A powerful geomagnetic storm that unleashed the vivid colors of the Northern Lights across the Northern Hemisphere over the weekend caused some navigation systems on tractors and other agricultural equipment to fail at the height of planting season, suppliers and farmers said.
Many farmers have come to rely on equipment that uses GPS and other navigation technology and helps them plant more efficiently and accurately by keeping rows straight and preventing gaps or overlaps. However, some operations were temporarily suspended in the Midwest and parts of the United States and Canada over the weekend.
In Minnesota, power outages hampered some farmers who had planned to plant seeds Friday night. “I’ve never done anything like this,” said Patrick O’Connor, owner of a farm that grows mostly corn and soybeans about 80 miles south of Minneapolis.
Mr O'Connor said he got on his tractor around 5pm because he wanted to plant corn overnight after two weeks of rain. When he got an alert about his GPS system, he called his tech support line and got a message saying there was an outage and there was nothing they could do to fix it.
Another farmer in Nebraska told 404 Media, an online publication covering technology, that his work has been halted. “Right now, due to the solar storm, all of our tractors are sitting on the edge of the field and out of commission,” said farmer Kevin Kenney. “There is no GPS,” he added. “We are planting corn right now.”
Solar storms are caused by the violent emission of charged particles from the surface of the sun. If the material is directed towards the Earth, it can interact with the Earth's magnetic field and create a geomagnetic storm. This weekend's event was the most powerful solar storm to reach Earth since October 2003.
Farm equipment suppliers warned of disruption due to the storm. And on Saturday, Landmark Implement, which sells John Deere farm equipment throughout the Midwest, said the accuracy of some of its systems was “severely compromised” by the incident.
“We are looking at tools to help us predict this issue in the future so we can warn our customers that this may occur,” the company said in a statement. It described the storm as a “historic event” rather than one that would require “frequently fought battles.”
Terry Griffin, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, said such storms, although rare, still pose a threat to U.S. agriculture, where most crops are planted using modern guidance systems.
“This was the first time we had a geomagnetic storm this strong and we relied on GPS,” he said. He said one of the most difficult times for storms like this to occur is during the planting season, when precision is limited. serious. Dr. Griffin added that alternative technologies are being developed, including systems that use machine vision and artificial intelligence, or more localized navigation systems that do not collapse in solar storms.
Mr., a farmer from Minnesota. O'Connor said the outage made her realize how dependent she is on technology she often takes for granted, and that if this technology were to stop working for longer periods of time in the future, she would “find a way to live without it.”
On Friday evening, Mr O'Connor said instead of planting corn, he prepared another field for corn while admiring the “amazing” colors in the sky. “It interrupted my evening, but I was still there,” he added.
“I was able to see the Aurora in all its glory.”