Corn run in 2007

by Bill Lavender

The Office of Indiana State Chemist of Purdue University quadruples its registered aerial applicators to 118 for 2007. In the same year, Illinois licensed aerial applicators exceed 275, also more than quadruple in number. In Indiana, an estimated 1.2 million acres of corn will have been treated by air this year, an unprecedented number. Out-of-state pilots will fly the majority of these acres. This spring, about 14 million acres of corn were planted in Illinois, up from 12 million, with a significant amount of it sprayed by air.

Such is the story throughout the corn-belt states, including key states Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. There have been huge “runs” before in aerial application, as the likes of green bugs in wheat and spider mites in soybeans. But to no one’s knowledge has there been a corn run in the United States of the magnitude of the one during the summer of 2007. To be able to better understand this phenomenon, AgAir Update visited five operations, four in Illinois and one in Indiana. The observations were unique and interesting in many ways, but in most cases, expected. The two prevailing observations were being overwhelmed with acreage to fly and the kind of tiredness that three weeks of intense flying can bring.

What is behind the quantum leap in aerial application on corn? Simple. Corn commodity prices and the potential for a 10-15% yield increase. In the corn-belt states, 200-bushel corn is a reality. When treated with a fungicide such as Headline by BASF, based on research, that yield can increase by as much as 20-25 bushels. With $4-corn, the grower can expect an additional $100 per acre in gross revenue. The cost for a fungicide application is $22-$25 an acre. That price includes product, aerial application and the retail chemical dealer’s services.

All of this becomes a simple decision for the grower. Book the work. It becomes a logistical nightmare for the chemical dealer and aerial applicator. Each ag-operation is faced with 100s of thousand of acres to spray in a three to four-week time period. Operations that typically run two, maybe three, aircraft are now faced with more work than can be done with ten! Every operation AgAir Update visited was using 8-10 or more aircraft, with the one in Indiana using 21. Any ag-pilot can imagine the coordination this requires.

AgriFlight — AgAir Update’s round robin, five-stop excursion began with David Eby’s AgriFlight in Wakarusa, Indiana. David has been running 21 aircraft, up from his typical three. He sets up five groups, four aircraft to a group, with one group having five. They operate from multiple strips in Indiana and Illinois, inside a 150-mile radius of Wakarusa. Semi-trailer trucks provide support to the aircraft, with the chemical dealers bringing “hot mixes” of chemicals (pre-mixed, ready to spray).

Through foresight and necessity, David and son, Ryan, developed a web-based scheduling system, Aerial Order Tracker. This Internet system is quite sophisticated in its design, but simple in its use. In summary, it allows the chemical dealer and the applicator to schedule work in real time, with email notifications when work is booked and completed. AgriFlight monitors the incoming work each day, scheduling that day’s work in the morning before application. The system allows for map grouping of the work, easing the coordination of where each plane needs to be. Ground ops are outfitted with laptops and PC cards that allow wireless connectivity at the airstrip. Once a job is completed, the AgriFlight office is notified through the Internet system. Next the chemical dealer is notified the job is finished. The chemical dealer can also monitor the progress of each order through the website. Billing is also incorporated into the system, making generating an invoice as simple as a click of the computer’s mouse.

Benoit Aerial Spraying — AgAir Update’s next stop was west of Wakarusa in Kankakee, Illinois to visit Steve Benoit of Benoit Aerial Spraying. Unfortunately, the day before, Steve had a run-in with anhydrous ammonia causing injury and a hospital stay. Not life threatening, but really bad timing. Fortunately for Steve, both his wife Carolyn and long-time pilot, David Kurtz, were able to run the show. During a typical season, Benoit Aerial Spraying uses three aircraft, two Walter-powered 500-gallon Thrush (Lindley Johnson conversions) and a piston-powered Thrush. This year the company is using eight aircraft, with Steve managing the ground ops before his accident. While AgAir Update was visiting, an operator from Lincoln, Illinois, Chuck Holzwarth, sent two aircraft to help Benoit Aerial Spraying.

Benoit Aerial Spraying uses plat maps with AgriData overlays. This is software sold by Sky Tractor of North Dakota. It allows for a more precise way to find the field through lat-longs, than just the plat map alone.

Reed’s Fly-On Farming — AgAir Update’s next stop the following day was at Mattoon, Illinois to visit Rick Reed of Reed’s Fly-On Farming.
“The season broke open for us all at once on Monday, June 25. Since then, it has been wide open, running eight aircraft the first week and six since then,” explains Rick.

About that same time, Rick took delivery of a new AT-502. On July 12 his new aircraft had flown over 70 hours, all the while with Rick coordinating six to eight aircraft.

Like most of the aircraft AgAir Update came in contact with, the 500-gallon versions were averaging 1,500 to 2,000 acres a day. There is plenty of corn acreage in Illinois, but it’s not blanket sectional applications. Many of the fields are cut up into smaller blocks, most less than 100 acres each, some a lot smaller. Often the pilots find themselves back in the same area the next day, turning over fields sprayed the day before, which isn’t the most efficient way to meet the demand.
“There needs to be a meeting of applicators, dealers and farmers this winter,” Rick stated. “If we are to cover the acreage dealers plan to book, somehow we have to coordinate better.”

Headline and other fungicide products like it, have to be applied during the tasseling stage, about a three to four-week window that occurs in relation to the planting date of the corn. The vast majority of the corn in Illinois and Indiana was planted in less than a two-week period. Without coordinated planting dates, the applicators were handed a hodgepodge of work, scattered throughout the state.

Operators in Illinois, like Reed Fly-On Farming, often depend on a certain amount of its profit coming from the sell of product. When the chemical dealers become involved with booking the acreage, this has an impact on the operator’s profit. But, there is value in the chemical dealers handling the growers and delivering the product. It is another issue that will have to be resolved this winter.

Reed’s uses the remarkable Garmin 396 and 496 GPS units to locate fields to be sprayed. Using a plat map to identify the field, the pilot simply places the Garmin’s pointer on the nearby township and follows the road from it to the field. On the Garmin, name and/or number identify roads. It is easy to use and is precise, plus the pilot is receiving real time weather through its Nexrad radar feature.

Lindell Aerial Ag Service — After a hardy lunch at the Mattoon airport restaurant, AgAir Update ventured north, close to the Illinois-Iowa state line, to visit Garrett Lindell of Lindell Aerial Ag Service in Aledo, Illinois. Garrett was a classic case of being overworked. He appeared to be dazed, very tired. He had been going since before 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. and even after midnight for more than three weeks, everyday. To his credit, after the first week of flying, he realized he was more effective coordinating ten aircraft from the ground. Any other year, Lindell’s was a two-airplane operation. This year was different.

Burning huge amounts of fuel every day, just keeping fuel available becomes a major task. With ten turbines in the air at one time, the fuel burn rate exceeds 500 gallons an hour. Figure in 14 to15-hour days and a tanker load of fuel doesn’t last very long, less than two days. An operator’s credit best be good, or else have a large supply of cash on hand for the fuel bills.

“We have been covering anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 acres every day for the last three weeks. Our office floor has been literally covered with work orders and maps,” explained Garrett. He and Jodi, his wife, have been diligently pointing the aircraft in the direction of those thousands of acres using plat maps and field descriptions. It was the same story, repeated at every stop AgAir Update made.

Chuck Holzwarth Flying Service — Landing at Lincoln, Illinois was the last stop for AgAir Update’s excursion with a visit at Chuck Holzwarth Flying Service. Chuck uses three aircraft for his operation, two AT-402s and an AT-602. But this year, he called in nine more from down south to help him. Running 11-12 aircraft, Chuck stayed behind the desk coordinating.

“Using AgriData overlays, we were able to handle the work,” Chuck said, thinking back about the last three weeks. With the AT-602 and AT-802s covering as many as 3,000 or more acres a day, while the AT-402s and AT-502s spraying 1,500 to 2,000 acres each day, one of Chuck’s biggest challenges was supplying fuel to the aircraft. “I estimate there were times we were burning over 900 gallons of fuel an hour,” he said.

Before the season started, Chuck’s company had 160,000 acres pre-booked. That number more than tripled during the three weeks of corn spraying. But, daylight was dawning; the company was down to five aircraft at the end of the three-weeks, with plans to send home two the following week, finishing up the season with the company aircraft.

“I cannot say enough good things about those pilots from the south. They saved our butts. We download almost every flight from their GPS. Checking randomly, the lines were some of the straightest I have ever seen. And, those boys worked as hard to do a good job that anyone could ask. They were the nicest bunch of pilots and just totally awesome.”

Epilogue — The corn run of 2007 for Illinois and Indiana is now history. It will be a time many ag-pilots will remember well. Even though 100s of pilots flew 100s of thousands of acres of corn, it was only a very small percentage of all the corn planted. There’s speculation if the fungicide applications work as well as the research plots, there will be no way all the corn planted in 2008 can be sprayed. The demand could easily double, triple, or even be much more. Others speculate there could be a glutton of corn, driving prices down, making the applications not feasible.

If there is a remote chance of 2007 repeating, it is going to take a large amount of coordination. Every applicator said there is room to improve efficiency. More than just improving efficiency, there will have to be thought given to other things. Working as guests from public airports and not having a loading dry break is unacceptable. Flying to and from fields, in areas where ag-planes are not commonly seen, or anywhere for that matter, must be done at 500 feet. It is hard to imagine in this day and time, there are pilots still flying without a helmet. Professionalism will have to prevail, or failure is immanent.

AgAir Update was told more than once, the face of ag-aviation in Illinois will not be the same after 2007. Breaking regulations will only induce more, whether it is flying too low, proper clothing, or whatever. If the demand for corn spraying is met, assuming it increases in 2008, there will have to be an open dialogue between dealers, applicators and growers, a dialogue that includes serious planning prior to corn planting time. On a positive note, it is truly remarkable the ag-aviation industry was able to complete spraying as many corn acres in such a short time as it did, a well-deserving reflection on its overall professionalism.