Reports: As digital grocery market expands, questions of access, fairness, and affordability loom
The rapid rise of food delivery and online grocery shopping, particularly among SNAP recipients, is both transforming the food system and raising new questions about how to measure and improve access to food and food security, according to two new reports from the Brookings Institution.
USDA to spend up to $1.15 billion on rural broadband
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday that the USDA would spend up to $1.15 billion to bring high-speed internet services to people living in rural communities. The money would be available in loans and grants to providers who offer service with download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second in areas that lack high-speed internet.
Infrastructure framework has $65 billion for universal broadband
President Biden said the $1.2-trillion infrastructure package negotiated with senators on Wednesday will "deliver high-speed internet to every American home" as well as repairing or rebuilding roads and bridges nationwide.
House bill proposes more than $7 billion for rural broadband
Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee on Thursday proposed a three-year program with $7.35 billion in funding to bring broadband access to rural America. The bill would focus on the most remote and least served areas.
FCC establishes $20 billion fund for rural broadband
In what it described as its biggest step yet to close the digital divide, the Federal Communications Commission voted on Thursday to establish a “rural digital opportunity fund” to provide up to $20 billion over 10 years for high-speed internet networks in rural America.
Digital divide persists, though 53 percent of farms conduct business on internet
More than half of U.S. farm operators say they do business over the internet, a 13-point increase in six years, as ownership of computers and access to the internet blossomed, according to USDA. Nonetheless, the Pew Research Center says rural Americans are much less likely than their city counterparts to have a smartphone or broadband service at home.
Will the digital divide delay access to USDA data?
Rural Americans are on the wrong side of the digital divide, with persistently lower rates of access to broadband service than their metropolitan counterparts. 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.”
Rural internet to be high priority for Trump administration
President Trump will express support during a speech to the largest U.S. farm group today for a dramatic expansion of high-speed internet service in rural America. The strategy will be a springboard for economic growth for a segment of the population dogged by lower wages and higher poverty rates than the rest of the nation, said a White House adviser. The president also is expected to call for greater use of federal forests and fewer hurdles to agricultural biotechnology, two areas that may be lightning rods for controversy.
Coalition would use TV ‘white spaces’ to bring broadband to rural America
Software giant Microsoft is part of the Connect Americans Now coalition, which has “a plan to eliminate the digital divide by 2022” by persuading the FCC and other regulators to set aside low-band spectrum across the country to provide a broadband connection for everyone.
Internet is familiar tool for farmers, but not quite as common as in town
Farmers, especially big operators, may be slightly more wired into the internet than rural Americans overall, and the urban-rural digital divide is narrowing, says a USDA report that provides a comparison with other measurements of the United States online. Based on a biennial survey of farmers, the USDA said 71 percent of U.S. farms have internet access.