Farmer internet survey looks at current, and potential, usage

James Cook University Townsville PhD student William Harrington hopes to find out how farmers use the internet and technology in their day-to-day lives.

Mr Harrington, who also runs a cattle property, said he had a history in agtech and wanted to find out more about internet usage.

He said he realised that one of the biggest issues, when running his business, was poor connectivity.

"I'm an external student, which allows me to stay on the cattle station - I've always been interested in the internet as I have a history in agtech," he said.

"In a previous business we developed one of the first water monitoring cameras and we found we were held back by poor internet connectivity."

Once the business was sold he said he had more time to find out how farmers were using the internet.

'We can then provide data to governments to say connectivity isn't good enough, for these reasons, and you need to do something about it," he said.

Part of the survey aimed to discover what technologies farmers wanted to use, but couldn't.

"Is that holding back development of the regions, is it going to cause issues with food security into the future?," he said.

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Mr Harrington said it was a short, and easy, survey to complete.

"The more people we get the better the data will be."

He said it would be interesting to see whether the internet was meeting farmers' needs or not.

"Are there things they would love to do on the internet that they are not able to do?," he said.

Mr Harrington said the government had recognised connectivity was a problem in regional areas, with investment through programs like the Regional Connectivity Program.

"But, even then its still very difficult because farmers mostly live outside towns," he said.

"Hopefully by demonstrating how important connectivity is to farmers then they will at least understand they need to keep at it.

"Hopefully he people who have poor connectivity will be able to complete the survey - that is one challenge we hope to find the answers to.

"It's a bit of catch-22, that one."

Mr Harrington also runs Wi-Sky, a broadband provider offering local internet networks.

The survey closes at the end of April and a link can be found at: http://bit.ly/3yeIrTB

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