Solar Storms and Precision Agriculture Don’t Mix

Jonathan Crowe — Sun, 12 May 2024 19:00:37 +0000

We were warned that this weekend’s solar storm could have an impact on GPS and navigation systems. 404 Media reports that it’s causing outages in the GPS and real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning systems used in many farmers’ tractors, right in the middle of planting. This is a bigger problem than you might think: quite a lot of crops are grown using precision agriculture, “with farmers using increasingly automated tractors to plant crops in perfectly straight lines with uniform spacing. […] If the planting or harvesting is even slightly off, the tractors or harvesters could damage crops or plant crooked or inconsistently, which can cause problems during the growing season and ultimately reduce yield.” To say nothing of the harvest. Precision agriculture achieves centimetre-level accuracy, but also relies on it, and losing it at one step of the process can’t be good. [Engadget, The Verge]

precision agriculture – The Map Room

Solar Storms and Precision Agriculture Don’t Mix