Rural Americans are on the wrong side of the digital divide, with persistently lower rates of access to broadband service than their counterparts in metropolitan areas. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue discussed the gap during an Axios interview this week, saying, “One of the things we’re really focusing on at USDA for rural development is broadband.”
The USDA said that new procedures — it will no longer allow news agencies to see its crop forecasts early — will give everyone equal access to the market-moving reports when they are posted on the agency website each month. The new approach, replacing a “lockup” for reporters who transmitted stories at the same time the USDA released its data, will take effect with the Aug. 10 report, often described as the most important crop report of the year because it has the USDA’s first forecasts of the fall harvest.
“The new procedures will level the playing field and make the issuance of the reports fair to everyone involved,” said Perdue on July 10. The USDA said news agencies were distributing their stories to readers and financial customers faster than the 1 or 2 seconds it needs to post the data. “There is evidence to suggest that there is significant trading activity worth millions of dollars in the 1- to 2-second period,” it said.
When asked if poorer-quality internet service would be a barrier for rural Americans when it comes to learning USDA forecasts in a timely manner, an agency spokeswoman sent FERN a copy of the July 10 USDA announcement of its new procedures. News agencies said that an early look at the forecasts — they had been getting them 90 minutes ahead of public release, though the information was embargoed until the official release time — ensured the accurate and immediate dissemination of USDA data to the public.
“I see sort of the motivation that one way to access the report is the most fair, but some traders will have a speed advantage. … [T]here are guys who will make the investment to get a speed advantage however USDA releases its reports,” said Joseph Janzen, a Montana State University professor, in a DTN/Progressive Farmer interview. A 2016 report by the Congressional Research Service said high-frequency traders employ tactics that may have nothing to do with the data in a crop report but are an attempt to push markets in a moneymaking direction for them, according to DTN.
Only 58 percent of Americans in rural areas have broadband service at home, compared with 67 percent in cities and 70 percent in suburbs, according to a Pew Research Center poll early this year. A quarter of rural residents have no broadband or smartphone, double the rate for other Americans.
“One of our goals there is to make sure when we leave, we have a robust rural broadband network across the country,” Perdue told Axios.