LandMark updated its post Saturday, saying it expects that when farmers tend crops later, “rows won’t be where the AutoPath lines think they are”

This would be a interesting opening to a scifi story of autonomous farm equipment marching towards the city and wrecking havoc.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Farmers had to stop planting their crops over the weekend as the strongest solar storms since 2003 battered the GPS satellites used by self-driving tractors, according to 404 Media.

And the issues struck just days ahead of a crucial date for planting corn, one of the US’s biggest crops.

For parts of the Midwest, planting corn after May 15th can lower crop yields, according to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, particularly as the end of the month nears.

He said he uses the centimeter-level accuracy of the GPS system to plant his rows so close to his tractor’s path that a human being can’t “steer fast enough or well enough to not kill the crop.”

LandMark Implement, which owns John Deere dealerships in Kansas and Nebraska, warned farmers on Friday to turn off a feature that uses a fixed receiver to correct tractors’ paths.

LandMark updated its post Saturday, saying it expects that when farmers tend crops later, “rows won’t be where the AutoPath lines think they are” and that it would be “difficult - if not impossible” for the self-driving tractor feature to work in fields planted while the GPS systems were hampered.

The original article contains 328 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 41%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!