The new coffee shop

Here is an interesting AP story about the rising use of the Internet by farmers.

Fifty-one percent of U.S. farms have Internet access, according to a July 2005 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture , up from 48 percent in 2003. More than two-thirds of them, however, still use dial-up modems to connect.


TK: It's painful to think how badly various companies missed in anticipating the migration of farmers to the Web. My first job out of college was at Harris Electronic News, which aimed to convince farmers in central Kansas, circa 1982, to dial up a database to receive grain prices and commodity analysis. We were slightly ahead of our time. Even today, a slim majority have Web access and two thirds of those have to use dial-up. But it is getting better. Now my folks in south central Nebraska have high-speed Web access. Hey folks!