Wisconsin Crop Dusters Deal With Modern Technology

(AP) — The only part of Jim Kazmierczak's crop dusting business that fits one of the many stereotypes linked to his misunderstood profession is the cramped, one-seater Piper airplane with its wide wings and roaring engine that he pilots just a few feet over Wisconsin farm fields throughout the summer months. Big or small, crop dusters need more than great piloting and multitasking skills to succeed — and even survive — in their dangerous profession, which the National Transportation Safety Board said needs to be safer after it scrutinized 78 agricultural aviation accidents last year. Environmentalists peg them as menaces to organic farmers, while drone manufacturers say they're dinosaurs facing extinction within the next few years, the Wisconsin State Journal (http://bit.ly/1royn43 ) reported. Kazmierczak, 58, can tell them he's spraying to protect crops like field and sweet corn and soybeans, as well as potatoes, onions, green beans and sweet peas. JR Reabe, one of the owners of the state's largest crop duster companies, Waupun-based Reabe Flying Service, said some of the popular insecticides, fertilizers and other products he applies on farms are extremely similar to the organic products his company applies on organic farm crops. Kazmierczak's little Piper and Reabe's planes, called Air Tractors, and helicopter are also outfitted with high-tech equipment that can increase the size of droplets and shorten the width of the swath to eliminate the potential of a chemical drift. The NTSB said crop dusters are faced with unique hazards, challenges and constraints that can't be completely eliminated, heightening the need for focus on pilot skills to manage the aircraft, fatigue and risk to lessen the chance of an accident. Kazmierczak and Reabe, as well as Andrew Moore, the executive director of the National Agriculture Aviation Association, dismissed talk that drones will soon replace crop dusters.