Arkansas producers value upload speed more than download speed for precision agriculture applications

While access to broadband services has increased in recent years, many agricultural producers remain without access or are served by an inadequate connection. As many precision agriculture applications rely on data transfer through broadband networks, the expansion of broadband into rural areas has become critical for farm modernization. This study recruited Arkansas agriculture producers to complete a choice experiment on their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a broadband connection. We examine factors influencing producers’ WTP for broadband upload and download speed using a conditional logit model. In the evaluation of WTP for broadband, producers were willing to pay on average $1.07 to $1.34 per Mbps (megabits per second) of upload speed, compared to $0.02 to $0.03 per Mbps of download speed. Producers also placed a premium on the reliability of the connection. These results suggest that producers value a symmetrical data flow for production operations to support precision agriculture applications.