The UP and
UPload Idaho’s fight for educational internet access BY HARRISON BERRY
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n 2019, the Heritage Orchard Conference, held at the University of Idaho’s Sandpoint Agriculture Center, brought nearly 100 people to the facility near Schweitzer Mountain in Sandpoint, Idaho. There, presenters discussed best practices for the amateur apple-grower, and local efforts to identify and preserve the more than 16,000 named varieties of apple known to grow in the United States. “We have an apple called a Strawberry Parfait that has strawberry notes to it. Another has a melon flavor. A lot of these are never going to be commercially grown … but a lot of these apples could have disease resistance that could be used in a modern breeding program. It’s definitely important work that’s being done,” says Sandpoint Agriculture Center Superintendent and Orchard Operations Manager Kyle Nagy, who hosts the conference. The next year, in 2020, the University of Idaho connected all of its extension campuses to broadband internet. When it went online, the Heritage Orchard Conference drew more than 1,200 virtual attendees from 49 states and 18 countries. Among them was John Bunker of the Maine Heritage Orchard, a legend in the orchardist community and a personal hero of Nagy’s. Broadband internet has in living memory gone from a luxury to a necessity. In the area of education, it’s a determining factor in whether children have access to learning materials and even their instructors — or, in the case of the Heritage Orchard Conference, between niche regional interest and a high-profile international audience. Idaho ranks 39th in the nation when it comes to broadband access, and there are significant hurdles to improvement. The Gem State is largely made up of public lands and rural areas; building state-of-the-art infrastructure is pricey, and some areas are serviced 14
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Apples + apples = internet access + rural education
by just a handful of internet service providers (ISPs). Though more than 70% of the Idaho population has access to quality broadband, many areas of the state do not meet the national standard 25MB/3MB download/upload speed. According to Microsoft, there may be more than 123,000 Idaho K-12 students living in households not using the internet at broadband speeds.
