The solar storm knocked out GPS equipment on farms — and it could happen again

Tanner Borsa was working his farm near Yellow Creek, Sask., last weekend when the Global Positioning System in his tractors stopped working.  

Like many farmers, Borsa pays for a premium GPS satellite signal to ensure accuracy and efficiency when he's planting seeds and spraying pesticide and fertilizer. When that signal went out on Friday night, he called his provider.

"They basically told me that it's a solar flare [and] there's nothing they can do about it," Borsa said. "They didn't really have an estimate on how severe or how long lasting the impact would be."

For Borsa, the problems continued off and on all weekend, in tandem with the powerful solar storms that brought dramatic views of the northern lights to much of Canada and the U.S.

He's not alone. Farmers across Canada and in some parts of the U.S. experienced similar GPS blackouts and malfunctions on their equipment during the weekend.

With more solar storms on the horizon and an increasing reliance on GPS across different industries, experts say the problem isn't going away any time soon.

GPS, or satellite-based navigation, has become standard in the agricultural sector. 

Jordan Wallace, a farmer who runs the GPS retailer and distributor GPS Ontario out of North Gower, Ont., says he was fielding dozens of calls all last weekend from farmers from B.C. to P.E.I., as well as customers in Texas and Georgia. 

"In agriculture right now, we're at the height of the planting season," he said. "And accuracy of signal is of extreme importance."

Farmers use GPS on their tractors, sprayers and harvesters to ensure they evenly distribute seeds, pesticides and fertilizer without overlap. Some vehicles even drive themselves, following the lines the GPS mapped out. 

"Your seed, your fertilizer, your pesticides, they cost quite a bit of money," Borsa told CBC from his self-driving tractor. "And over-applying them or overlapping as you work your field is basically wasting money."

Luke McCreary, a farmer near Bladworth, Sask., says his GPS equipment was off by nearly two metres during Friday night's solar storms, forcing him to manually compensate.

"Anywhere that I'm driving manually instead of using the GPS, we're missing out on the optimization … that we hope to get when we have systems like this installed on the tractor," he said.

Craig Frenzen, a farmer in Fullerton, Neb., says rainfall in his region had already kept farmers from seeding during their already narrow planting window. When the solar storm knocked out the GPS on one of his tractors, it put him even further behind.