The Farmers’ Union of Wales is sponsoring the free WIFI at the Royal Welsh Winter Fair, held in Builth Wells on Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 November, in order to highlight the importance of digital inclusion across Wales.
“We still have over 15 percent of our population digitally excluded and even those that are connected still suffer poor performance in terms of speed and reliability. There are urban networks delivering speeds of up to 200MBps - way in excess of the 10 Mbps seen in some rural areas,” said FUW Managing Director Alan Davies.
“2 percent of our population produce around 60 percent of our food. Yet there is a significant part of that 2 percent who remain unable to connect to the internet from their farms. To highlight this problem the FUW is proud to be the official sponsor of the free Wifi available at the Royal Welsh Winter Fair,” added Mr Davies.
The FUW has stressed on many occasions that those without a connection cannot diversify their businesses, that they cannot support children with homework as many need to do and that they cannot connect readily with Government programmes for advice and support payments as they are mandated to do.
Mr Davies further said: “In simple terms our rural areas are still being left behind and the gap continues to widen. But over and above all that, they cannot benefit from the wider impact of digital technology that is racing through many parts of the world. If you are not familiar with the digital world you will find it far harder to adopt new and innovative practices that could transform businesses.”
The FUW acknowledges that much progress has been made over the years to include more and more people in the digital world in Wales but there is still more to be done; particularly to reach the most remote groups, those families that are farming our land to produce the food we eat and care for our natural habitat and landscapes, who can often be found in the most rural areas of Wales.
“We must not underestimate how important it is that we get every part of Wales connected and exploiting digital technologies in order to ensure that we can help make farming and rural businesses more effective and efficient through that connectivity and help more people to a brighter digital future,” added Mr Davies.