About Crop Dusting
Agricultural products that are grown outdoors often need to have a number of different applications put onto them. These include fertilizers, insect repellents and fungicides, but also include a number of other things depending on what the farmers' goals are. Since many fields of crops are often too large to spray by hand, specialized airplanes and sometimes helicopters are used to spray large fields quickly and efficiently. This is called crop dusting, and been used for many years, though recently there have been environmental issues surrounding the act.
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History
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Crop dusting first occurred in 1906 in New Zealand and involved using a hot air balloon to drop a large amount of seeds on swampland below. In the 1920s, that idea was taken and turned into what is traditionally referred to as crop dusting today. It involved an airplanes dusting a field in Ohio with lead arsenate in order to kill invasive caterpillars. As crop dusting became more popular, water bombing was introduced in the mid-1950s to combat wildfires, and crop dusting at night became more apparent during the 1970s as insects reacted to crop dusting during the day and managed to hide further down the plants.
Features
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Aircraft used for crop dusting are generally created specifically for the task. This is because there are a number of features that the aircraft have to allow them to perform this specific task. All crop dusting craft have elongated tubes that are used to spray out fertilizers, pesticides, or water. These tubes allow the pilot of the craft to aim the product so that the spraying is controls. Many aircraft have a series of lights to work at night, and others have longer than average wings to allow them to spray a larger surface area.
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Types
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There are a couple different types of crop dusting. Typical crop dusting involves the spraying of pesticides, insect repellents, seeds and fungicides. This is typically done with an airplane, but sometimes helicopters are used. Spraying fertilizer goes by a special term, which is called aerial topdressing. This is also done mainly by airplanes. Water bombing is when an aircraft either dumps water onto an area or sprays water with the use of a hose. This technique helps to battle wildfires mostly, and the work is done typically by a helicopter.
Benefits
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Many agriculture technicians choose to use crop dusting to apply various things to their crops because of the time and energy it saves. Many farms across the globe cover a large amount of area, which would be too difficult to dust or spray by hand. Crop dusting makes the application of various chemicals much easier, and allows for a number of runs each day, depending on what and how much needs to be applied.
Warning
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Crop dusting has come under heavy scrutiny because of the environmental hazards that are involved with it. Use of chemical pesticides in general has been known to cause cancer, and crop dusting may allow these chemicals to drift away from fields and pollute soil and water supplies. This is a bigger issue in third world countries, where workers are heavily affected by crop dusting chemicals. It has also been argued that insects will be able to adapt to crop dusting, which makes it a poor sustainable practice.
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