Image: European Space Agency
What’s new: A report on the impact and potential impact of solar activity on GPS/GNSS in November 2025. The report also includes a short discussion on the possible impacts on farming if it happened at another time of year.
Why it’s important: Farming increasingly depends on GNSS for precision planting, fertilzing, weeding, machine control, etc. Some estimates are that 40% or more of the food in the U.S. is produced by “precision agriculture” which is less expensive and more environmentally friendly than traditional methods.
What else to know:
- We saw similar reports about impacts on farming in May 2024 and from other events. See the links to some below.
- We wonder if precision agriculture is the most vulnerable, or at least one of the most vulnerable applications to GPS/GNSS interference. We did not see nearly as many media reports of problems from other industries/applications.
- Here are links to some of the other reports from farming:
Solar Storms Impact on Farming: 5 Critical Risks in 2025
Finnish Farmers And Foresters Suffer GPS Disruption – Agriland
Will the May 10 GPS outage affect farm profitability? – Michigan Farm News
Solar Storm Knocks Out Farmers’ Tractor GPS Systems During Peak Planting Season – 404 Media
What if GPS goes down? – AgWeb (GNSS in Agriculture)
Solar Science
The November 2025 geomagnetic superstorm pushed satellite-positioning errors beyond 10 metres in parts of the continental US, with interference stretching nearly coast to coast. Researchers warn that had it struck during spring planting, it could have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
A new reconstruction of the November 2025 G4 storm finds mid-latitude GPS interference across much of the United States, exposing a seasonal risk to precision farming.
