“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.
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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.