further agricultural consolidation by the large agriculture and food companies rather than empowered growers. 

Other relevant components of the bill

Better connectivity is not the only improvement farmers will experience as a result of the bill. The Senate also authorized $110 billion of new funds for roads, bridges and other major transportation projects which will help farmers to continue moving their products around the country. Importantly, they might be able to do so more sustainably in electric vehicles as $7.5 billion will be used to build out the first national network of EV chargers in the country, with a particular focus on rural, disadvantaged and hard-to-reach communities. Water infrastructure is another important concern for farmers to which a $50 billion investment aims to bring increased protection against droughts, floods, wildfires and weatherization. Lastly, $3.3 billion for wildfire risk reduction may lessen farm exposure to this worsening threat. 

Despite these important provisions, farmers are disappointed about the limited scope of the bill. They continue to wait for the administration to recognize the important contribution farmers can make to the future of the country by decarbonizing their operations and storing carbon in the ground while providing Americans with food, fiber and fuel. Groups have their eyes set on the Reconciliation Bill, which is expected to out-shadow infrastructure investments, hopefully with more holistic support for the industry. 

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