Aussie bob,
Sadly there is an element of truth in what you have stated, all be it small, but i would like to counter somewhat as it is a bit of an exaggeration and contains a few misconceptions.
you wouldn't want to be flying under wires in a fully laden 802 in high winds
802's aren't flown under wires, they don't fit as a rule. Also the optimum height for spray applications for the likes of M18's and 802's is about wire height. It is all about sedimentation velocity of the chosen droplet size and the influence the aircraft has on the spray pattern.
It is important to understand the relationship between drift and wind. When conducting an application over a crop with a canopy as opposed to bare soil, as a general rule the stronger the wind the less drift.
Sounds counter intuitive but it is factual, the wind creates swirling eddies over the crop that drive the spray through the crop, the result is more spray droplets having an opportunity to come into contact with the plant foliage. Light winds often result in greater off target product drift. Anything less than a 3 kt breeze and you stop and wait until it improves the loss of effectiveness is clearly visible with herbicides under light breezes. There is a qualifier here though, whilst there is less quantity of chemical that drifts off target in strong winds the smaller amount that does can drift further as the water carrier (if water based) evaporates and leaves a fine dry particle of chemical. The other advantage of a strong wind say 15 to 25 kts is that the direction of drift will be easily determined as such it makes planning a job with regard to downwind sensitive areas much more accurate. Light winds tend to waft about in direction and makes the job tricky when working around sensitive areas.
I spent 7 years as an Ag Pilot (left in 03) I came into the industry with a very high standard of environmental awareness and ethics, some may say I border on being a greeny, fair enough. I must say during my time i did see a few things that made me cringe but on the whole I was very proud of the environmental standards adopted by the industry, rarely (but not never) was i put under pressure to bend environmental standards. Although my time was in the southern regions and not on cotton I was impressed the most by the guys who worked the cotton crops. It may not have always been a personal green bent they possessed but by hell 90% were **** scared of a drift claim and would be extremely reluctant to take a risk. If there was a weak link sadly I would have to say it was the mixer crews who were a little slap happy, but their lot falls under the pilots responsibility to some extent so pilots would try to educate the guys, but it is always a balancing act as the ground guys do work hard for little thanks so you can't ride them too hard.
I can confidently imagine in the 10 years I have been out of it that standards have continued to improve from what was already a high standard and that the AAAA's continues to drive the message of high standards and worlds best methods that it always had. The industry was nearly killed off in the mid 80's by cowboys, they learnt the hard way, from that point, the turnaround was impressive.
No one is a fan of pesticides at a simplistic level, an old boss once said,... "I only know one latin word, cide, it means death". But without them yield/area would be down so more area would be needed to produce the same amount. In the history of pesticides there is as i am aware no recorded loss of species attributed to them. There is however a very long and sobering list of extinction attributed to loss of habitat.
If you don't like pesticides and I don't either, then support population control. To quote David Suzuki...."what ever your cause it is a lost cause without population control"