Can Your Hear Me Cow? Wi-Fi Hot Spot Could Improve Cattle Management in Rural Georgia

MORGAN, Ga. - Rural southwest Georgia, one of the state's most technologically challenged areas, will soon be home to a 100-square-mile wireless hot spot.

Besides bringing wireless Internet to hundreds of rural homes, planners want to provide farmers with high-tech tools that could help them use less irrigation water and boost farm profits through more efficient crop and livestock management.

"I would greatly compare this to the transition from horses to tractors," said John Mascoe, chief executive officer of a Wilkinson, Ind., firm that will bring Wi-Fi to the area where cell phone service is still unreliable in some areas and most homes are too remote for high-speed DSL service.

Farmers have said they'd have to balance the savings they might achieve with the cost of the service and equipment.

"I'm excited about it," said Tony Smith, an Arlington cattleman. "I think it's something we need to use."

Smith said Wi-Fi could provide an efficient way to keep track of cattle by monitoring their electronic ID tags.

Mike Newberry, another Arlington farmer, said he was familiar with the technology, but cost could be a limiting factor.

Partners in the Morgan Wi-Fi project include the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, southwest Georgia's Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District, an NRCS farm advisory group, and The Nature Conservancy.

Organizers have received $160,000 from the conservation district, $10,000 from The Nature Conservancy and they hope to raise additional money. With a suggested signup fee of $3 to $5 per acre for farmers, a grower with 1,200 acres of crops would pay a minimum of $3,600 a year for the service.

Mascoe and Graham Ginn, the conservation district's project director, told the farmers how they could monitor irrigation systems using GPS, sensors and wireless cameras. They showed the farmers sensors that monitor the soil moisture, soil temperatures and rainfall in fields and transmit the information to a Web page they could access for instant updates.

"We have to educate the growers on how to use the technology and validate the economic benefits," Mascoe said. "They don't have a problem spending $200,000 on a piece of equipment. They know what it'll do. The technology industry has not done a very good job validating the economic value in agriculture."

Ginn and Mascoe hope to have the system up and running by April. Within a few years, they plan to extend it to other counties in the Flint River Basin.

"We want to bring high speed internet to schools and rural communities," Ginn said.

He said they picked the Morgan area for the pilot program because it is rural and would benefit from the technology.

"If we can make it work here, we can make it work anywhere," Ginn said.

Story by Elliott Minor, Associated Press for the Macon Telegraph.