Rural Smallholdings Magazine

In January 2010, a new European Union grant was announced, aimed at improving rural internet access in Wales. Despite advances in broadband and wireless technology, many rural areas in the UK still have problems with the internet access which is increasingly vital for individual communications and business development.

Even in the twenty-first century, some very remote rural homesteads in the UK have only been connected to the electricity and telephone grids for a couple of years. And with broadband signals only able to travel along conventional phone lines for a short distance, special technology and planning is needed to get the furthest-out smallholders and farmers online. Isolated Welsh lamb and dairy farmers have been forced to give up trying to sell to some processing companies and wholesalers, because as email becomes the standard means of communication for most businesses, they simply can’t keep up.

Rural Communications Solutions, a Cumbria-based firm specialising in getting internet access to rural ‘not-spots,’ cites bypassing by mainstream internet service providers as a problem. Getting services to remote houses, villages and smallholdings simply isn’t cost-effective for web providers geared to supplying cheap broadband to urban mass markets. Suppliers like RCS have to find ways to get strong wireless internet signals to remote sites, without resorting to the kind of controversial and unsightly aerials used by the mobile phone networks.

But as Ieuan Wyn Jones, Deputy first minister of Wales, said of the EU grant, “In the 21st Century, it is vital that people in all parts of Wales gain access to a high-speed internet service, and it is essential that businesses are fully equipped with the right information communications technology (ICT) infrastructure to compete successfully in a global market.” As well as the ability to access the web, good internet connections also offer rural communities the opportunity to run their own websites, communicate via email, and save on phone costs by using VOIP (voice over internet protocol) calls.

And for smallholders looking for ways to maintain a livelihood from rural locations, the internet is becoming non-negotiable. According to Isobel Davies of Izzy Lane, a designer clothes company which uses wool from sheep kept on her own small farm in Yorkshire, “the website is vital for sales. I think any smallholder will find that if you try to sell through shops the mark-up they have to put on products can make them unsaleable. With clothes, retailers often mark up 250% so if you have a high-quality, high-cost product to start with, the prices become ridiculous and in a recession no shop is going to take that kind of risk. Which is why the internet is brilliant, because if you sell direct to consumers you retain that margin instead.”

Chris Bailey, who with wife Suzie runs Whithorn Lodge B&B from his smallholding in Dumfries & Galloway, also depends on the internet for much of his trade. “Most people come because they see the website, they see that we have the rare breed animals running free range and that’s what sets us apart.” Although the Baileys do get some B&B trade via word-of-mouth and repeat custom, being able to access the internet is key to their business, and to many other rural enterprises. And this is a tool which is still unavailable to many inhabitants of rural areas, especially in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the North and West of England.

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Article by Sarah Irving for Rural Smallholdings Magazine

Photo Courtesy of East Devon Guide