Missouri farm makes hay with edge computing, private LTE

A family-owned farming operation in rural Missouri is about to get a major upgrade.

Thanks to the efforts of Trilogy Networks and its new Rural Cloud Initiative (RCI), the Hurst Greenery farm in Westboro, Missouri, is scheduled to become the nation’s first “farm of the future,” complete with edge computing-powered machine vision technologies running on a private wireless LTE network.

The effort is the first of what Trilogy executives hope will be several demonstrations of the types of technological solutions RCI participants can bring to rural areas.

The effort lines up with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s interest in precision agriculture, highlighted by his formation of the Precision Agriculture Task Force and his proposal to allocate up to $1 billion toward 5G in agricultural settings.

Thus, it’s likely no surprise that Blake Hurst, the owner of Hurst Greenery in Westboro, is also vice chair of one of the working groups within Pai’s Precision Agriculture Task Force. (Trilogy’s CEO George Woodward is in the same working group.)

“Automating energy, water and yield management with such transformative technologies are critical for family farms to protect future agriculture production,” Hurst said in a release issued by Trilogy Tuesday.

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