Some Iowa farmers were interrupted by solar storm
The northern lights were visible in Iowa on May 10 and 11. (Photo by Jesse Strong)
Some farmers who rely on satellite data to plant their fields were delayed in recent days by a geomagnetic storm, according to field agronomists who have been monitoring corn and soybean planting.
The storm — caused by recent bursts of plasma and magnetic field from the Sun’s corona — developed on Friday and led to spectacular nighttime sights of pulsating, colored bands of light in many states where aurora borealis is uncommon.
But it also disrupted radio signals of the country’s Global Positioning System, which most farmers use to steer their tractors and seed the ground without overlapping rows.
“It shut some guys down,” said Aaron Saeugling, an Iowa State University Extension field agronomist in southwest Iowa.
The first of several coronal mass ejections arrived at Earth about midday on Friday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Saeugling said farmers in his area reported problems with their GPS equipment that afternoon and on Saturday.
HTS Ag of Harlan, which installs GPS technology in tractors, was inundated with calls from its farmer customers between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Friday, said Adam Gittins, the company’s president.
“This was the strongest geomagnetic storm to hit the planet since about 2003,” he said. “We won’t know the full implications of it until the crops come up.”
That’s because it’s possible that farmers who were using GPS to plant seed but were steering their tractors manually might not have noticed the technology was on the fritz, Gittins said. That could lead to overlapping rows and sections without seed. And the effect on the equipment was variable: the locating errors ranged from several feet to several hundred feet.
Gittins said most of his customers stopped planting and waited for the storm’s effects to subside.
Wet conditions in recent weeks have already delayed planting as farmers approach crucial deadlines to complete the work or risk losing yield potential.
Planting made a quick start in April when the fields and weather were ideal, but it has fallen behind the progress of recent years in the past two weeks. As of Sunday, about 57% of the state’s corn and 39% of soybeans had been planted, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The planting of both crops is about a week behind last year and four or five days behind the five-year average. Farmers across the state had an average of about three days in the past two weeks that were suitable for field work, the USDA reported.
“Eventually, we’ll get it planted,” Saeugling said. “But when the weather is good and you’re having some additional struggles with your technology, that’s just additional stress.”
In the wettest parts of Iowa, the geomagnetic storm had little or no effect on farmers — they had no intentions to plant on those days anyway.
“Nobody has been in the field in three weeks,” said Angie Rieck-Hinz, an Extension field agronomist in north-central Iowa. “If we don’t get rain this week, it’ll be at least another week before we get in the field. There’s still ponds of standing water.”
Most of that area had at least two inches of rain last week, State Climatologist Justin Glisan reported. The state averaged about 1.51 inches, which is about 50% more than what is normally expected.
The repeated rainfall has shrunk the area of drought in Iowa by more than half in the past two months, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. A report last week said 37% of the state still has some degree of drought.
Editor’s note: This article was updated with additional reporting.
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