The first International Agricultural Aviation Conference, held at the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield between the 15th and 18th of September 1959, was well timed to mark one stage in the development of the art of airborne farming—it was the stage when the art ceased to be mainly experimental and became essentially a commercial business.

Intermittently for the past thirty years, in various parts of the world, attempts have been made with varying degrees of economic and practical success to do certain operations connected with farming, forestry or other allied activities. Two main factors within the past decade have served to intensify the interest and activity in the art. One important factor is the general improvement in aircraft, including helicopters, coupled with the very large number of relatively suitable ones which became redundant (and therefore cheap) at the end of the Second World War. The other factor, equal in importance, concerns the development of the science of agricultural chemistry which has given the farmer a new and wide range of fertilisers, selective weed killers and other chemical forms of pest control which are effective in reasonably small bulk.