Equipment stuck in the middle of a field.
Over the weekend, a magnetic storm covered the Earth, which disabled the GPS systems with which critical equipment is equipped important agricultural equipment and tractors for farmers. The disruptions forced many US farmers to suspend planting entirely.
This is reported by 404 Media.
Hundreds of agricultural machinery and tractors equipped with GPS and RTK systems got stuck in the middle of the field or changed course during planting, farmers complained.
Modern tractors and agricultural equipment use RTK systems to achieve centimeter positional accuracy, particularly during planting, cultivating fields, spraying fertilizers and herbicides, etc.
These automated systems have become critical to modern agriculture, with farmers increasingly using crops to plant in perfectly straight lines and even spacing. Precision farming has significantly improved farm yields, with more than 50% of corn, cotton, rice, sorghum, soybeans and wheat being deposited and harvested solely by automated farm equipment, according to a 2023 USDA report.
Recall that in the sunspot AR3664 on Thursday, May 9, a new powerful flare of X2.2 class appeared. Before this, an X1 class flare appeared in it, as well as several M class eruptions. According to scientists, the size of the spot is almost 200 thousand km, which is 15 times the size of the Earth.
Such intense flares, which are bursts of radiation and energy due to changes in the Sun's magnetic field, often cause shortwave radio communications on Earth to go dark. As a result of an X2.2 class flare, radio communications in Europe and Africa were cut off for some time.
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