By now you’ve surely read the reports: a very intense solar storm in space disrupted farm machinery telematics last Friday. For some, the situation lasted well into the weekend during the heart of planting season.
Simply put: not good, not good at all.
Now, we all know that weather delays are one thing - completely out of our control, even expected to an extent - but being delayed by the very technology that is supposed to make us more efficient is...ironic. And for some farmers, potentially quite maddening.
That’s because while many of us lucky enough to be in the viewing zone were chasing the aurora borealis (aka Northern Lights), many farmers were forced to press pause and wait until GPS satellites came back online. Many GPS services require a minimum of 8 connected satelittes to establish solid connectivity for accurate guidance and data telematics.
It seems, however, that like most things discussed and posted about on online, the posts on #plant24 and other social media channels perhaps made the situation seem a bit more dire (or dramatic) than it turned out in reality.
“There were some scattered reports of these storms delaying planting over the weekend, particularly in the Midwest, but no major disruptions have been reported by farmers at this time,” says Curt Covington, senior director of instituition credit, AgAmerica. “Dealerships like 21st Century Equipment reported a slight disruption to their RTK networks, but it was resolved relatively quickly, as far as I know.”
Covington has an extensive background in PR and he regularly monitors and comments on developments in agriculture and technology. Now that GPS systems have been restored to full functionality, Covington is concerned the outage may have frustrated some farmers to the point of no return.
“It could deter some farm operators from widespread adoption of smart agritech systems,” he opines. “Overall, this event should spark an important conversation in the farm community. Will this happen again and if so, at what scale? And what steps can we take to ensure the technology we rely on in agriculture is protected?”
Covington worries it’s just another setback to toss on top of the rather large, steaming pile of issues that farmers have had to sort through this spring. That’s everything from depressed commodity prices to dicamba’s now-sealed fate to the ripple effects of H5N1 in the livestock markets. These issues and others have created a mounting heap of uncertainty as we head into the summer months.
“If this delay affects planting schedules for corn growers in the Midwest, it might lead to increased yield losses if crops are planted too late, ultimately squeezing profit margins,” he says. “This situation compounds with expectations of declining farm income following several robust years.”
There’s no need for ambiguousness there: the solar storms surely did delay planting schedules for many operators. If there is one silver lining, though, it’s that many farmers in the Eastern Corn Belt were already rained out of planting for the weekend. An Ohio farmer we spoke with confirmed he didn’t miss any field time over the weekend because, well, he hasn’t been dry enough to plant corn for almost two weeks at this point. No harm, no foul for that farmer.
Still, it’s time, Covington thinks, for a wider discussion in ag tech around creating redudant systems that ensure uptime and consistent performance.
“We should be having these conversations now to reduce the risk of future disruption to our food system as technology becomes an increasingly essential part of it,” he says. “If this were a singular event, the lasting impact should be minimal. However, there may be cause for concern if this becomes a reoccurring event. If anything comes from this, it should be a focus on the importance of being proactive in protecting our food system and having a response plan in place to avoid large-scale disruptions.”
