COUNTRY CORNER
Steve Fairchild, editor

Summon your inner geek; buck up for a broadband connection

Geeks. Time was when the term was mean but understandable. It meant polyester shorts in gym class. It meant plastic-framed glasses with a bit of tape on the bridge, and it described that kid who knew more than you did in computer class. But that’s to exclude the bulk of you isn’t it? Computer class didn’t come around until about three body styles ago on your favorite pickup truck. And if demographic statistics about farmers are worth anything, I assume you are too old to have kept up with what the mean kids were saying on the bus in 1991.

So, if you’re unfamiliar with the term, you should know that until recently it was derisive slang that described a soul more concerned with technology than the rest of life. In modern parlance, geek has transmogrified. It has crept away from being abusive. In fact, being a geek is vogue these days. Geekdom has come to represent those who have mastered computers and technology to bend machines to their most efficient use in business and personal life. Geeks are hot. They’re capitalizing a huge chunk of American commerce. And if you haven’t noticed, like every other business, agriculture needs geeks.

We need geeks not just because they can make the GPS receiver and the light bar work, but because technology represents a competitive advantage American farmers can wield against the leveling field of world agriculture. We need geeks to master communications that allow direct sales to specialty markets. We need geeks to achieve the next level of precision farming. We need geeks to make the old PC run Vista…well…maybe that’s taking it a bit too far.

Yet U.S. agriculture is at a disadvantage in breeding geeks. America’s rural youth—our geek farm—don’t have enough access to broadband Internet connections. Neither do you.

I know that many of you wonder what that’s got to do with anything. You remember the promise of CyberCrop.com, the Internet Bubble site that would change the way you sold grain. You remember Rooster.com, a bubble start-up of ill definition that promised to change, well, something. For nostalgia’s sake, I dug up some ancient press releases that told of the wonders these Web sites would bring (An ag revolution!). Those promises didn’t pan out. They went the way of so much 1990s high-tech venture capital. But, as I studied them, I began to wonder if their demise was due purely to irrational exuberance. Perhaps their lackluster was due to a rural geek culture aborted by the excruciatingly slow data transfer of dial-up. Maybe broadband would have made a difference.

One thing is sure—the Internet has changed since the 1990s. Today, things you need from USDA or FSA are online. So are the latest agronomic tips. Ditto news about Asian rust or animal diseases. You can easily download herbicide labels or manuals for equipment. And today there are proven ways to watch and access real-time markets. Yet none of these things helps you if you can’t connect to them and download information in a reasonable amount of time. You need to enter geekdom to be efficient, but you can’t do it in slow motion. I recently told a townie friend of mine that if he didn’t have a cable or DSL connection, he wasn’t truly using the Internet. He has since signed up for high-speed access and told me I was right. You’ll find the same to be true. If you’re close enough to town to hitch onto DSL or cable, give it a try. If not, check out what the local telephone company or electric cooperative has to offer by way of line-of-sight wireless or satellite. Your inner geek will thank you, and so will your music-downloading, game-playing, certified-geek kids.

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