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Fiveon the Fly by Grant Boyd
WHO:
PHOTOS COURTESY OF AIR TRACTOR
1. Why is agricultural aviation important to everyone, including those who don’t live on a farm or have interests in agriculture?
Each year, 127 million acres of cropland are treated aerially, or 28 per- cent of the total cropland acres. This includes corn used for food and ethanol, cotton used for clothing, and rice, soybeans, fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. used for food. Aerial application also treats range and pas- tureland to feed livestock used for consumers’ dairy and meat consump- tion. Whether it is conventional cropland or cropland grown organically, aircraft are used to apply seeds to start crops, nutrients to feed crops and pesticides to protect crops until harvest. The industry also provides firefighting and public health application services to combat disease-
AndrewMoore carrying mosquitoes and other health-threatening pests.
2. How is the industry working together to minimize risk within the agricultural flying environment?
Similar to all of aviation – general, commercial or military – safety is
paramount for ag aviators. Flying ag introduces more risk into the fly- CEO ing equation due to making applications at just 10 feet above the crop
canopy typically at speeds above 100 mph. Flying at this altitude means flying below obstacles such as utility poles with accompanying wires and communication and meteorological evaluation towers. Many of these towers are unmarked. From 2008 to 2018, there were 22 agricul- tural aviation accidents from collisions with METs, communication tow- ers, towers supporting powerlines and wind turbines, resulting in nine fatalities.
For all of general aviation, there have been 40 tower-related accidents and incidents resulting in 36 fatalities over the same 11-year period. As
COMPANY:
National Agricultural Aviation Association
POSITION:
18 • TWIN & TURBINE / August 2020