futurism
Modern tractors rely on precise GPS coordinates to navigate fields. But with charged particles distorting radio signals from GPS satellites, some of them started acting erratically, stopping abruptly or weaving back and forth.
“I would guess 80 percent or more of all farmers in the Midwest use at least basic GPS for something — whether it’s auto-steer or yield mapping,” John Deere service manager Ethan Smidt told SpaceWeather. “At least 50 percent of all farmers are VERY reliant on GPS and use it on every machine all year long.”
During particularly violent solar storms, charged particles fill the Earth’s ionosphere, the part of the Earth’s upper atmosphere that creates a protective barrier between us and electrically charged particles from the Sun.
The layer is also responsible for transmitting GPS signals from satellites down to the surface. So changing densities of the ionosphere, caused by this bombardment of charged particles, can distort radio signals as they make their way through. More
I bet I can round up a few old guys that still know how to use a steering wheel.
If you take the cell phones away from the tractor drivers they actually can follow rows. Probably too much to ask these days.
Are there such things as DEI farmers?
Poorly written… It’s differential GPS, which is a whole other beast. GPS nets you a circular probability of error on the order of 1 to 15 feet. With selective availability turned off it tends towards the lower figure. That’s not good enough for the crop insurance at planting. So the local John Deere dealer gets a surveyor to mark a position to state of the art accuracy, within in a centimeter or so, and places a GPS receiver on that site. It then calculates the drift between the surveyor’s known location and the received GPS signal. This error difference will be generally the same over a wide area of 100+ miles or more. They then broadcast a correction to all subscribers across that area, allowing them to plant seeds with centimeter accuracy, satisfying the insurance companies underwriting requirements for seed spacing. Where things get tripped up is where and at what frequency the differential radio signal is transmitted. UHF or VHF are little impacted by solar activity, but have short line of site ranges. Moving down to HF or lower-VHF wavelengths can net 200+ miles ranges, but brings in distortion by a variable ionosphere subject to solar activity. This longer range also introduces a third source of error, where the tractor received a differential correction based on a set of GPS satellites it can’t directly receive a signal from.
KR
The rice farmer in the norther central valley have been relying on this technology for a couple years. It’s sped the harvesting up by about a factor of 5. Rice fields aren’t square. And the checks are higher than the rice fields meaning if you ram your harvester into the side of a check it gets expensive. They end up with some pretty interesting geometric patterns. Usually ever increasing arcs.
Oh God, we’re all going to starve. I wonder what grand Pa would do?? Cry???
@Deplorable 2nd Class,
As I understand it, a bunch of farmers here in Texas and Oklahoma turned off GPS and planted anyway last spring, and lost their insurance. This led their Ag seed loans to tack on a penalty for not having insurance. I haven’t heard if there was any repercussions beyond that, as we had a pretty good growing year. I’m sure a bunch of farmers are spending the winter trying to decide the cost/benefit ratio.
But when you hear Farmers complaining about right-to-repair, this is in the thick of it. They have banks & insurance companies mandating use of technology, and the technology is a closed ecosystem. You have to pay John Deere, Case, etc…, hard earned $$ for subscriptions, to get things fixed, etc… And it’s done almost mafia style. No insurance, no seed loan, no seed loan, no crop. You could plant heirloom holdback seed, but then you run into lower yields and the cross-pollination problems with your neighbors hybrids, etc… Farming is low yield enough…
KR
GPS must have been a lot better when my grandparents and others farmed decades ago.
@Kali: When was the last time Selective Availability was enabled on our GPS satellites?