Access to the Internet through broadband technologies has become a widely available, but not uniformly over space. Spatially-dispersed economic actors have lower Internet penetration rates, either out of choice or lack of local availability. We use data from the 2009 June Agricultural Survey,...

Farm business Internet access as well as its use has become more prevalent, but use is neither universal nor uniform. Our analysis shows that approximately 56 percent of farms had Internet access in 2004. Sixty-nine percent of sole proprietorship non-farm businesses in the same year had Internet...

As broadband—or high-speed—Internet use has spread, Internet applications requiring high transmission speeds have become an integral part of the “Information Economy,” raising concerns about those who lack broadband access. This report analyzes (1) rural broadband use by consumers, the...

Rural communities have had less Internet service accessibility than their urban counterparts and, as a consequence, have been perceived as disadvantaged. Federal government policy makers have recognized the shortfall in service provision with its perceived disadvantage and have been trying to...

The retiring farmer generally tries to balance the desire to keep the farm intact as a going concern with the need for a secure assets portfolio to finance retirement. This problem becomes more complex in situations where younger family members choose not to be active in the farm business....