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Farm Bill hearing frustration on broadband expansion
The ranking member of the House Ag Committee says Washington bureaucracy is disrupting the deployment of rural broadband to farmers and ranchers.
Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania says bipartisan legislation has stalled in the House and what was passed in the infrastructure bill isn’t enough. “Two billion dollars to USDA, with inflationary costs the way they are, that’s not going to go very far. We need to bridge the digital divide in rural America.”
He says broadband is a necessity for producers. “If we would’ve taken the same disjointed approach back in the 1930s to electricity, I think some of our communities and probably the community that I live in, would still be in the dark.”
USDA’S Undersecretary for Rural Development Xochitl Torres Small says the agency continues to provide loans and grants to expand service in underserved areas. “Our ReConnect round 3 is targeted at reaching places that no one has dared to go before,” she says. “It’s going to take ingenuity. It’s going to take working with new communities.”
Thompson and Torres Small made their comments during House Ag Subcommittee hearing on Tuesday for a Review of the Farm Bill for Rural Development.
