At the recent Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s (PFB) State Legislative Conference in Harrisburg, PFB and approximately 300 farmers urged members of the state General Assembly to support commonwealth efforts to expand and improve access to high-speed broadband in rural Pennsylvania.
PFB officially announced its support for legislation establishing a special legislative commission to recommend strategies for expanding broadband to unserved and underserved areas of Pennsylvania. It would also allow for the examination of whether state-owned assets could be leveraged in an attempt to help expand broadband access.
“Rural Pennsylvanians, including farmers and other business owners, are falling further behind those who live in more urban and suburban areas of the Commonwealth,” PFB President Rick Ebert said. “Many of our farm families can’t take advantage of online banking, tax software and other technology that would greatly benefit their businesses, simply because they lack adequate rural broadband or fiber-optic services. Our farmers are small business owners and the technology they use for many facets of their businesses is run through high-speed internet.”
Rep. Martin Causer (R-Cameron/McKean/Potter), chairman of the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, has been a long proponent of legislative efforts to improve rural broadband access.
“For rural communities to grow and thrive, broadband access is a necessity. We need it to help our students and teachers, our farmers and business owners, and our doctors and patients,” Causer said. “It is encouraging to see the importance of broadband access finally being widely recognized at both the state and federal levels, and I commend the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau for its role raising awareness and calling for solutions. I am optimistic we will be able to overcome the challenges and finally bring this vital infrastructure to rural Pennsylvania.”
During the conference, farmer Corey Grove said the lack of internet access adds unnecessary challenges to his management of his poultry barn in southern York County.
“I would be able to operate my hen laying barn much more efficiently with access to high-speed internet. Simply by using an app on my telephone, I could check on conditions inside the barn to ensure that the chickens are comfortable and continually have easy access to food and water,” Grove said. “In addition, high-speed broadband would allow me to use an app to correct a variety of problems that could arise at the barn, even if I’m doing crop work out in the field or am located a hundred miles away.”
PFB is the state’s largest farm organization with more than 62,000 member families, representing farms of all sizes and commodities across the commonwealth.