Computers: Rural America

Automatic electronic machines for performing word processing, designing and complex calculations. Computers have gained tremendously in popularity with farmers and ranchers since the machine’s introduction in the mid-1970s. Current applications include analyzing cash flow and production costs, enterprise analysis, tracking use of pesticides, gathering information, and communicating via e-mail. However, most farmers still rely on traditional methods for receiving information.

Introduction

More than 150 years ago, farmers and ranchers helped explore a geographic frontier as they settled the Great West. Today’s farmers, like their urban cousins, are experiencing an Information Age described by one observer as today’s frontier—the only place, besides space exploration, where we are not faced by limits (Donnelly, 1986). Computers and other electronic technologies have been driving this communication revolution.

The revolution started slowly, as computers were introduced in the mid-1970s, but picked up steam as we entered the mid-1990s. Early on, computers were seen merely as playthings for hobbyists. But the home market began to take off in the mid-l970s, thanks especially to Apple Computer. The co-founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, realized that millions of people would purchase personal computers if appropriate software programs were available. Home computers were first used for 1) playing with computing (in the hobbyist sense), 2) playing video games, and 3) word processing. Microcomputers were soon adopted in schools and offices.

Futurists and others predicted early on that every farm would have a computer to assist in record-keeping, decision-making and communicating with others in rural and urban areas via computer networks. Specific benefits cited by researchers and agricultural specialists include: enhanced decision-making performance based on ability to analyze large amounts of information; improved farm management from using accounting and bookkeeping applications; increased and more efficient operations through the ability to analyze and evaluate various production options; and more thorough and efficient market analysis (Davis and King, 1994).

In light of these benefits, many predicted that farmers would readily adopt and use computer technology. However, recent studies indicate that computer/ software adoption has been relatively modest. For example, Abbott and Yarbrough (1992) point out that the computer has been an evolving innovation, becoming cheaper and more powerful since it became widely available to farmers and ranchers in the early 1980s. It is now more user-friendly, has much more flexible and powerful software, and is capable of many more complex operations than were its earlier counterparts. Yet its rate of adoption by farmers and ranchers has been linear and very slow, rising at between 1 and 2 percent per year to a total of 15 percent by 1989. This slow rate of adoption occurred despite extensive media attention to microcomputers on the farm that peaked in 1984. If current rates of adoption continue, only about 35 percent of farmers will have a microcomputer by the year 2000. By 2005, more than half of current Iowa farmers will have reached retirement age, most without ever having adopted a computer.

Computers Come of Age

By 1992, the number of adopters of computers had risen to approximately 22 percent of farmers, although only 7 percent of farmers had a computer with a modem, an essential tool to send and receive electronic mail (Abbott, 1995). A study of Ohio farmers showed that over 44 percent of farmers used an office computer for their farm business by 2003 (Batte, 2003). Nationwide, however, 68 percent of large farms (those with sales over $100,000) were using personal computers (NASS, 1999).

As a group, farmers who have adopted computers are very different from other farmers. The following factors are consistently associated with greater adoption of computers: higher income, higher education, ages 35 to 44, use of sophisticated management practices, and greater leverage (more acres rented). Thus, computer adopters became an elite group, and the gap in ownership of a microcomputer between the “haves” and the “have-nots” widened for both the general population and farmers. Abbott (1995) believes the gap will continue to grow as people from land-grant universities and others interested in communicating with farmers find themselves spending more and more time communicating with those who share their technologies (e.g., Internet, e-mail, and fax), and less with their intended audiences.

Abbott and Yarbrough (1993) believe the increasing gap in access to and the use of computers is due to two major factors: scale of farming operation and skills farmers possess that enable them to envision what these technologies might do that could be useful to them.

Although many farmers can improve decisionmaking and management practices by use of a computer, the communication researchers predict that larger farmers will benefit more from each hour they invest in learning how to use a computer for these purposes. The researchers’ data suggest farmers may need to approach the $200,000 annual farm sales level before they find computers to be truly advantageous to them.

Although adoption of computers by farmers and ranchers continues at a slow but steady pace, a large number of computer users are unfamiliar with any type of agricultural software or have never heard of such software applications. Davis and King (1994) point out that many farmers used general application software, like Lotus 1-2-3 or DBASE, instead of specifically tailored agricultural products. Most farmers were satisfied early on with computer software available for agricultural purposes. However, this was before integrated and linked packages became readily available and most available software was single-purpose. Farmers and ranchers became dissatisfied with the agricultural software programs available in the mid-1990s as they saw and experienced the newly developed integrated and multitasking software.

AGNET—An Early Application

One of the earliest computer systems to communicate information to farmers and ranchers was AGNET, an agricultural computer network that began at the University of Nebraska in 1975. Initial use was to respond to growing requests from former students to use interactive computer models developed at the University to teach agricultural economics and agricultural engineering. The first non-University user signed on in 1976. More followed, and by the mid-1980s AGNET had evolved into a totally self-supporting network where public and private sectors worked together to provide management models and time-sensitive information to decision makers. Over 3,000 clients in 27 states, Canada, and other foreign countries paid the entire costs of the network operation, including actual computer and communications resources used, staff salaries, program and system development and maintenance, publication of materials, and rent for office space. At its peak, AGNET offered more than 225 programs in three categories (problem-solving, marketing information delivery, and conferencing through e-mail) and had six major land-grant universities participating as partners (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming, in addition to Nebraska). Partner status allowed states to modify existing programs and place new programs on the system. Farmers, ranchers, agribusinesses and other users could access the programs through their County Extension office or on their own computer terminals. As commercial software applications became readily available, AGNET began to lose users and ceased operation in the late 1980s.

Today, farmers use computers for a wide variety of applications, including analyzing cash flow and production costs, comparing profitability of crop and livestock production enterprises, and tracking the efficiency of pesticides, fertilizers and irrigation. A national study showed that 68 percent of large farms (those with sales over $100,000) used a personal computer to keep financial records and 39 pecent used the computer for production planning. The use of a computer for communications (e.g., Internet, e-mail and fax) was used by 38 percent of the farmers (Gloy and Akridge, 2000). Thus, as a communication device, computers are used for e-mailing messages to and from rural and urban residents around the world. Computers are also used to tap vast libraries of information on text-based “Gophers” and on the World Wide Web produced by the USDA, land-grant universities, agribusiness companies, commodity exchanges, and even farm magazines like Successful Farming.

New uses for the computer are just beginning to grow as technologies progress. For example, computerized digital image analysis may be used to identify weeds in crops (Hemming and Rath, 2001), which would allow for computerized robotic field equipment to spray or till the weeds. Commodity inspection and grading is being done through on-farm computer technology (Brosnan and Sun, 2002). Entire research journals (e.g., Computers and Electronics in Agriculture) are now devoted to examining the potential of computer technology in agriculture.

Traditional Methods Still Popular

Despite the adoption of computers by an increasing number of farmers and ranchers in rural America, most of the information they receive today still comes to them through the traditional methods they have used for many years. Most studies show that farm magazines and radio continue to rank as primary sources of information for most farmers and ranchers on a daily basis, ranking well ahead of computers and other new electronic delivery systems. Looking to the future, it is likely that traditional farm magazines and other print media will continue to be a major source of information for farmers and ranchers for many years to come. But some publications already are making their issues available to readers via computer, and the day may come when the print version of some publications, will be only a memory. Instead, readers in both rural and urban America will turn on their computers and access the current issue, back issues, useful articles that never made it into print, and feedback on all of the above.

— Gary L. Vacin

See also Policy, Telecommunications; Technology; Technology Transfer; Telecommunications

References

• Abbott, Eric A. “The New Technology Dilemma.” ACE (Agricultural Communications in Education) (March, 1995): 3. 
• Abbott, Eric A. and J. Paul Yarbrough. “Inequalities in the Information Age: Farmers’ Differential Adoption and Use of Four Information Technologies.” Agriculture and Human Values, 9 (1992) 67-79. 
• Abbott, Eric A. and J. Paul Yarbrough. “The Unequal Impacts of Microcomputer Adoption and Use on Farms.” Paper presented at International Conference on Information Technology and People, ITAP ’93, May 24-28, 1993, Moscow, Russia. 
• AGNET—The First Decade. Report prepared by AGNET. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska, 1984. 
• Batte, Marvin T. “Computers on Ohio Farms: How Used and How Useful?” Report Series: AEDE-RP-0040-03. Columbus, OH: Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics, Ohio State University, 2003. Available online at: http://aede.osu.edu/programs/VanBuren/pdf/AEDE-RP-0040-03.pdf. 
• Brosnan, Tadhg and Da-Wen Sun. “Inspection and Grading of Agricultural and Food Products by Computer Vision Systems: A Review.” Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 36, nos. 2-3 (November 2002): 193-213. 
• Davis, Sid and James King. “An Assessment of Microcomputer Software in the Farm Sector: Is It Meeting Users’ Expectations?” Journal of Agricultural and Food Information 2, no. 2 (1994): 81-106. 
• Dillman, Don A. “The Social Impacts of Information Technologies in Rural North America.” Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, 1985. 
• Donnelly, William J. The Confetti Generation. New York, NY: Holt Publishing Co.,1986. 
• Dutton, William H., Everett M. Rogers, and Suk-Ho Jun. “Diffusion and Social Impacts of Personal Computers.” Communication Research 14, no. 2 (1987): 219-250. 
• Gloy, Brent A. and Jay T. Akridge. “Computer and Internet Adoption on Large U.S. Farms.” International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 3 (2000): 323–338. 
• Hemming, J. and T. Rath. “PA—Precision Agriculture Computer-Vision-based Weed Identification under Field Conditions using Controlled Lighting.” Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research 78, no. 3 (March 2001): 233-243. 
• Kramer, R.C. “The Future of Computers in American Agriculture.” AG Comp Bulletin 2, no. 2 (1981): 42-52. 
• National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Farm Computer Usage and Ownership. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 1999. 
• Vincent, Gary. “All Ahead Slow! Ag Computerization Steams On.” Successful Farming 44 (March 1987): 18-AR-18AS.