Australian farmers’ low levels of digital inclusion – findings from the Australian Digital Inclusion Index

Australia is a very large continent, with the majority of its population concentrated in major urban centres along the coastal fringe. Nonetheless, regional and rural populations are important to the society and economy. For example, Australian agriculture accounts for approximately 3% of gross domestic product (National Farmers Federation, 2017). The sparseness of regional and rural centres presents challenges for provision of telecommunications, internet connectivity and access to technology training, which are all essential to digital inclusion. Digital inclusion is a framework for enabling people and communities to use technology to improve social and economic well-being across society. It is based on the premise that everyone, regardless of circumstance, should be able to make full use of digital technologies (Thomas et al 2017, 2018). According to the Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII), digital inclusion denotes the ability of people to access, afford and use online technologies effectively. This article reports findings about farmers and farm managers, based on additional analysis of data from the ADII (Thomas et al., 2018, 2017, 2016). The index indicates generally low levels of digital inclusion in rural communities, and particularly among farmers and farm managers, with distinctive and complex characteristics across measures of access, affordability and digital ability. The ADII’s methodology is an ongoing Single Source survey of 50 thousand Australians gathered annually through face to face interviews. ADII calculations are based on a sub-sample of approximately 16,000 responses in each 12-month period. Our findings give insight to a perplexing scenario in which farmers score poorly on the Index when compared to Australians living in similar circumstances but who are not employed in the farming sector. Namely, lower levels of access may be attributed to limited internet technology options, lower data speeds, inadequate reliability and lower data allowances; poorer affordability may be associated with lack of competition between service providers in sparse population areas and the comparative cost of building telecommunications infrastructure in the bush; and lower digital ability scores are reflective of the ageing farming population. We conclude the article by making recommendations for further research and policy development.