Location: Miller, Mo.
Owner: Kiman Kingsley
History: As a fourth-generation grain farmer, Kiman Kingsley has always loved agriculture. When he was a child, his mother would bring him to the library every Thursday for story hour. There he would check out books about the Wright Brothers, the first aviators in history. “In other words, I’ve loved aviation since I was a child,” he said. After high school, he at-tended Mizzou Aviation in Joplin, Mo., and graduated with a private pilot’s license in 1989. In 1991, Kiman returned to the school to get an Instrument Rating, and returned once more in 1999, to get a Commercial Pilot’s License.
After flying pipeline patrol, he began to desire to return to agriculture, while still pursuing his love of aviation. For Kiman, the conclusion was to begin crop dusting. He then went back to school once again to learn how to fly crop-dusting planes, which differ from other planes due to the need to understand tail wheel transitions. The business grew exponentially from there. In 2005 he bought a spray plane. The business went so well that year, he was able to pay off the plane entirely and bought another, also paying it off in the first year, with money earned from the fall run on army worms. The business continued to grow, and they now spray more than 100,000 acres a year and own seven spray planes. Kiman then got involved in training students to do on-farm work through the mentoring he was doing within his own business and started his own school of aviation. They take anywhere from six to eight students per year.
Products and Services: The aviators at Plane Cents Aviation specialize in spraying crops which have become too tall for ground application of insecticides and fungicides. They are also able to treat crops in early spring, when it is too wet for ground rigs to function properly.
They treat crops throughout Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. They spray corn and soybeans for army worms and can spray pasture and other crops. They also spread fertilizer. One perk of aviation over ground application is the ability to cover a significant amount of acreage in a short period of time. They also help farmers when their crops have been damaged by insects or fungus, by providing an efficient solution to eliminate the threat.
Business Philosophy: Kiman compared crop dusting to the ambulance of the farming world; “Whenever the crops have been damaged, and we need to move quickly they call the airplanes in… we are the air ambulance of crops.”
