NAAA and HAI’s Participation in Precision Application Field Day Reaches MAHA Commission and EPA Staffers
Last week, the NAAA and Helicopter Applicators, Inc. (HAI), the aerial application operation out of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania led by Glenn Martin, participated in a two-day precision agriculture field day to demonstrate the progressive technologies and application techniques used by pesticide applicators to maximize efficiency and protect the environment. The audience for the demonstrations included key ag and health advisors to President Trump, including one of the architects of the controversial Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, USDA, the EPA’s Office of Water, and the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. Calley Means, Senior Adviser to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and MAHA initiative advocate, attended the first day of the precision agriculture event. The MAHA Commission, a presidential advisory body focusing on childhood chronic diseases in the U.S., recently released its hastily constructed initial assessment using both outdated and judicially discredited studies critical of a number of pesticides some no longer in use today. Click here to read more. Also attending was Kip Tom, former Trump Administration U.S. Ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture, and Jason Becker, White House agricultural advisor.
The second day of the event included over fifty federal staffers, mostly from EPA, including Director of the Office of Pesticide Programs Ed Messina.
NAAA and HAI manned a station that included a Bell Long Ranger ag helicopter. The station demonstrated the sophisticated technology, including different nozzles, global positioning satellite systems, onboard meteorological technology, flow control systems, droplet sizing software, etc., enabling aerial applications to be targeted and efficacious. HAI pilot Chris Heffner performed two different live aerial application demonstrations to the crowd in attendance.
The precision ag demonstration event was organized by the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) in Newburg, Maryland, at Chip Bowling’s family farm. Bowling’s family has farmed in Maryland for seven generations, and he was former chairman of both the National Corn Growers Association and the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance. NAAA thanks HAI, AEM and Chip Bowling for their great work in making the event a success.
