The solar storms that have enthralled people with the northern lights across the United States for the past two nights have also disrupted GPS satellites, paralyzing the operations of some Midwest farmers. reports 404 Media. The problems have forced many to stop planting just as a crucial deadline for corn planting approaches.
The storms reportedly temporarily knocked out “some GPS systems,” affecting the accuracy of “real-time kinematic” (RTK) systems. Tractors from John Deere and other brands use RTK for “centimeter-level positional accuracy” when performing agricultural work such as planting crops or fertilizing. 404 Media writes.
The “extremely compromised” systems caused “drastic changes in the field and even some reversals” for those who continued planting during the interruptions, according to a warning from John Deere Landmark Implement dealership in Kansas and Nebraska over the weekend. Landmark said planted rows won't be where AutoPath, a tractor guidance system, thinks they will be later when it's time to tend to them, and that it could be difficult or impossible to use in fields that were planted while GPS systems were compromised. .
While the solar storms, which are among the worst to hit Earth in more than two decades according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), are expected to subside soon, they come at a critical time for corn crops. Willie Cade of the right-to-repair advocacy group Repair.org said 404 Media that May 15 “is a critical date for planting corn,” calling it “huge” if corn farmers cannot plant their crops by then.
Organic farmer Tom Schwarz, who was also quoted in the article, said solar storms halted his operations and now the weather forecast threatens to further delay planting. His farm and others like it use RTK systems to plant crops up to the edge of the lanes that tractors use to travel between them, and if the GPS is not accurate while planting, they risk destroying the crops later, because drivers Humans “cannot drive.” fast enough or well enough” to keep the tractors between the rows.
On a large scale, agriculture practiced today relies heavily on tractors and other high-tech, often highly automated, equipment. When they fail, farmers often have no recourse because the entire life cycle of their crops is wrapped up in technology. That reliance is part of the reason there is so much momentum behind right-to-repair laws now, as farmers want to be able to repair their tractors when they break down, rather than being beholden to manufacturers for it.
Geomagnetic storms like the ones that hit farmers this weekend are created when plasma and magnetized particles are ejected from the sun in what are called coronal mass ejections. NOAA rates them on an increasingly severe scale from G1 to G5. The storm that has hit the Earth in recent days has arrived at the G5.
NOAA says “severe to extreme” solar storms of G4 or higher could happen again today. So far, the storms have not led to widespread reports of solar storm-related outages, although Starlink has experienced some “degraded performance,” as Reuters writes, while some on Reddit reported problems with flight systems either Amateur radio broadcasts.
