THE state’s agricultural pilots are at full tilt as they attempt to meet the huge demand for aerial spraying and fertilising brought on by the wet winter. Many paddocks too boggy for ground rigs have spurred farmers to hurriedly call on the services of fixed wing and helicopter applicators to meet crop application windows.
Aerial Application Association of Australia chief executive officer Phil Hurst said parts of the state’s north and around Deniliquin and Griffith were the main pressure points. Other states, too, had unusually high demand.
“We’re seeing increased demand in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, NSW and even into Queensland, so we’re seeing quite a bit of work, and of course that has implications for the size of our workforce. You can’t make an ag pilot overnight,” he said.
Rebel Ag managing director, Julie Black, Trangie, was among those juggling the extreme demand with her current capacity. Her company has contracted two Jetranger Helicopters from Commercial Helicopters, based at Mudgee to assist her usual fleet of six fixed-wing turbine aircraft.
This week, Rebel Ag has seen a swing from in-crop herbicide to urea spreading and fungicides (for chickpeas) as the crops change growth phases.
“We have pilots from interstate giving us a hand and we’ve got our usual core pilots” she said.
“It’s gone beyond any scale – the demand has been extreme. At the moment the phones calls coming in have not stopped and given the forecast, it is likely to continue. We could have gone and got double the amount of aircraft, pilots and mixing vehicles and we probably still would not have kept up with demand.”
Commercial Helicopters pilot, Sam Nichols, said the helicopters were helping where extra care was needed in preventing drift, or where paddocks were too far from usable airstrips, which otherwise increased fixed-wing ferrying time.
Fieldair business manager, Stephen Holding, Ballarat, Victoria, said demand was strong through the southern Riverina, which the company serviced from its two main depots at Finley and Deniliquin.
“We’ve certainly seen in the southern Riverina early-season demand that we haven’t seen in many years,” Mr Holding said.
“It’s got wet to the point where it’s starting to hamper the airstrips we’d normally use – we are being limited by the number of suitable airstrips at the moment due to the wet conditions.”
He estimated Fieldair was receiving as much as four-fold the usual demand for June-July and some jobs remained unattended due to lack of serviceable airstrips.