Agricultural aviators face tough times

The troubles in the commercial air

industry have had a ripple effect on a distantly

related business agricultural aviation.

Insurance rates for aerial applicators

better known as crop dusters have risen

in lockstep with the increases imposed on

commercial airlines since Sept. 11, 2001.

But it isn't due to the discovery that

some of the men involved in the terrorist

attack that day had investigated learning

how to fly crop dusters.

"It's because our insurers use the same

reinsurance market as the airlines," said Pat

Kornegay, owner of Sun Valley Dusting

Co., in San Benito, Texas, and president of

the National Agriculture Aviation

Association, at the group's national convention

in Reno last week.

"There has never been a terrorist incident

or attack using these type of aircraft,"

he said.

Kornegay estimates that rates have risen

an average of 30 percent.

But it isn't the only difficulty the industry

is facing.

"There's drought in agricultural areas

and commodity prices are in decline," said

Kornegay. "So there is a decreasing amount

of dollars dedicated to protecting crops."

And aircraft now equipped with Global

Positioning Systems are able to do the

same work as older planes in a fraction of

the time.

All those factors have led to a shake out

in the industry, said Kornegay.

"There is a trend toward smaller, more

efficient companies," he said.

That hasn't been all bad, said Jerry Frey,

owner of Frey-Spray in Fallon.

"It got rid of the flakes," said Frey.

"There used to be a bunch of yahoos in the

business.We've all been held at gunpoint a

number of times," by operators trying to

horn in on new territory.

Frey grew up in Fallon and has been in

the ag aviation business for 30 years. In

that time, he's seen Fallon transformed.

"It changes now on a yearly basis," he

said.

And he's seen the aerial application

industry in Nevada reduced to four operators

that blanket the state.

Frey-Spray, which owns three aircraft

and employs one other pilot and a bookkeeper,

covers about 350,000 acres annually

for 200 clients. The crops involved include

alfalfa for both hay and seed, timothy for

horses, and garlic for seed, said Frey.

That's only half the company's agricultural

business. Frey-Spray also has contracts

for 14 mosquito abatements around

the state's valleys. And Frey is looking at

doing firefighting work too, which uses the

same type of planes equipped with different

delivery systems. (Pesticides are

sprayed on crops while fire retardants are

dropped on fires.)

Frey is also in another line of business:

He flies a 10-seater Lear jet owned by a

wealthy California woman. At one time,

he chauffered her, but now he uses the

plane primarily to manage her different

properties on Martha's Vineyard, in

Oregon and in the San Francisco Bay

Area.

He got into that business, he said, when

a friend inherited a lot of money in the

1980s and he began flying Lear jets with

him in the winter, during the off-season of

the ag business. That led to an introduction

to the Californian heiress.

"The lady needed a pilot when the airlines

were already hiring a lot of pilots,"

said Frey.

Now that work takes up about half his

time.

But Frey said he still loves agricultural

work despite the moments at gunpoint,

the drastic changes in his hometown,

intense government regulatory oversight,

the $500,000 price tags on today's planes,

and the rise in insurance rates, which he

says have quadrupled in the last five years.

"It's a great way to make a living."