Looking Back

Now that Christmas is over and New Year's is just around the corner it's time for us to look back at some of the stories that made 2013 what it was.

We started the year looking at the information highway or the lack thereof. For those people who live even a few miles outside of town and even in smaller rural communities, getting anything more than an very slow dial-up connection is iffy. Harry Thibedeau of Excede Internet Service discusses what bringing broadband internet to rural America can mean.

THIBEDEAU: We know, number one, that economic development in rural America is absolutely tied to internet connectivity. If you don't have good, high quality internet service it's literally like when the interstate highway system was built in the movie Cars. We can't afford to have rural America in that situation today.

The 2013 Potato Expo got underway at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas where John Keeling, the executive vice president and CEO of the National Potato Council felt they are reaching the crest of a hill that started a few years back when potatoes became the pariah of the nutritional world.

KEELING: There's a bit of a paradox at play here. What we see as positive attitudes towards potatoes are rising. Those negative attitudes that had been associated with Atkins and some other things are declining but what we are seeing is potato consumption continue to be flat or slightly declining.

More tomorrow on the year in review.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.