Aerial application

Many countries have severely limited aerial application of pesticides and other products because of environmental and public health hazards like spray drift; most notably, the European Union banned it outright with a few highly restricted exceptions in 2009,[2] effectively ending the practice in all member states.

The first known aerial application of agricultural materials was by John Chaytor, who in 1906 spread seed over a swamped valley floor in Wairoa, New Zealand, using a hot air balloon with mobile tethers.

[4] Crop dusting was developed under the joint efforts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Army Signal Corps' research station at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio.

[4] The first commercial cropdusting operations began in 1924 in Macon, Georgia[6] by Huff-Daland Crop Dusting, which was co-founded by McCook Field test pilot Lt. Harold R.

Currently, the most common agricultural aircraft are the Air Tractor, Cessna Ag-wagon, Gippsland GA200, Grumman Ag Cat, PZL-106 KRUK, M-18 Dromader, PAC Fletcher, Piper PA-36 Pawnee Brave, Embraer EMB 202 Ipanema, and Rockwell Thrush Commander, but multi-purpose helicopters are also used.

[10][11] Since the 1970s, multiple countries started to limit or ban the aerial application of pesticides, fertilizers, and other products out of environmental and public health concerns, in particular from spray drift.

[12] In 2010, the United States Forest Service collected public comments to use within a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), which was developed because the Montana Federal District Court ruled that aerial application of fire retardants during wildfires violated the Endangered Species Act.