Texas A&M Undergraduate Student Wins Award for Research on Value of Ag Aviation Industry

Last week NAAA learned that a member of the Texas A&M University team researching the economic value of the agricultural aviation industry won an award for her work on the project. Kaitlynn Hughes won the Food Distribution Research Society (FDRS) 2024 Best Undergraduate Research in Food Distribution and Marketing award at the FDRS annual conference in Puerto Rico.

Kaitlyn is an undergraduate student in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M University. She is advised by Dr. Senarath Dharmasena, also with Texas A&M, and Dr. Daniel Martin, who is part of the USDA-ARS Aerial Application Technology Research Unit. The work by this team focuses on documenting the economic value the agricultural aviation industry has on the economy. Their work has been presented during the Aerial Application Technology Session at several Ag Aviation Expos: 2020, 2021, and 2023, which was presented by Kaitlyn.

NAAA uses the valuable information from these studies to provide evidence of the importance of the agricultural aviation industry to government agencies, politicians, pesticide registrants, and the public. Some key statistics gleaned from the research include:

• The annual value of the agricultural aviation industry to the U.S. economy for just corn, soybean, wheat, cotton, and rice is $37 billion.
• Without ag aviation, the U.S would see a loss of 1.7 billion bushels of corn every year.
• 27.4 million acres of additional cropland would be needed every year to support the current yields for corn, soybean, wheat, cotton, and rice if aerial application was not available to protect these crops, this is land equivalent of the state of Tennessee.

NAAA congratulates Kaitlyn on her well-deserved award!