- Some farms in Washington are piloting 5G-enabled agritech as food insecurity is forecast to rise.
- Federal cash for the Food Resiliency Project dried up, but the state and partners have growth plans.
Thirty miles north of Seattle, the urban landscape thins out into agricultural lowlands.
There lies Swans Trail Farms, a family-owned operation that focuses on agritourism and events with apple orchards, a corn maze, a pumpkin patch, and strawberry fields. But Swans Trail is not your typical farm. Since 2021, the farm has been equipped with 5G through the Food Resiliency Project.
"When they approached me and said, 'Hey, do you want to do this?' my first initial reaction was, 'What the heck are you talking about?'" Nate Krause, the owner of Swans Trail, said.
The Food Resiliency Project is a coordinated effort between the 5G Open Innovation Lab, Snohomish County in Washington, and other partners, including Innov8.ag, Washington State University, and T-Mobile. Initially funded by the CARES Act earlier in the pandemic, the project is part of a push to incorporate 5G into agriculture.
"All of it comes back to food security," Linda Neunzig, Snohomish County's agriculture coordinator, said. "COVID has taught us that, and we're still not in the clear. We still have grocery store shelves that don't have food, and we're watching food prices escalate."
Amid the pandemic, one in seven people in the US has experienced food insecurity, according to estimates from Feeding America. Along with inflation, supply-chain issues, and global instability, 222 million people worldwide are estimated to face acute food insecurity, according to an analysis of recent data from the World Food Programme. These are the short-term issues. By 2050, the global population is forecast to climb to over 9.7 billion. Meanwhile, agricultural land is degrading. By 2050, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the planet will need 70% more food than it did in 2009.
The agriculture industry has been slower to adopt technological advancements, largely because of limited connectivity in rural areas. (More than 22% of Americans living in rural areas lack broadband coverage, according to the Federal Communications Commission.)
By setting up 5G networks in agricultural areas and combining that with other technologies, farmers could conserve resources like water and fertilizer by receiving pinpointed data, save time through automating tasks, and better monitor their crops.
Snohomish County and the 5G Open Innovation Lab launched sites to pilot 5G-enabled agricultural tech on two farms— Swans Trail and Andrew's Hay. The lab, in partnership with Innov8.ag, installed a private network on each farm that was able to handle large amounts of data. They put in soil sensors to determine the nutrients in the ground and weather stations that tracked microclimates. They automated the technology and linked it to the farmers' cellphones, saving them time on tasks like turning on irrigation systems, putting up sun shades to shield the crops, and spraying chemicals.
"The traditional way of doing farming is one thing," Krause said. "Being open-minded for new ways and applying tech into agriculture is the future of farming."
For Krause at Swans Trail, where the data center is in the farm's 100-year-old cow-milking barn, the technological advancements have saved him time and money.
The new system is 600 times as fast as the low-bandwidth hot spots the farm operated previously. The soil sensors help him understand where he should apply more or less fertilizer, and he spends 25 to 30% less on chemicals. With water sensors installed on each block of trees in his orchard, he discovered he'd wasted water for years by overirrigating, so he cut back by 75% on water. Innov8.ag did a digital mapping of the farm's blossom and apple count so Krause can accurately predict his harvest.
According to the FCC, the use of 5G or other mobile-broadband services enabling the use of technology like smart crop monitoring, drone farming, autonomous farming machinery, and smart building management could unlock $100 billion globally for the agriculture industry.
CARES Act funding for the initiative dried up last year, but the 5G Open Innovation Lab continues to fund the project. And plans to grow are in the works.
Snohomish County applied for a grant that would put more soil sensors and weather stations on other farms around the county. The 5G Open Innovation Lab and Innov8.ag are working to expand to eastern Washington, an area of the state that's more agricultural.
"We've learned a lot. We've had our hiccups," Jim Brisimitzis, the head of the 5G Open Innovation Lab, said. "We want to take those learnings and figure out how we help the next hundred growers or the next thousand growers."
Krause predicts that technology in agriculture is going to rapidly advance within the next few years.
"You're more precise. You're saving on resources. You're saving money," Krause said. "So just being able to have that advantage that technology gives you is huge."