The Alabama farmer revolution: logging on and conducting business with satellite Internet
Back in the day, being an Alabama farmer was anything but complicated. Life was so simple back then preparing the soil, growing the crops and harvesting them when the time was right for sale. Whether goods were sold at the local farmer's market or boxed, packaged, sold and shipped all over the nation, the life of a farmer was always one of hard work and good business.
In the current era, however, things have changed. Where once business was conducted over letters, wired messages and telephone calls, now business is almost completely on the Internet, with satellite broadband and wireless technologies taking over. In twenty something years, the youth of today will be the ones running the country, utilizing modern technology as they always have been. Phone calls will be a thing of the past, since the future business leaders will have never grown up with them.
Luckily, the good-old Alabama farmer is keeping up with the current trends with the help of satellite Internet. Since every farm is located outside of an urban area, in sparsely populated rural zones, such city conveniences like digital cable Internet are not available. With little population in the farmer areas of the country, why would cable Internet companies invest in the expansion of their service areas for only a few hundred or thousand people? It does not make economical sense.
Well, thanks to the current improvements and popularity of satellite Internet, farmers and rural folk are staying connected and moving their businesses online, in some instances at faster speeds than in the cities.
Instead of relying on hard copy, written accounting books, farmers are upgrading to online accounting programs to keep everything in order. Instead of waiting for orders to be sent through the mail or by fax, orders can now be sent and received instantly online. And if for some reason an order messes up, farmers can use satellite Internet broadband to meet face to face (in a manner of speaking) with their clients over Skype, to explain possible discrepancies and correct problems. Yes sir, the farmer has transitioned to the online medium in the same manner as every other business in the world.
But, as the backbone of the American economy and the symbol of the hard-working man, many believe that this transition is a bad thing. Now, with farmers conducting their businesses online, the actual human touch has been lost. Since farming is such a personal and hard business, how could a transition to the digital world really keep all aspects of the business in tact?
Well, although the naysayers have a point, there opinions are completely unfounded. Satellite Internet has simply just leveled the playing field for the farmer and has enabled the small, organic farmer to have a better chance of competing with the giant, mass distributing corporations. The little guys should not be run out of business simply because Internet was not available in their areas. They should have just as fair of shot as anybody to grow and succeed, and thanks to modern advances in Internet technology, they have that chance.
