1938, hedge hopping while crop-dusting over a bean field at Seabrook Farms, NJ. Photograph By Edwin Rosskam. I think these are the first crop dusting photos I've posted

The usual traveling "dusting circus" had three or four planes, its own pilots, mechanics and mobile repair shop.

Beans caught in wheel of spraying plane. These planes must fly so low that their backwash turns the plants over while the spray settles. The small propeller behind the wheel spreads the "dust."

Bob Copeland had a career in crop dusting, but also in aerobatics shows and movie stunt flying.

Interested in aviation from a very early age, Bob learned to fly at the age of fifteen, in 1943.

Born in Colorado in 1928, Bob grew up during the great depression and graduated from high school in Boise, Idaho in 1945.

He gained ground school experience by joining the Civil Air Patrol as a cadet. He had to hitch hike or ride his bike seven miles out of town to take flying lessons. He paid for the lessons from his weekly wages as a helper on a creamery truck. Along with his pilot’s license he also earned a mechanic’s license and ended up with a job maintaining Empire Airlines’ 247 planes.

When the company ran out of money, Bob joined a crop dusting business as a mechanic, and helped build an airplane for his employer. In 1950, he took on his first flying job, dusting fields of sugar beets.

By the 1980s, crop dusting slowed dramatically. The urban growth took over the fields they had once sprayed, and growers began to use cotton seeds that were genetically modified to repel insects. Demand for crop dusting dropped. 

In 1966, Bob won sixth place in the Reno Air Race, a national aerobatics championship. He helped put on fundraising shows at the Chandler Airport, as well as bringing the 1978 “Cloud Dancer” film makers in to shoot scenes for at the airport for the movie. He flew with two friends in clipped wing Cubs, calling themselves the Clipped Wing Air Force. Bob also performed stunt flying for the 1977 movie, “Kingdom of Spiders,” and flew in a helicopter in “Cannon Ball Run II.”

By 1989, Bob sold his business and took a vacation after twenty nine years

https://www.posterazzi.com/crop-dusting-1938-na-crop-dusting-airplane-over-seabrook-farms-between-bridgetown-and-vineland-new-jersey-photograph-by-edwin-rosskam-1938-poster-print-by-granger-collection-item-vargrc0326739/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Dusting_plane_hedge-hopping_after_spraying_swath_on_beanfield_in_New_Jersey.jpg

http://chandlerpedia.org/Exhibits/Stories_from_the_Chandler_Airport/Explore_Stories/Copeland%2C_Bob

For more photos from Rosskam of the crop dusting subject in 1938: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?pk=2017728942&sb=call_number&st=gallery

Wives of "duster pilots" re-cover plane fuselage which has been damaged. In this dangerous occupation crashes are common but rarely fatal because of low speed, low altitude and high operating skill. Note farm machinery in background. Seabrook Farms

https://www.loc.gov/photos/?fa=contributor:rosskam,+edwin&sp=3