The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.
Joe Coldebella:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Broadband Bunch. We are in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at the NTCA, SRC Live Event. I’m your host, Joe Coldebella, and joining me is Jill Kuehny, CEO of KanOkla Networks.
Jill Kuehny:
Yes. Half Kansas, half Oklahoma. KanOkla.
Joe Coldebella:
Welcome to the Broadband Bunch. Thank
Jill Kuehny:
Thank you.
Joe Coldebella:
Before we dive into the topic of Ag Tech, I would love it if you could sort of just share with our audience a little bit about yourself and your organization.
Jill Kuehny:
All right. I am the CEO of KanOkla Networks. We originally started as a telephone company in 1951. We were a co-op, which was a combination of small mom-and-pop telephone companies out in the rural areas that came together and formed a co-op so that we could borrow money from the USDA Rural Utilities, which at that time was called REA, Rural Electrification. So they allowed telephone companies into that pool so that we could do the far reaches of rural America, mostly where it was on the outskirts of any larger town in our county. So that’s where Southwestern Bell would serve that area. Where they did not want to serve, that’s where we picked up that slack there. And it formed all of the co-ops that you see today that are delivering broadband over those same pathways.
Joe Coldebella:
So now, it’s sort of an evolution, right?
Jill Kuehny:
Absolutely. An evolution in our industry. It’s been exciting, delightful, scary, frustrating, and all of it.
Joe Coldebella:
So it’s great too, because you sort of straddle the fence in the sense that you’re the tech side, and then your husband is a farmer, correct?
Jill Kuehny:
Yes, a multi-generation farmer. Their whole family settled in this area of the country. We are on the Kansas and Oklahoma border. My company serves half and half. So we have the small communities that ride the line of the border, but basically in the middle of the country between Wichita and Oklahoma City.
Joe Coldebella:
So yesterday you led a panel on agriculture and technology. It was awesome. We also heard Kathryn Dewitt speak about how when communities invest $1, they get $4 back. It’s very much the same with Ag-Tech. I would love it if you could unpack that for us.
Jill Kuehny:
Yes. So precision agriculture has taken off in both of our surrounding universities where a lot of our young farmers come back with their four-year degree, usually in precision tech or ag economics of some sort. So the precision used to be spread as a wide cast net if you’re putting on, you know, you’re spreading seed and then you’re putting on fertilizer and all the things that you do in your different seasons. And this precision has gotten it down to — the first edition was, you know, a couple of inches off if you’re planting your row crops or spraying a certain chemical on them, then it got down to within a half an inch and now it’s within a sub inch. So that’s interesting. And then it measures the moisture all the way into the ground.
So then, you know in your field, you can’t assume everything gets the same treatment. Plus over a 10-year span is when you put on your different fertilizers, say nitrogen. That’s a 10-year investment. So you’re putting that in one year. You can’t assume that it’s going to be taken up the same in every piece of the field. What Precision has done is produce a lot of industry out there, a lot of new jobs in agriculture where those guys are coming around. And they’re measuring your soil or putting in the technology that’s going to help you out with your moisture so that you don’t overflood afield if you’re into irrigation.
We are not, we are dry land farmers, so we don’t have that irrigation. But that is the spigot, you know, having a smart spigot and being able to put on enough water where you need it, but maybe not put it over where it just got rainfall of half an inch. Why would you rewater something? That is a waste. So it’s been able to conserve resources even more. Farmers are the most conservative and sustainable industry out there. And so even coming in and being able to tweak that a little bit has been fascinating to watch.
Joe Coldebella:
In the talk yesterday, you asked the folks, “Who lives on a farm?” A couple of people raised their hands. Then you asked, “Who drives by a farm?” And literally, everyone’s hand shut up. And as someone who lives in this city in terms of that explanation, it is like, wow, there is a ton that goes into it. And I think what’s important for an event like this and for your panelists as well, is that the policy folks inside the Beltway don’t have that education. So it’s vitally important that we’ve got folks like the NTCA and the Farmers Bureau championing the cause of how important it is to get broadband in rural areas.
Jill Kuehny:
Absolutely. We’ve had a disconnect from the beltway out here, just the policymakers in theory, and then where the rubber hits the road out where it’s actually used. So NTCA has been a fantastic way to tell our story of what is actually happening out in rural America, because of the ideas that are in their heads — I mean, I can say I’m from Kansas to this day and they will ask me about Toto and Dorothy. You know, I don’t understand. Is it storybooks; is it movies? Is it John Wayne? I don’t know.
But we are very technical and evolved. And so I think there’s this fun, exploration that I’ve been having to try to figure out what the assumptions are and then how can I battle those for you and with you as a way of education. So we just recently had two folks from New York find Caldwell America.
That’s where we’re headquartered. So we are a border town. We’re called the Border Queen due to the Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas back in the 1860s after the Civil War.
So being the border queen, I said, “How did you find your way to the border Queen?”
And he said, “I can work from home now.”
He had his own IT company that he developed. He works for big corporations in change management.
And I said, “This is fantastic.”
And he said, “Yeah, you guys had fiber. I can get my gig speed.”
That’s all he needed. He is delightful because I don’t know how much time he spent outside of New York. And since you’re from New York, I’m curious about learning more about that.
Joe Coldebella:
You talked about Hollowing Out the Middle. It’s a book that I want to pick up. Can you just share with the audience what it is and, and what it is about?
Jill Kuehny:
So I saw it referenced in one of the podcasts or something I was listening to. So I picked up the book, and I’ve read it twice. I’ve asked people in my community to read it. We’re going to have a whole community conversation about it. In Hollowing Out the Middle, several things happen at the same time. But more in the education of the rural communities where maybe an industry from the 1920s or 1940s, something that kept that community afloat shut down and moved to a bigger city for efficiencies.
There was something there and all the ancillary businesses that would cater to that large business. And so what we have in our area, agriculture, and all the small towns catered to that industry, the efficiencies are of such dire need that they’re online finding ways to buy in bulk and find ways to do things with less money.
So the businesses in the small town have kind of hollowed out. So I was following along with this book. What it showed alarmingly was that we educate our students to find the very best and bright and send them off somewhere big to make themselves successful somewhere else. So that we almost have a sense of pride in sending off our very best instead of paying attention to who doesn’t leave. They’re called the stayers.
So who isn’t leaving and who wants to return and how do you make them feel — A lot of those youths in the book said that nobody paid attention to them. Nobody was giving me extra points or extra education or extra exposure to some things. So it was fascinating to me. Why do we raise our youth to leave when rural America is doing without these bright young minds? But I also was alarmed that most of the kids there were just as bright. They just didn’t have the means to leave, or they didn’t have the means to put themselves through education. So they’re mechanically minded anyway. They can make anything, and they can put together anything. They are very ingenious and inventive. But they didn’t have the means to leave, and we didn’t pay attention to them in school.
Joe Coldebella:
I know we had a talk here and one of the professors asked his students if their communities don’t have fiber would they go back? You send them away. But as people age and get older and want to start a family, city life sometimes loses a little bit of its luster. But if you don’t have that connectivity, you’re not giving these people an opportunity to go back to their roots or to just go back to a place because of the opportunity.
Jill Kuehny:
Absolutely. There’s more opportunity for those young people to come back. And they do want a safe school. They want a good school, a safe environment, and a sense of community. We’ve had some returners lately and they say that they just want to be able to give back somewhere where it actually matters. You know, you can volunteer in a small town, and you get much more effect out of that than you would maybe somewhere that you didn’t have your sense of community. So I loved Dr. Whitaker’s session on that and the man from Purdue, Dr. Gallardo. The way they leave.
They leave, and it is good to leave. You get to see the rest. You get different perspectives. Then you realize what you left behind, and how wonderful it was. But it isn’t until they get married and have kids. There is some data behind that. Dr. Whitaker expressed that. They do want to come back and have that for their own children. So the kids can be free and everybody in the community looks after the kids. If you have fiber to that school, you can do education amongst many things.
Now you can bring that in. You can explore things, do field trips online, and get them out and about. We have a new robotics program. These kids have just put together these robots and taken off with them. And then there’s a natural piece of them that is on all the time. It’s created with the gaming world and the surrounding ag work. The hard work ethic of seasonal work where you get more hours per day than say a typical eight to five. And you get those FFA programs and four H programs. They already have the leadership built into them.
Once you get a kid through that, they’re ready. I mean, they are so set. But if they go somewhere, they usually do see if there is an opportunity for them to work. And we have that now. We have so many people wanting to move out of the bigger cities, and usually 50% of the families the spouse is working online. So they are looking for small towns with a high quality of life with rural broadband.
Joe Coldebella:
Right. And then they also bring things back into the community as well. So it’s one of those things is that you send them out, and they come back with more for the community,
Jill Kuehny:
With more. Yep. They go out and learn. They go out and get all kinds of skills. And what we’re looking at now is the early retirees that are coming back with professions and skills to share, to mentor, and to use in some of our internship programs where they can talk about their perspective of professional degrees and what that brings to the rural areas.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. So one of the things that you talked about as well was that farms take up 11% of the US employment. When I heard that, I was like, wow, really? So that leads me to my next question. Are farms anchor institutions for communities?
Jill Kuehny:
So in Oklahoma, specifically, they’re trying to define the definition of an anchor institution. Now, traditionally, we think of that as a hospital or a school. In the areas where you don’t have those, those are the spaces between. Those are the spaces that still need broadband. Farms need fiber. They serve many, many people. And that is the definition of anchor institutions. They feed the world. So I’m curious, would that qualify as a definition?
So just posing that as an idea of how we see farms? What is the perspective of that from the East Coast of say the policymakers? And if they haven’t visited a farm, they need to understand what goes into all that operation that develops food for the world. Now, people want to know where their food comes from. And due to the economic and political climate right now, there’s a big push to have American-made items. There’s food scarcity, and food resources so that it’s not cut off from imports and exports if we can produce enough for our own country, which we do. You know, we export quite a bit.
Joe Coldebella:
I think that’s great, and I think you make a really important point for everyone to really reach out to your state broadband offices and to make sure that when they have these five-year programs the important things like the farms are defined as anchoring institutions because it’s critical.
Jill Kuehny:
It’s critical for the production of the state and for the food security of the state. But the states are starting to define that at this moment based on their rurality factors. And so every state’s a little different. Both of the states that we work in are a little different. But every farm and every emergency and the ability to get your fires put out and to get your safety and healthcare and how far apart each of those are depending on broadband out in those rural areas for safety and life. Life, because farmers are so dangerous.
The work that they do is life-threatening. One, they are far enough away from services. I mean, I’ll take you back. Twenty years ago, we had a kid working out there on the farm, and he knew better. He had been told several times, but he stuck his arm down in that auger and lost it. And when you grab that piece of arm and you grab that 18-year-old kid, and you’re trying to haul him to a hospital 30 miles away. I mean, it would be nice to have that telehealth or that connectivity to just say, “Hey, we’re coming. What can I do now?” Those are the areas that are putting together so many different combinations of things every day. Connectivity is life.
Joe Coldebella:
No, it really is. Yesterday you were talking about the different age groups of the farmers in general. And so farmers were, you know, CEOs and then CFOs. And now it seems like they’re becoming CIOs as well, which is crazy. They wear all these hats on these farms. I’m sure that some age groups are more open to adopting Ag and others might be a little more hesitant.
Jill Kuehny:
Absolutely. It depends on the generational knowledge from where they’ve been and where they are today and how adaptable they are to that technology. But in my situation, the 85-year-old has the new iPhone in his pocket. He loves it. He uses it as a phone, and I can text him pictures of the great-granddaughter. So he’s happy. Other than that, he’s not using it for its full capabilities yet. My 55-year-old husband, who is going to use it only if it proves itself out, is getting a nice combo from my sons, 25 and 32. They want those efficiencies to make more out of less. They’ve got more to do, fewer resources, higher input, and a lot of things changing every day. Mother nature never cooperates. So they’re trying things because they see them, and they’ve been learning them at the institution.
Like if you’re at Oklahoma State University or Kansas State University, the young farmers coming back out want to use this. They’re so excited about it. They’re highly adaptive and adoptive of this technology because they’ve grown up with it. They are there to teach, and they don’t mind sharing that knowledge. Now every farmer does not share. Typically, they’re a solopreneur, an entrepreneur of themselves. Like you said, they’re the CEO, the COO, and they’re the labor. They work 15-hour days. I mean, it’s seasonal. They just have to do it all.
And now this whole new realm of technology is a burden for the older ones to understand. But the younger ones are just plugging it in here and there and trying it out. And plus they’re all connected. So they have all their resources from where they learned it, and they are quickly changing the world out there in rural America.
Joe Coldebella:
You know, it’s interesting because the older farmer has it all up in their head. But then with the internet and data accumulation, a farmer can not only use his experience from one year, but they can use it for 10 years. And to your point earlier in terms of efficiencies, they’re allowed to look back at things and understand and for soil erosion. It’s one of those incredible opportunities when they have access to the internet and they have access to data, it makes it that much easier for them. I don’t know if it lessens the burden, but hopefully, it makes it a little bit easier for them to see that they are going the right way. I’ve done it in the past. I’m looking at the data, let’s move forward.
Jill Kuehny:
Yeah. The older generation that was born in the Depression and lived through the farm crisis of the eighties has a perspective of, “Hey, we’ve done this before. It’s been bad before.” The younger ones don’t have that. What I noticed in the pilot program, when I found out there were eight John Deere engineers out in my field somewhere studying a new pilot program in one of the combines, I jumped in the combine just to look at it.
And what it is showing and the data it’s collecting from here on out. Look at the data we have. I mean, we’ve been doing it by hand on spreadsheets so far. Now you’ve got the data collected from the machines. Can you imagine the data that’s going to be there in 10 years and how you can scrutinize that and analyze that and use it for productivity and for precision ag and all the things?
But it starts now going forward. I don’t think they’re going to put in all that data from before. They might. So there are some carbon capture programs. And it’s going to require a lot of data. Well, these machines are already going to do that data. There must be some who are talking about that to be able to grab all that data that they want.
So once the machine-to-machine data, which is the pilot program was more machine-to-machine. It was talking to the grain card; it was talking to the other combines. It was putting them on the map. You could see your whole field and where all the machines were, but he could also see how many pounds of grain were coming into those machines. And then you would know when that combine needs to be dumped into the grain cart and then who travels to the truck to take it to the elevator.
I was so fascinated by that. Usually, the combine just puts off a little blinker light. You know, my daughter’s been driving that grain cart. The boys are her brothers. So besides the chitchat that might not be so friendly, she knows what each of their little habits are and how one is easier to unload than the other. But she also knows when they’re ready, and she just takes off. You don’t have to radio; you don’t have to do that. Well, these machines tell you, and then you can share some of the straight lines.
The GPS auto steer is what’s changed the world out there. The precision on that is where it will drive your tractor straight across the field without steering it and then alert you to pick up your implement, turn it around, and head back the other way. But you program the GPS to deal with the wind and the direction. Once you key it in, you’re good to go.
So she was able to sit on that one summer and produce her whole master’s curriculum program for her Master of Art. She was going to school online in Missouri. But she was sitting on a tractor in Oklahoma. Thank goodness for ag technology. She would just get the alert, pick up her implement, turn it around, and then she was back to work. Well, who knew that this wonderful curriculum that she created for her project, then we went right into COVID. It was perfect for that, but it helped her be able to teach art online. And that’s what she does today.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s just an awesome story. Now people are embracing technology which is great. I think what you’re saying also is that 10 years from now, there’s the opportunity that we’ve got the farmers that are, that are happening right now. And I thought that you or someone on the panel made a great point. The kids that are in four H that are in the young farmers of America that’s the place where you need to go and introduce the technology to them. When they get to be farmers, their tool belt is full.
Jill Kuehny:
It is. We’ve just introduced a robotics program in the middle school just to capture that crazy middle school mind where they’re still open to new ideas and not afraid to fail. And the premise is to look at all the ag technology that’s going to be here. Look at what you can do to still return to your small town if you want to.
We did a survey because we have a community college that recently built a satellite office. The survey said that 70% of those youth, this was ninth through 12th graders in the county, would like to stay in our county and work. That was exciting but alarming. What are they going to do in this world if they’re not truly on the farm doing those kinds of things? How many ancillary businesses could there be? Tremendous amounts.
Once you learn how to robot troubleshoot or you can create one and build one if you can figure out what’s wrong with one and fix it, every industry in America is going to be using this automation. You’ll be able to work on that machine from anywhere. So having exposure at a young age so that they’re not afraid to try it. They’ll get down on the floor together. They collaborate, work in teams together, figure it out, and they have to program that thing using their phone.
They’re going to be set for life because no matter what industry they choose if they choose to work in one of our healthcare industries locally, anything in the ag field, anything in aerospace production — you know, in Wichita, we have a lot of aerospace engineers that live in there. We have a lot of need for engineers in all areas. They’re already capable of that because they’ve been exposed at a young age. So I’m excited for the ag industry.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. And has there been one thing that was the tipping point in terms of technology? Or was it little by little?
Jill Kuehny:
No, I think the tipping point was auto-steer GPS. So everybody was using some sort of Garmin on their phone or in their car, and they were learning maps. How did we get anywhere without that, you know? This freedom to travel now and not worry about maps. At about that same time, here comes auto steer GPS. You line up with a satellite as I picture an old tractor sprinkler in your yard that looks like John Deere. I picture these satellites up there like that, I don’t know, maybe. But they control all of that. So it tells you your tractor is going a certain way and then you turn around, like my daughter’s story. That was proof to everyone because it saved them dollars in their pocket.
They could see they were not planting too much seed. So they didn’t have to go two rows over to overcompensate to make sure they didn’t have a miss. They spread that fertilizer on without overusing it because it’s very expensive. And they have water usage, you know, everything was data in their hand. So I think from the older generation seeing that proof, then they would go out and buy one of those.
Now do you buy one and then you cart it around to all your different machines? Or do you go ahead and buy one for each machine? And now that there’s a subscription and now there’s an annual fee. They’re having a little bit of a hard time I think adapting to that constant other subscription fee. But then measuring the numbers of how much they’ve saved on the back end, it has made perfect sense for them. So I would say that’s the game changer. My husband said it’s 90% adopted in our area.
And I asked, “What do you mean 90%? What’s the other 10%? How can you tell?”
He goes, “Oh, you can tell.”
So if you drive down a dirt road, and you don’t see straight precise lines in the field, you know, they don’t have that GPS in there. So it’s kind of funny.
Joe Coldebella:
I love that story. Everyone competes. It’s like, yeah, those lines aren’t too straight compared to mine.
Jill Kuehny:
They are very competitive. It’s not like all the farmers get together and work together. I mean, they’ll have coffee maybe in places, or they’ll talk about things. But they’re entrepreneurial and competitive in nature.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, that’s a great example. It seems like it permeated throughout like in terms of like auctions and for different things in terms of using the technology and embracing the technology. Obviously, you’re a smart rural community. I would assume that it’s so much better on this side. So, you know, please make sure to bring fiber to your area.
Jill Kuehny:
So we bought a third-generation telephone company. Like a third-generation farm, it’s hard when your kids don’t want to take on that industry. So we are a co-op, but this company was a private family owned. So we purchased it, and we’re trying to get them fiber. I have been waiting three years for a USDA Reconnect One, or I’m waiting on my environmentals. So we can get them fiber. Well, we had an older guy call. He runs a livestock auction out there in the middle of Osage County and he said, “Hey, I really need help. I’m going to do my auction online. I need more buyers and more exposure here.” So we found a way, and we are on a tower. And we were able to beam that down to him so that he could do his first livestock auction live.
And so, you know how nervous my IT team is back there. They were like, “Oh, my gosh, this is his living.” So one second difference of a delay makes a difference in a buyer’s auction when you’re buying his bulls. I think he was selling bulls or possibly bread heifers. I’m not certain, but I’ll go back and look. And we’ve been able to do this for him annually through the last three years with fixed wireless technology. We just had some tornadoes and storms and wind, 70-mile winds back at home.
I just asked my operations guy, “What’s going on with all the notifications of my towers out?
And he said, “It’s all storm related.”
I’m in sunny Florida. So I was unaware. But, yes, the lightning and the wind are taking down towers right and left. So we must bury it in tornado alley. It is just a priority for KanOkla to get our fixed wireless put under the ground.
Joe Coldebella:
Wow. It must be a win-win for him as well as the folks in the area because it’s one of those things where competition is always great.
Jill Kuehny:
Yes, competition is always great. It makes people better; it makes people strive to do better and do more with less. And so competition in any arena is going to make people better.
Joe Coldebella:
Jill, this was a phenomenal visit. If folks want to learn more about your community and your company, where can they go?
Jill Kuehny:
Most of our information is on Kanokla.com. That’s our website. And we’re expanding and trying to build out two county seats in Oklahoma and one in Kansas that have been a little bit left behind. I’ll say that nationwide carriers and rural America should never be put in the same sentence. I’ll just leave it at that.
Joe Coldebella:
I couldn’t agree with you more. The nationwide carriers are good, but it’s got to be a high population density for them to, I guess, see the benefits. When it’s homegrown, it should be built by those who live there.
Jill Kuehny:
Hey, I can almost bring that analogy of precision ag to this. It’s very precise, almost precision rural. So you need that small community provider that understands your community and what you need that’ll be there every day and will get you back up and running within the afternoon. Nobody has time to wait for a nationwide carrier to come out in two weeks anymore.
Joe Coldebella:
I love it. That’s a perfect place to end it. This is going to wrap up this episode of the Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
