New Zealand - Airplane
- Aerial topdressing is a dawn to dusk operation. At first light the Fletcher faces down strip, the truck rig edges close and manoeuvres so that the canvas snout of the scoop fits squarely over the aircraft hopper. In thirty seconds, the Fletcher is loaded. The truck pulls back and another topdressing run starts. The operation is repeated every three minutes until high winds force a halt, or a stop is made for a meal.
- 1960s
- Image from The Weekly News Annual
#603983
- Aerial topdressing is the aerial application of fertilisers over farmland using agricultural aircraft. It was developed in New Zealand in the 1940s and rapidly adopted elsewhere in the 1950s.
- Initial interest in New Zealand concentrated on seed sowing, but much of New Zealand's central North Island farmland, given to returned servicemen after World War I, had proven deficient in trace minerals such as cobalt, copper and selenium, forcing difficult topdressing by hand in rough country, or abandoning the land for forestry. The possibility of using aircraft was soon investigated.
- Spreading superphosphate by agricultural aircraft was independently suggested in 1926 by two New Zealanders, John Lambert of Hunterville and Len Daniell of Wairere. There was some publicity when in 1936 Hawkes Bay farmer Harold McHardy used a de Havilland Gypsy Moth to sow clover seed on his own land. This led the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council to decide to fund aerial sowing and topdressing trials in 1937 to prevent erosion, but little progress was made, despite strong advocacy by Doug Campbell.
- At that time it was illegal to drop anything from an aircraft, which dissuaded several advocates who felt a law change was needed before experiments could begin.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_topdressing)
- Weekly News Annual
Wilson & Horton Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand
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