Ground VS Air

Often a farmer will be faced with a decision as to whether to treat their crop by ground application or aerial application.

Aerial Application has a number of advantages over ground based application. These include:

Advantages

Timeliness of operation

Zero Crop Damage

Zero Disease Transfer

Professional accurate application

Zero Soil Compaction

In order to assist our clients in assessing potential wheel track damage, we have built an online calculator. Simply enter in the assumptions below to calculate potential average wheel track damage per hectare.

Aerial Operations

Aerial Application (Spraying, spreading, seeding, baiting)

Forestry (Solid fertilizers & sprays)

Baiting (Snail & Mouse bait dispersal)

Plague Locusts (Insecticide Spraying)

And also

Seeding (CROP SOWING)

Oil Spill (SPRAYING DISPERSENTS)

For further details

Operations Gallery

Operations Downloads

Tips for using the Ground vs Air Calculator

As a general rule the more advanced the crop the greater the damage and the wetter the ground the greater the damage. When crops are more advanced the damage is multiplied, as the vehicle chassis tend to damage the crops as well as the wheels.

Damage will be greatest as tyre width increases and boom width decreases.

Crops often recover visually from being run over but often these areas lag behind the rest of the paddock and grain ripens later or not at all. Damage will obviously vary with crop type, crop stage and other variables but a rule of thumb seems to be an average of 40% damage (ie yield loss) to areas that are run over.

When calculating total machinery wheel width, don’t forget that if the front and rear types of the towing vehicle and the tyres of the spray unit don’t all run in the same wheel track, you will need to add these together. If they do run in the same wheel track, your total wheel track width will be less but the damage factor may be greater.

To convert feet to metres – multiply feet by 0.305

To convert acres to hectares – divide acres by 2.47