Farm Adoption of Computer Technology

Abstract

Overall computer ownership has been increasing among American farmers since 1997, however, it still remains well below US computer ownership as a whole. The general consensus is that more educated, younger farmers and those with bigger farms are more likely to adopt computers than other producers. Previous research has primarily focused on farm-level adoption in a specific state or region and thus have not looked at broader diffusion patterns. I use USDA and CPI data to model agricultural computer diffusion at the state level and analyze broader temporal and regional adoption trends. I use a two-way fixed effects model to look at overall diffusion trends, then decompose the effect of key variables in each year to compare across adoption groups. Similar to previous literature, I find that both farm size and share of dairy farms are positively associated with computer adoption, as well as internet access.