Farmers ‘crippled’ by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to

Farmers ‘crippled’ by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to
a halt

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Farmers ‘crippled’ by satellite failure as GPS-guided tractors grind to a halt
==============================================================================

##### By [Mike Foley](/by/mike-foley-p4yvn4 "Articles by Mike Foley")

April 18, 2023 — 5.39pm

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Tractors have ground to a halt in paddocks across Australia and New
Zealand because of a signal failure in the satellite farmers use to
guide their GPS-enabled machinery, stopping them from planting their
winter crop.

The satellite failure on Monday was a bolt from the blue for farmers in
NSW and Victoria, who were busy taking advantage of optimal planting
conditions for crops including wheat, canola, oats, barley and legumes.

A tractor pulling a seeder to plant the winter crop
in Balliang, Victoria. Credit:
Bloomberg

“You couldn’t have picked a worse time for it,” said Justin Everitt, a
grain grower in the Riverina who heads NSW Farmers’ grains committee.

“Over the past few years, all these challenges have been thrown at us,
but this is just one we never thought would come up.”

Tractors that pull seed-planting machinery, as well as the massive
combine harvesters that reap Australia’s vast grain crops, are high-tech
beasts that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Loading

They are enabled with GPS tracking and can be guided to an accuracy
within two centimetres, enabling seed-planting equipment to sow crops
with precision to drive up efficiency, prevent wastage and boost
environmental sustainability.

All that went out the window when the Inmarsat-41 satellite signal
failed.

Katie McRobert, general manager at the Australia Farm Institute, said
Australian farmers sourced their GPS signal from one satellite, which
was a critical risk to rural industries.

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“Having all your GPS eggs in one basket is a vulnerability on a good
day, and a fatal weakness on a bad one,” McRobert said.

“If the Medibank and Optus data breaches didn’t make the agriculture
industry sit up and take notice, the implementation of[kill switches on
stolen Ukrainian tractors in
2022](https://www.orchardandvine.net/news/john-deere-%E2%80%98kill-switch%E2%80%99-renders-stolen-tractors-useless/)
should have been a three-alarm wake-up call.

GPS-enabled precision planting equipment has been
grounded by a satellite signal failure.

“Digital literacy, capability and crucially, security, need to be
priority investment areas for the industry and the Australian
government.”

Chris Groves, chairman of the National Farmers Federation farming
systems committee, is planting canola, grazing wheat and oats on his
property between Canowindra and Cowra in NSW.

He said the winter cropping period had kicked off with a perfectly timed
autumn break — the first major rainfall event of the season that heralds
the crops’ growth period — but the GPS outage would probably mean major
costs and headaches for farmers.

“This is crippling for the farm community,” Groves said.

Chris Groves said the outage was crippling for the
farm community.Credit: Brent Young

“I was talking to a cousin of mine, he has been farming for 70-odd
years, and he reckons its as good an autumn break as he has ever seen,”
he said.

“But GPS is our guidance system that eliminates overlapping \[in rows of
seeds\] and over-application of chemicals, and when that system is down,
the machine is literally down.

Loading

“My planter is 32 rows wide; if I overlap by just two rows, that is 4
per cent I am losing out on. When you’re paying $1300 \[a tonne\] for
fertiliser, that really adds up very quickly.

“My crop sprayer relies on the GPS signal to tell the spray unit how
much chemical to put on, where it is in the paddock and how many nozzles
it needs working.”

There is no indication when the problem will be fixed.

Satellite provider Inmarsat said a fix was under way and customers would
be updated on progress.

***Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert
analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly
[Inside Politics newsletter here](/link/follow-20170101-p5apym).***

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License this article

- Agriculture
- Farming
- GPS
- Network outage

Mike Foley
is the climate and energy correspondent for The Age and The Sydney
Morning Herald.Connect via
[email](mailto:[email protected]).

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