South Wairarapa aerial topdresser John Bargh marks 30,000 flight hours

John Bargh with his Air Tractor AT-402B, in the hangar on the family farm. Photo / RNZ / Sally Round

By Sally Round of RNZ

Aerial topdresser John Bargh goes the extra mile to do the job, even taking his Fergie tractor out to smooth out hill country farm landing strips to give his plane a smoother ride.

He had been spreading fertiliser from the air for nearly half a century, recently notching up a major milestone - 30,000 hours of flying.

At 71, Bargh is one of New Zealand’s few remaining owner-operators, and he thinks he’s probably the oldest still flying.

He pointed out the hills he’s topdressed over the years to RNZ’s Country Life from his home overlooking the South Wairarapa valley.

“Every farm you can see around here, I’ve topdressed it.”

New Zealand has been at the forefront of the topdressing industry, which took off after the World War II when ex-Air Force pilots and planes were pressed into service to enrich previously marginal land for farming.

Bargh had wanted to become a topdressing pilot since he was a small boy.

“My father was always keen on aviation, and he didn’t do it.

“So I got encouraged from him. I guess it’s challenging to fly a plane. It’s freedom.”

He started his career in the 1970s when New Zealand farmers were heavily subsidised.

“The farmers had a subsidy to buy the fertiliser, they had a subsidy to help for the cartage, and a subsidy to pay for the spreading, and they used to get SMPs, supplementary minimum prices, for their sheep, their wool and the lambs.

“And cashflow for a farmer wasn’t such a problem then, and so we used to just go flat out all year round.

“It was just hard out going for it.”

But things changed drastically when subsidies were removed and John and his wife Penny had to take up other jobs to make ends meet.

John Bargh taking off on a hill country farm on an aerial topdressing job. He has recently notched up 30,000 hours in the air.

“I had one farmer say to me years ago in the 80s, you want to try making a living being a farmer.

“And I said to him, you want to try making a living out of what farmers have got left over.”

His farmer contacts helped see him through, though.

“I used to do anything from relief milking cows, tractor driving, truck driving, pruning pine trees, working in the back of wool sheds.”

Tough economic times recently have seen a similar downturn in the demand for Bargh’s services.

John Bargh (left) and Penny Bargh (right). She is the safety manager at Bargh and Gardner Aviation. Photo / RNZ / Sally Round

“We’re going through the same kind of thing that we did in the 80s.

“The farmers just haven’t got the money.

“They tell me that they want to put fertiliser on, but they’ve got no money to do it.”

Despite prices lifting and interest rates dropping, costs have gone up.

It costs farmers $140 a hectare to aerial topdress now compared to $100 two years ago, Bargh said.

John Bargh flies a specialist agricultural aircraft built by Texas-based Air Tractor. It can carry 1.5 tonnes and cruises at 250 km/h.

“They’re still struggling, and we struggle along with them.”

Income from the business has dropped by 65% in the past year and he’s had to let his loader driver go.

“We couldn’t keep him on fulltime.

“And we are pensioners, so we’re living mostly on the pension.”

Aerial agricultural work is notoriously dangerous, and New Zealand saw a spike in accidents at the end of last year.

John Bargh also flies and trains pilots on vintage aircraft.

Two years ago, John’s wife Penny, the other half of Bargh and Gardner Aviation, took on the role of safety manager for the business.

“The house is essentially our office,” she said.

“I can see him taking off, landing. I mean, I even watch some of the airstrips from here with the binoculars, and I know a lot of them because I’ve been there ... all the quirkiness and all the good points of things, all the bad points.”

Bargh doesn’t like to dwell on the crashes he’s escaped.

“I’ve had some quite near misses, which you think ‘Whoa I nearly wore it that time’. It’s the after, and your knees shake a bit and whoa, your heart races a bit.”

From ‘eyeballing’ the land to GPS

The fertiliser load is stored in front and released automatically using GPS technology.

Technology has changed dramatically too since Bargh first started topdressing.

He’s gone from “eyeballing” the land and releasing the fertiliser with a manual lever to automatic release using GPS mapping and the door of the hopper adjusting automatically for the speed of the plane.

He said it was simpler before, but you had to be conscientious to avoid swamps and waterways.

Now shutting off fertiliser near water is easily handled automatically through the GPS system.

Pasture being turned into pine forest is another big change Bargh has noted over the years, which has contributed towards the downturn in business.

In a hangar on the Barghs' 29ha block of land, sits a bright yellow Air Tractor turbine-engined AT 402-B, built in Texas and able to carry 1.5 tonnes.

Bargh climbs up to open the lid of the small cockpit fit for one and demonstrates some of the computer systems.

“It’s better,” he said, but you get the sense he yearns for the time when it was just the sound of the air rushing past rather than a computer beeping.

“I know that John’s a very good pilot,” Penny said.

“He’s a very safe pilot, but you always have that thing in the back of your mind, but I’ve never dwelled on that.

“He doesn’t take risks, and that’s why he’s here today.”

- RNZ