I spent several years crop-spraying in the UK, great fun. Can't remember the figures, but certainly one of the significant selling points was that in fact it was cheaper than using a tractor based purely on the amount of field sacrificed to tractor and trailer (if applic) wheels. It also had the great benefit of swift application, which (as I recall) was particularly critical for things like potato blight and a type of insect which attacked grain whose name I forget.
Marvellous job, staright out of HM forces, and hurtling around at 60 knots and two to three feet, under the power lines, under the telephone wires. Rule of thumb - if a combine can get under here, so can I. Didn't always work, but was very fortunate never to hit anything thicker than a phone line! Several pheasants and partridge etx in the canopy, and loads desperately flying ahead of you only to rise through the rotor blades with a thump of blood, bones and feathers all over the windshield.
As someone said, killed by over regulation and compensation culture, though one has to sympathise with people getting the downwind spraydrift all over cars, gardens, houses, fishfarms, etc. Worst thing, thinking back was how as pilots we were assured the stuff was relatively harmless (no probs mate, you could DRINK a pint of this!!!) and now discovering a lot of the relevant chemical is banned and just BTW carcinogenic. Great times though, but not a career. Certainly wouldn't like to try any of that again.
