The Essential Nature of Aerial Application and NAAA

INSIGHTS

By Andrew Moore, CEO, National Agricultural Aviation Association

Aerial application has been, is and will continue to be essential.

The latest historically significant example of this stems from March 19, 2020, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce” identified those providing agricultural inputs as an economic sector with essential workers critical to public health and safety, as well as to economic and national security. The guidance went on to state that permitting these functions to continue during periods of community restriction, access management, social distancing or closure orders is crucial to the continuity of essential functions— like the food supply. Aerial applicators and crew didn’t skip a beat and continued to treat nearly a third of the nation’s cropland during the 2020 U.S. COVID-19 outbreak.

This industry being deemed essential by the federal government is not a unique occurrence. Perhaps most memorably, think back to 2001 and the tragedy of 9/11. The U.S. government shut down the airspace throughout the country after hijackers crashed airliners into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and an open field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Aerial application was the first sector of general aviation back in the air on Sept. 14, 2001, due to the essential service ag aviators were providing to defoliate cotton, protect potatoes from fungi, and combat wildfires and disease-carrying mosquitoes that late summer. Two more times the airspace was shut down to aerial applicators shortly thereafter due to intelligence uncovered showing the terrorists possessed information on ag aviation, but the essential service they provide, coupled with determining there was no security risk, resulted in those additional ground stops being lifted within 48 hours or less.

All of this didn’t occur in a vacuum. The National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA) was the conductor that orchestrated the government into action in these and a plethora of other cases.

Almost immediately after state quarantines began being issued nationally this past March, NAAA was in direct communication with officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Vice President Pence’s Coronavirus Task Force and the White House, effectively explaining that the aerial application industry was an essential service in light of the COVID-19 outbreak and needed to continue to provide that essential service. After succeeding, NAAA worked with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the FAA, the EPA and state pesticide certification agencies to successfully extend expiration dates for the many licenses required by our industry members due to government and nonemergency medical offices being shut down and unable to issue licenses.

In 2001, NAAA was in direct conversation with the White House, congressional leaders, and an alphabet soup of other federal offices including the FAA, DOJ, DOD, DOT, USDA, FBI and CIA to ensure the skies remained open for aerial applicators. And it worked due to our essential nature.

In a post-viral pandemic world will we remain essential? Certainly, if a safe, affordable and plentiful food supply, clothing, disease prevention and fire protection remain vital for human survival. Global demographics and diversifying as an industry will likely result in aerial application becoming even more vital.

The planet’s population is projected to grow from its current 7.8 billion souls to possibly 11 billion by the next century. That is a lot more clothing and food needed. Couple that with a return to the pre-pandemic pace of international travel and the threat of health-compromising microbes will likely increase as the planet’s petri dish of human carriers increases and returns to its international migration for business and leisure purposes.

And it is not just human diseases that will increase international travel in the future—crop and forest pests will do the same. Exotic pests typically require quick and effective applications of crop protection products to control their destructive spread. Quick and effective means aerial application.

Aerial application is essential for food, fiber, biofuel production and fire protection. In a post-coronavirus epidemic, our essentialness may even grow by providing more public-health protection services. NAAA will be leading the way communicating the invaluable nature of the industry to public officials, the media and the public at large.

If you aren’t an NAAA member yet, please join in preserving, protecting and promoting the essential nature of aerial application by joining your national association. The payoff far exceeds what you will spend in dues in the form of effective advocacy, national representation, education and safety programs. Visit AgAviation. org/membership or call (202) 546-5722 to learn more.