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Home / Washington Business - November/December 2007 / Profile: Tom Dent - Owner, Dent Aviation |
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Profile: Tom Dent - Owner, Dent Aviation |
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Written On: November/December 2007 |
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Written By: by Daniel Brunell |
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The next time you drive through the Moses Lake area, look up. You might see a single-seat yellow airplane swooping low over a field of alfalfa, trailing a fine mist. Making a tight turn perilously close to the ground and coming back for another pass, the plane could be in the hands of Tom Dent, a veteran crop duster from Othello, Wash.
Dent has been in the crop-dusting business—or aerial application of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides to crops—for more than 25 years. His family moved to Othello in 1955 when plentiful irrigation water came to the area via the Columbian Basin Project. After attending Big Bend College, Dent worked various jobs.
At that time, some of Dent's friends were private pilots just flying for fun. A few made extra money flying crop dusters for local farmers. After going up with them several times, Dent was hooked. By 1975, he finished an intense pilot's training course and became a flight instructor. He worked as a commercial pilot for several years and, in 1984, he opened Tom Dent Aviation in Moses Lake. The business is a family enterprise with Dent doing the flying and his wife, Dana, handling the books. His son, Monte, also helps out.
Crop dusting is an important part of the national agriculture picture. Since its inception in the early 1920s, the industry has expanded to more than 3,200 pilots and operators in the United States. More than a quarter of American crops rely on aerial application for at least some of their needs.
But why use airplanes for this? "The biggest factor is time. We are much faster than a ground rig," said Dent. "Some plant diseases can go through a field in a manner of days. Fast application is important. Also, we don't compress or damage the soil, we can cover more area and we're more flexible."
Aerial application provides a flexible tool for farmers to apply the crop-growing aids they need—exactly when and where they need them. This interdependency between crop duster and farmer creates a close relationship. "This is a service business, and you have to know where farmers are coming from," said Dent. "Farmers put a lot on the line when they plant a crop. This is the type of business where you have to know your customers, get along with them, and know what their needs are."
The technology of crop dusting goes back more than 80 years. In a 1921 experiment in Ohio, lead arsenate dust was spread over catalpa trees to kill sphinx moth larvae. Under the direction of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Lt. John A. Macready, a U.S. Army pilot, made the first application with a modified 90-horsepower Curtiss JN-6 Super Jenny fitted with a 32-gallon hopper. The experiment was a success, and a new industry was born. Today, Dent's 1,050-horsepower Air Tractor AT-602 could fly circles around the old Jenny and carries 630 gallons of chemicals.
One of the big changes in the crop dusting industry since the early days is the chemicals used. Since the 1960s, the chemicals used on food crops have been required to meet stringent ecological, health and safety standards. Aerial application introduces an additional factor—drift. When the spray from an aircraft drifts in the wind—or due to the plane’s own wingtip vortices—it can end up in unintended areas. This is a serious concern for farmers, pilots and government regulators.
To combat the problem, Dent and others in the crop-dusting industry devised ways to reduce drift. New, innovative solutions were developed, including shorter spray booms and specialized nozzles designed to control the application of chemicals more precisely. The results have been wildly successful. By implementing these changes, Dent and the rest of the industry have made crop dusting more accurate, more efficient and safer.
So, the next time you see a crop duster, be aware of his contribution to the food on your table. Far from being a daredevil, he's a vital link in the food production chain that feeds each and every one of us.
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