Planting rice in California is done at speeds much faster than most other crops are planted.

Most of California's 500,000-plus acres of rice is planted by aircraft onto fields flooded with just a few inches of water.

On this particular morning in mid-May Growers Air Service of Woodland, Calif. was seeding rice fields west of Woodland as the sun rose through a layer of clouds that were dumping late-season snow in the Sierra Nevada.

Ralph Holsclaw, president of Growers Air Service, utilizes a fleet of Air Tractor 502B aircraft to do everything from plant rice, wheat and alfalfa to apply crop-use products by air on northern California crops.

"There isn't a crop up here that we don't work on," he said.