SALINAS, Calif. -- Hundreds of thousands of acres of crops could be in danger if the air traffic control tower at the Salinas Municipal Airport is shut down due to federal cuts. Aerial applicators could lose flying time and that could put your food at risk.
Aerial applicators spray crops to help prevent infestations, but if the tower closes, their flying schedule would be thrown off.
In that case, it may be too late to save more than 200,000 crops in the five-mile radius around the airport and ultimately it could put a dent on the Central Coast's multi-billion dollar agriculture industry.
Growers said they're already having a tough time making ends meet, and not having the tower at the airport could put them overboard. That's because they rely on aerial applicators to go in and make sure the food is safe to sell.
"We'd have less revenue," said David Martella, a Salinas Valley grower. "We'd harvest a lot less product."
Martella said he doesn't know how he'll make a profit if the tower is shut down. He relies on aerial applicators to spray his 2,200 acres of vegetables for infestations.
"It limits our choices in how we apply pesticides and when we apply them in a timely and safe manner, more than anything," he said. "It will also have some impact on worker safety, because we will be forced to spray more during daylight hours when crews are in the field."
Without the tower, aerial applicators wouldn't be able to fly under the fog or before winds pick up.
The Monterey County Farm Bureau is concerned about the fly schedule and its impact to the agriculture industry. It wrote a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration. In part, the letter states closing the tower "...could have severe impacts on the availability of these produce products to our nation's markets, and could lead to price inflation as supplies dwindle."
"It just becomes harder to grow crops profitably," Martella said.
