Daylight Savings

What does it exist?

In layman terms, the aim of Daylight Savings is align our human activities with the sun, e.g. hanging out the laundry, watering the crops etc. However, not all human activities need to be aligned, take for example doing homework, watching a movie etc.

To complicate matters, we also like to put a time to our activities in order to coordinate and plan. Imagine how confusing it would be if your kids' school bus arrives at 7am or 8am depending on the time of year.

In the end, to make it easy to follow and understand, the approach was to switch to another timezone that aligns with the sun, so that the school bus will arrive at 7am everyday throughout the year, when there is already some sunlight.

In United States, New York, this switches between Eastern Standard Time (EST/GMT-4) and Eastern Daylight Time (EDT/GMT-5)

Impact on farming

While daylight saving time aims to align human activity with daylight, it poses unique challenges for the agricultural sector.

Farmers, especially those with livestock, face disruptions to carefully managed routines. For instance, dairy cows thrive on consistent schedules, and a sudden shift in milking time due to daylight saving can cause stress and affect milk production.

Because milk trucks are probably still coming at the same time per the clock, it means farmers can’t just change to keep milking times consistent for the animals.

Lack of awareness

Currently, about 70 countries – about 40% of those across the globe – adopt daylight saving. That means large groups in the remaining 60% of the world have no idea what this is all about.

It is already quite confusing to manually convert between timezones, throw Daylight Savings into the mix and there is a very high chance of getting the time wrong. that is when tools like World Time Planner can help ensure everyone gets the time right.