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Film OriginalsAgricultural Aviation (1955)

How airplanes and helicopters help farmers. With excellent Kodachrome footage of cropdusting and crop spraying; insecticides and their application, and pests in action.


This movie is part of the collection: Prelinger Archives

Producer: Film Originals
Sponsor: National Association of State Aviation Officials
Audio/Visual: Sd, C
Keywords: Aviation: Agricultural; Aviation: General; Agriculture: Herbicides and pesticides

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: DeluxeReissue - - September 5, 2008
Subject: Help - I'm choking.
Nice visuals of crop spraying, bugs dying, small planes and helicopters.

I just feel sorry for the cameraman in this - I'm assuming he died a terrible death sometime after making this as he must breath in a ridiculous amount of these killer chemicals during the filming.

Reviewer: Christine Hennig - - April 6, 2003
Subject: Agricultural Aviation
We're talking crop-dusting, folks. Planes and more planes and helicopters, too, spraying chemicals on everything in sight. Like Crow says in the msting of The Truck Farmer, "There's nothing we can't spray!" The mst3k gang would have had a field day with this one, especially when they get to the part about tobacco farming. This is one to take to your next msting party. Just make sure there's no organic food fanatics comingit would give them a heart attack!
Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - December 16, 2002
Subject: Mmmm! Chemicals!
This shocking 1955 film, features plane apon plane spraying gallons of dangerous chemicals such as DDT and 245tp. Nice close-ups of dying insects are shown. Not shown, side effects after exposure to humans. It's amazing to see how naive people were in 1955. In film after film, they're just whooping it up, with not a care in the world, and we have now these films to prove how grossly wrong their ideologies were.

Shotlist

VS cropduster over cotton fields
CU boll weevil on cotton boll
CU Cartoon of boll weevil on airplane rudder
GS US Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC
CU hand pouring contents of graduated cylinder into beaker
VS agricultural research activities Ð greenhouses, fields, chemicals, etc.
VS biplanes dusting and spraying crops (good)
Some of this footage is quite scary
Experimental cropduster
VS Black child looking at cotton, smelling bolls
VS CU boll weevils on cotton bolls
MS workers picking cotton in fields, lugging bags, dumping bags of picked cotton onto trailer
CU sprayer applying cotton defoliants to field (idea is to thin out vegetation by killing leaves)
VS helicopters spraying defoliants in San Joaquin Valley, California
CU bolls on defoliated plants
Mechanical picker going thru field of rank and matted cotton
Apple orchards in the Northwest:
VS windfall damage and pre-harvest drop
Worker inspecting apple from tree
Helicopter landing and receiving filling of growth regulator chemicals
2,4,5 TP Ð growth regulator for apples
Helicopter spraying growth regulator as it flies over Northwest river
ECU apple stems connecting apple to tree
CU Northwest applies in boxes
Biplane spraying DDT
VS tobacco field and tobacco leaves
CU tobacco leaves attacked by tobacco hornworm
CU insect-infested corn field (killed by grasshoppers)
Leaves and stalks with holes from insects
CU tobacco leaves chewed by insects
CU green pest on leaf
Narrator: ÒInsecticides are poisonousÉÓ
VS CU insect writhing after application of insecticides
VS muddy wheat fields before planting
Bags of fertilizer being loaded into airplane
VS fertilizing wheatfield (wheat booster) in partly snowy wheat field
VS weeds
VS LS cropduster laying down weed emergence herbicides over field (good)
Air-to-air shot showing plane spraying 2,4-D on field (moving shot)
CU seeds bombed with 2,4-D
LS two cropdusters marked ÒMarshÓ
ECU weeds, progressive shots after application of 2,4-D
Narrator: ÒAgricultural aviation is a young giant, rapidly coming of age.Ó
CU cotton being dumped into bin right by camera (good)
Cropduster flying by camera (good)