Tending to crops by air

Tending to crops by air

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Besides using tractors and combines and ground based machinery to take care of crops, many farmers also employ planes and helicopters to spread fertilizer, deliver other chemicals, even plant some crops. What we used to call a crop dusting plane. And also I found a helicopter standing beside the aircraft. We found Jim Perrin. Speaker2: I'm an operator from Wisconsin, and I fly a fixed wing aircraft there in Wisconsin. This is my 30th season, and in that 30 years, the changes and advancements in technology are pretty impressive. I've got air conditioning and I need air conditioning. Everything's done via GPS, for instance. When I land, my wife will email me a job file with a shapefile that'll pop up on my computer screen. Inside the airplane, we can take a look at the weather suitable for doing it and then go ahead and have the crew mix up the load for that, go out, spray that field with the prescription that's got to go on that individual field. We are indeed precision ag. The pilots not, for instance, trying to fly over anybody's house to irritate anybody or looking at anybody's backyard. It is a professional that's doing that job. I think throughout the industry we've seen promising surgeon professionalism. Speaker1: And Tim Perrin says a big reduction in accidents. The major problem the industry has right now is a shortage of both pilots and ground workers, same as for almost all sectors of agriculture these days.
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