Precision Ag

Heads Up: Space Weather Could Disrupt GPS Signal This Week

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:41:46 GMT

The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration has updated its expected arrival of a G4 severe geomagnetic storm. Initially expected to be observed June 2 to June 3, it’s now potentially ending earlier by June 2.

These space weather events can disturb the Earth’s magnetic field and at this severe level cause “more frequent and longer periods of GPS degradation.”

“If you’re finished planting, have no spraying to do, or otherwise too wet to get into the field, this solar storm may not matter for production agriculture even for the most susceptible states,” says Terry Griffin with Kansas State University. “Given the time of year, several hundred thousand acres of peanuts are left to be planted in Georgia (74% planting progress as of last week). Without RTK (not just GPS but sub-inch accuracy RTK), a 11% yield penalty is known at planting due to uncertainty of AB line when digging, the topic of my current research. In Kansas, corn was 85% planted as of last week and most crops have been planted on schedule or ahead of the 5-year average, but spraying and other midseason operations are still vulnerable.”

He adds Kansas winter wheat harvest usually begins mid-June so it won’t be affected by this storm.

Are these events normal?

Griffin says accurately predicting solar storms is more difficult than terrestrial weather.
“One analogy is to think of predicting geomagnetic disturbances on Earth as compared to the familiar tornado season. We know that in Kansas every April and May we can expect tornadoes in our area; when we may have a tornado watch, sometimes a tornado warning, and less common for an individual homeowner to be directly affected by a tornado,” he says. “Geomagnetic disturbances are similar: every 11 years we should expect a variety of “watches” and “alerts” due to increased solar activity before quieting down for about the next seven years until activity ramps up again.”

However space weather brings an even greater level of uncertainty for what the precise impacts on Earth will be. Just because there’s activity measured from the sun, it doesn’t always arrive at Earth in a predictable pattern.

“Activity on the sun does not always arrive at the Earth, observed coronal mass ejections (CME) can go in the opposite direction or even be a “near miss”, just like a tornado,” he says. “Instruments can detect CMEs several minutes after they occur, and even when material is coming toward the Earth it may take a few days before we know if we’re being affected.”

What can farmers do?

“GNSS outages caused by solar storms should be expected to be the norm, at least during solar sunspot number maximums that occur about every 11 years,” Griffin says. “At the very least, farmers should expect GNSS outages associated with solar storms during sunspot maximum; spanning maybe three years of the 11 year cycle.”

Griffin says solar storms can occur any time of year, and he points to some historical evidence suggesting increased frequency of geomagnetic disturbances near the spring and fall equinoxes.

Farm Journal reached out to Griffin first thing Monday morning for an update. He said the solar storm “arrived a day early...it was moving really fast” and would likely be over by Monday afternoon. He did not hear from any farmers about GPS outages or issues with satellite lock on their farm equipment as of Monday morning.

NOAA did record a G4 level solar event in space occurring on Sunday, June 1, however, by Monday morning at 8:45 am EST it had weakened to a G1.

Griffin says farmers should check the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center hompage (www.swpc.noaa.gov) on a regular basis this summer before heading out to spray or do other field work.

“That May 10th event (last year) was not a once in a lifetime event,” Griffin warns. “We need to keep our eyes open for the next one.”

The “next one” could happen anytime in the next 12 months, or not at all, he believes. Griffin says we’re in the middle of what some scientists call the “battle zone” of solar activity and the current conditions are expected to last for the next year. Once we get to next summer, Griffin says, scientists are projecting a “quiet period” for the next six or seven years before space weather and solar storms start to ramp back up in the early 2030s.

“The previous solar cycle we were in was really quiet, and the one we’re in right now is normal,” he says. “We need to be ready for these events.”

A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 18:24:44 GMT

With a visual form ripped straight from a skin-crawl inducing robot thriller, Tesla’s new AI-bot, Optimus, is eliciting strong reactions from tech advocates and flip-phone touting technophobes.

Let’s indulge our imaginations for just a second and imagine how a farmer could put one of Musk’s $20,000 helper robots to work around the family farm in, say, the year 2040. I use 2040 because, even though the prototypes in the video below look awesome, it turns out the AI behind it needs more work before any farmer would feel safe setting a squad of them loose on the farm.

Our own Clinton Griffiths was also inspired by Optimus’ unveiling. In his upcoming column in the November issue of Farm Journal, Clinton gets right to the heart of the issue, and that’s whether the bots will pan out on the farm?

The real test, he writes, “will be whether it can keep its glossy finish motoring along regardless of whether or not the field is mud-free.”

I couldn’t agree more, Clinton. Serving up fancy drinks during an unveiling party on a glitzy Hollywood film studio lot is one thing. Standing up to all the dust and heat and tough conditions of your average farm or ranch is a different beast altogether.

In that vein, we offer up the following farm chore list Optimus can take over from here on out.

No, seriously Opti, you don’t need our permission. Just go ahead and take care of these few little things every single day for the rest of time, and we’ll be off, I don’t know, fishing at the lake with the kids, rocking on the front porch, or something.

Farm equipment maintenance tech
Director of crop protection jug disposal
Backpack spraying around-the-clock weed warrior
Chief grain bin inspector
Head ladder climber
Irrigation pivot inspector general
Head high in July crop scout
Pig loader and unloader extraordinaire
Master bottle mixer and calf feeder

Now that you’ve read my list, I’m curious how you would use a robot that walks, talks and moves like a real human (and never gets tired, bored or spends 20 minutes staring at its phone) on your farm? or click

Share your robot wish list by clicking the green “Respond Here” button or click here .

Your Next Read: As the Wizard of Yield, Ken Ferrie Reveals His Secrets on Unscripted

John Deere, SpaceX Announce Starlink Deal

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 19:08:32 GMT

Deere & Company announced an agreement with SpaceX to provide Starlink network satellite communications (SATCOM) service to farmers. Utilizing the Starlink network, this solution will allow farmers facing rural connectivity challenges to fully leverage precision agriculture technologies.

“The value of connectivity to farmers is broader than any single task or action. Connectivity unlocks vast opportunities that were previously limited or unavailable,” said Aaron Wetzel, VP of production and precision ag production systems.

The SATCOM solution will connect both new and existing machines through satellite internet service and ruggedized satellite terminals. This will enable autonomy, real-time data sharing, remote diagnostics, enhanced self-repair solutions, and machine-to-machine communication, all of which help farmers work more efficiently while minimizing downtime, according to John Deere.

“We are bringing satellite communications service to the farm at scale so farmers with cellular coverage challenges can maximize the value of connectivity to their operations,” said Jahmy Hindman, senior VP & CTO.

He adds that the SpaceX partnership “unlocks the John Deere tech stack so every farmer can fully utilize their current precision agriculture technology in addition to the new innovative solutions they will deploy in the future.”

But, by adding a third-party telematics solution into the data ecosystem, many online are wondering who controls the data (and access to it) as it passes through the Starlink system on its way to or from the Operations Center?

John Deere users with those concerns can rest assured that “we don’t anticipate any changes there, the customer still controls it,” said Mike Kool, senior product manager - connected fleets.

Kool also shared that John Deere has been working on its fleet connectivity project for the last 18-24 months. Starlink’s Leo constellation of low-orbit satelittes delivered the “high bandwidth and low latency” performance Deere was seeking.

“This solution fits our customer needs today and it also allows them to grow in the future,” said Kool. “The way I like to think about it is we’re giving our customers their time back, giving them more time to do the things they love to do. They have a very important job in feeding and clothing the world, and doing so on less arable land today. I believe wholeheartedly this will further unlock the power of our tech stack.”

Deere has yet to outline how the new Starlink features will be priced. Kool said those details are still in the works, so stay tuned.

To activate the Starlink solution, John Deere dealers will install a ruggedized Starlink terminal on compatible machines, along with a 4G LTE JDLink modem to connect the machine to the John Deere Operations Center.

The service will initially be available through a limited release in the United States and Brazil starting in the second half of 2024, according to the company.

New Technology Aims to Improve Early Disease Detection in Swine Herds

Thu, 22 Sep 2022 04:13:06 GMT

The winning project in the Merck Animal Health High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award contest aims to improve early disease detection in swine herds by implementing next-generation technology that monitors the feeding and drinking behavior of pigs, as well as their weight gain, to detect acute and chronic illnesses and anomalous events.

Led by Tami Brown-Brandl, PhD, professor of Biological Systems Engineering at the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the project titled “Next-Generation Grow-Finish Swine Health and Growth Monitoring,” utilizes radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on the ear of each pig that track when it eats and drinks. This allows researchers to pick up on the pigs that go off feed more quickly. Depth cameras are used in tandem to measure the weight of the pigs, providing more accuracy than the naked eye and experience alone.

As with humans, when pigs don’t feel well, the animal will typically eat and drink less. Inspiration for the technological breakthrough came for Brown-Brandl and her team, which includes Yijie Xiong and Raj Sharma, following an outbreak of pneumonia in their research barns. They had been monitoring the eating and drinking habits of the pigs and noticed that feeding behavior was off days before animal care takers noticed pneumonia in the pigs.

“The RFID tag goes in the ear of the pig, and when the pig puts its head in the feeder, the system will pick up the ear tag and record that the pig’s head was in the feeder. If the pigs are just walking by the feeder, it doesn’t pick the tag up. The pig’s head actually has to enter the feeder,” Brown-Brandl says. “This will allow us to detect animals that go off feed for a variety of reasons. We might not be able to pick up the specific type of illness, but we’ll pick up places in which we need management intervention and can say, ‘Please go check this group of animals because these animals are off of feed.’”

One of the great things about the RFID technology being utilized is that it’s scalable. Whether it’s a small farm or large commercial operation hogs, the technology and monitoring system will work.

The other aspect of the project focuses on weighing the hogs. In commercial operations, judging which animals have reached market weight is done on visual observation by the animal caretaker who has to make a judgement call, Brown-Brandl says. It takes experience and can be difficult. That’s where depth cameras can come into play.

“The second part of our project will be to monitor the weight of all the pigs on a daily basis, which we’re doing with a special camera called a depth camera. It gives you the distance from the camera to all the pixels, this allows us to capture the volume of the pig, and that volume is very closely related to weight,” she says.

A secondary goal for the project is to then create a dashboard of all the data that a producer or animal caretaker could use to see a quick snapshot of what’s going on with their herd, and more quickly and easily intervene should an issue arise.

“With a dashboard, you can pull the information in and summarize it, and then a producer can quickly look at it and say ‘Okay, these are the pigs that I know I need to look at. I have three pigs in pen six I need to look at. And I have 25 pigs in pen eight that are ready to be marketed.’ Being able to put that dashboard together so the producer can see it before going to the barn will make the job more efficient,” Brown-Brandl says.

The Merck Animal Health High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award builds on the company’s heritage and commitment to scientific excellence and innovation. When the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the original format of the High-Quality Pork Award, in which the winner would travel to three different Merck Animal Health High- Quality Pork events around the world, the company decided to take its focus on innovation and technology and make it central to the revamped High-Quality Pork — Precision Farming Award.

Instead of the typical essay format, entrants completed a virtual “Shark-Tank”-like pitch process that included a video, and now Brown-Brandl will partner with the judge who scored her team’s project highest to test and implement the idea, much as the “Shark” works with the entrepreneur that pitches their product on the show. The award also includes a grant of up to $200,000 to implement the project, says Rika Jolie, DVM, PhD, global swine lead for Merck Animal Health (known as MSD Animal Health outside of the U.S. and Canada).

“There were 32 total entries from around the world, and 30 of them really fit all of the entry criteria. This shows that there is a very strong interest, and a lot of innovators out there, to bring digital technology into swine farms,” says Jolie.

The judges were impressed with Brown-Brandl’s project in particular because it was well-rounded, addressing labor efficiencies as well as animal well-being, Jolie says.

“It was well-rounded with respect to animal well-being and the efficiency of labor of activities on the farm, and also efficiencies around raising the animal and bringing the animal to market and making the right decision around which animals are ready to go to market,” Jolie says.

As for future applications, in addition to the potential for better animal care, Brown-Brandl also hopes this system could help with the labor retention issues that are seen in the swine industry by changing some aspects of the job and making them more technology based.

“We have a really hard time getting people into taking care of pigs. There’s a turnover issue and finding a sick pig in a pen is not something you can necessarily put in a training video. It takes time. You can show a new employee how to find a sick pig, but until they’ve done it for a while, they aren’t going to be as effective,” Brown-Brandl says. “I think this technology will help even experienced people find sick pigs faster, but is especially important for less experienced people.”

This Technology Makes Any Sprayer Smarter

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 04:16:13 GMT

Reducing herbicide usage by 97% pre-emergence and 88% post-emergence, the team at Greeneye Technology are working to make it the ‘next-big-thing’ in sprayer technology .

Since launching its precision spraying system commercially into the US earlier this year, the Israel-based company has been working with early adopter farmers in the Midwest. There, CEO Nadav Bocher and his team are applying their focus to provide farmers with significant savings on their herbicides cost while enabling better efficacy in herbicide application.

Whether it’s saving money on inputs or using more effective products to help farmers achieve better weed control and manage herbicide-resistant weeds, Greeneye Technology has brought to the table a ‘smart’ way of spraying weeds in the field.

The Installation

With the idea of ‘after-market first,’ Greeneye Technology created a sprayer boom designed to retrofit any existing sprayer machine. Much like a skid steer attachment, the entire existing, factory boom is replaced with the fully equipped Greeneye boom.

The one-tank system on the average sprayer is changed out with a two-tank system. The Greeneye aluminum boom uses the existing sprayer line coupled with its own to provide the capability of spraying broadcast residual while target spraying weeds precisely with contact herbicides via the Greeneye line.

The Greeneye boom arrives intact with its 12 graphics processing units (GPU), 24 cameras, 144 sprayer nozzles and pulsating lights, which allows the sprayer to run around the clock.

(Farm Journal)

The Data

Using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the sprayer gets ‘smarter’ with every pass of a field.

The cameras are set up in a grid-like pattern, where each frame consists of a 10 by 10-inch square. Each camera serves as the ‘eye’ for 6 nozzles. When running through the field, the cameras are scanning the area one meter in front of the machine, which allows the technology to process the images and signal the selected nozzles to engage for application when the boom passes over the identified weed.

As the sprayer runs through the field, data is collected to provide the farmer with valuable insights to be housed in an online dashboard.

The AI scans the photos with high resolution and is able to identify weeds down to the species level, as well as the stages of maturation of each weed.

Operation

According to Greeneye’s sprayer operator, Jackson Bakken, the system is user-friendly. With only a couple more buttons to engage and its own screen, operating the equipment does not require a huge learning curve to overcome.

If a breakdown occurs, Greeneye provides sprayer operators access to a 24/7 ‘hotline’ located in Israel to help diagnose and fix the sprayer from afar.

The sprayer has two modes, green vs. brown and green vs. green. Green vs. brown, used during pre-emergence or a fallow situation, tells the sprayer nozzles to activate on all ‘green’ plant life. The green vs. green mode looks at each frame and deciphers the weeds from the crop.

The sprayer also has a sensitivity range to be determined by the operator and a default program that tells the sprayer to automatically spray if the boom reaches a certain height above ground where the cameras can no longer detect if a weed is present.

On average, Greeneye Technology sprayers can be operated at 13 miles per hour through the field.

Working with early adopter farmers in the Midwest this year, 97% and 88% of chemical usage was reduced for pre- and post-emergence herbicide spraying, respectively.

One farmer who committed acres to Greeneye Technology this year, explains how he could see the Greeneye system as being more manageable for the farmer operator—less chemical sprayed, less fill-ups and fewer people and time committed.

Additionally, with less inputs being used overall, farmers are given the opportunity to use more expensive and more effective product options that may not have been in the budget previously.

The Future of Greeneye

Looking ahead to 2023, Bocher explains that the demand for the Greeneye solution will be greater than supply. This is mainly due to supply chain issues that have hampered the manufacturing of the equipment. However, Bocher still plans to deploy dozens of Greeneye systems in the fields next year.

This year, Greeneye offered its early adopter farmers ‘spraying as a service.’ In 2023, farmers will have the opportunity to purchase their own system, which can be retrofitted to any brand or size of sprayer. A majority of Greeneye users in 2022 have already committed to buying a system in 2023, Bocher says.

Greeneye Technology also plans to move its manufacturing to the Midwest in 2023.

The 2023 model will include a global positioning system (GPS) and provide farmers with a mobile app to display information, similar to its online dashboard. Expanding its precision application capabilities to other inputs, such as fungicides and micronutrients, and introducing further field analysis capabilities will also be priorities in future models.

Currently, Greeneye Technology has focused on corn and soybeans in its initial development, however work has already begun to integrate wheat and cotton to the lineup.

Bocher explains a Greeneye Technology sprayer will be available to farmers in the U.S. via pay-per-acre, purchase or lease options next year.

With the input savings and efficiency of the technology, Bocher believes a system can be paid off within 12-18 months.

At this time, 2023 prices are estimated to be released mid-summer.

The company also recently announced its first in-field testing to take place later this year in Brazil.

“2022 has already proved to be a milestone year for Greeneye Technology, following our hugely successful launch in North America, and we are delighted to announce the next exciting stage in our global expansion,” Bocher says.

Co-Ops Open the Door for High-speed Broadband and More Use of Precision Ag

Wed, 25 May 2022 03:56:51 GMT

According to a new report from CoBank’s Knowledge Exchange, agricultural cooperatives are in an ideal position to work with communication companies to deliver carrier-grade, high speed private wireless networks to their farmer members at costs that were unthinkable just a few years ago. Such networks allow for greater adoption of precision ag applications that can help farmers produce more efficiently.

“Offering these network solutions could be a new, reliable revenue source for U.S. farm supply cooperatives, helping them to offset the highly competitive and volatile business of fertilizer, chemical and other input sales,” said Kenneth Scott Zuckerberg, lead grain and farm supply economist with CoBank.

The lack of affordable, reliable broadband access in rural America, has hindered widespread adoption of precision ag technologies. That may be changing with the increasing availability of private wireless networks. Today a wide range of entities and organizations can enter the wireless network business and deliver broadband access in areas where it was previously scarce, if not unattainable.

While the idea that agricultural co-ops should take the lead in developing private wireless networks sounds aggressive, Zuckerberg said co-ops are in a much better position than individual farmers to do so for several key reasons, including greater financial resources and their service-based orientation.

Click here for the full report

The Federal Communications Commission’s decision in 2018 to make 150 MHz of spectrum available in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band was the catalyst for private wireless networks, said Jeff Johnston, lead communications economist for CoBank. With speeds in excess of 100Mbps and options for customization, these networks are a self-sufficient solution to support on-farm broadband demand for precision ag technologies.

“Opening up the CBRS band essentially democratized building and owning carrier-grade wireless networks,” said Johnston. “Prior to this, schools, cities and businesses in unserved areas would either have to beg the national operators to build coverage where they needed it, or build their own Wi-Fi networks, which are far inferior to the standards-based private wireless networks.”

With CBRS, organizations now have access to the same spectrum as well as standards-based equipment that the national operators use since CBRS has fostered a broad ecosystem of manufacturers, added Johnston.