Sixty-five percent of Wisconsin farms own or use a desktop or laptop computer. That’s 2 percentage points lower than the U.S. percentage, according to the latest USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service Farm Computer Usage and Ownership report.
Farms using smart phones for their farm business was 67 percent, 10 percentage points lower than the national percentage.
Eighty-two percent of Wisconsin farms have internet access, unchanged from 2019 and equal to the U.S. percentage.
The most common methods of accessing the internet were cellular, broadband (DSL, cable, fiber optic), and satellite connections. Cellular was used to access internet by 62 percent of Wisconsin farms. Fifty-four percent of farms used broadband to access internet in Wisconsin. Satellite was used by 16 percent of farms.
Beginning in 2021, data were collected for precision agriculture practices with the question: “In the last 12 months, did this farm or ranch use precision agriculture practices to manage crops or livestock?”
This would include the use of GPS guidance systems, GPS yield monitoring and soil mapping, variable rate input applications, use of drones for scouting fields or monitoring livestock, electronic tagging, precision feeding, robotic milking, etc.
In Wisconsin, 15 percent of farms use precision ag compared to 25 percent of farms nationally.
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