Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season - 404 Media
What's New: Two or three days prime planting was lost for many farmers because of solar weather.
Why It's Important: As mentioned in the article, it shows the vulnerability of the food supply to GPS disruptions.
What Else to Know:
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Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers' Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season
MAY 12, 2024 AT 9:39 AM
The solar storm that brought the aurora borealis to large parts of the United States this weekend also broke critical GPS and precision farming functionality in tractors and agricultural equipment during a critical point of the planting season, 404 Media has learned. These outages caused many farmers to fully stop their planting operations for the moment.
One chain of John Deere dealerships warned farmers that the accuracy of some of the systems used by tractors are “extremely compromised,” and that farmers who planted crops during periods of inaccuracy are going to face problems when they go to harvest, according to text messages obtained by 404 Media and an?update posted by the dealership. The outages highlight how vulnerable modern tractors are to satellite disruptions, which experts have been warning about for years.
“All the tractors are sitting at the ends of the field right now shut down because of the solar storm,” Kevin Kenney, a farmer in Nebraska, told me. “No GPS. We’re right in the middle of corn planting. I’ll bet the commodity markets spike Monday.”
CEO & Founder - Geospatial Innovator
10 个月Technology continues to lower the cost to feed humanity and that is a good thing. There are ways to solve for this by using no 'space waves" that will be coming to market in the next year. This will not have to happen in the future. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/05/13/2880497/0/en/MerlinTPS-Partners-with-Bluespec-to-Provide-Urgently-Needed-GPS-Augmentation-and-Backup-Without-Satellites.html
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10 个月Perhaps this reveals another flaw with industrial farming? Maybe this means less food to throw away to manipulate pricing.
Digital Engineering Leader | Cyber Innovator | Advisor
10 个月Is this a recurring problem? It seems like the farmers and others with this gps challange could base navigating off of other signals so they are not dependent exclusively on one type of signal.