Modern crop spraying near Fostons Ash

I have been hunting around a couple of garden centres this morning looking for a few decorative climbing plants, and possibly a couple of different types of morning glory. I tried large scale businesses, with masses of imported pots of industrially produced plants, to small single person green houses where prices were more realistic. I didn't find any morning glory plants but I did succumb to some other pretty flowers that can adorn the patio, with herbs and a few vegetables too.

On the way home via the farm shop in Bisley, I drove along the Cotswold plateau where the farming is large scale with bigger fields stretching across the rolling landscape. Near Fostons Ash, close to where Natural England have a big centre, I spotted this farm machine spraying the land. My natural bent is towards organic food production and I worry about modern farming and its apparent primary role of making money rather than food, as Bill Mollison of Permaculture fame pointed out decades ago.

I turned the car round as soon as I could and returned to where I could park and take a picture of the spraying process. The vehicle had also turned around at the end of the field and was nearing the end of its next track through the crop. I thought it would turn again as it seemed to be in the middle of the field, but when it reached the stone wall it shut off its spray, and then turned and proceeded beside the wall which you can see here, and then turned again to cut through a gateway into the next field . Then it went down the side of that field and over the horizon towards the line of trees and out of sight. It was only then that I wondered what it was doing.

The part of me that is sceptical of motives of large scale farming made me wonder if the driver didn't want to be seen spraying at that time. What was it spraying? Were the weather conditions suitable, as it was very humid with low cloud cover and no wind? As I stood waiting to see if it re-appeared in the next field (which it didn't, having dropped down to the bottom of the valley, you can see in the distance) I could hear skylarks singing in the air above me (see yesterday's blip of a skylark). Would their nests and possible young have been damaged by such spraying?

It was only when I got home and looked at the pictures that I could see the young driver's face looking directly at me from his cab, standing as I was at the side of the road beyond the stone wall. Within a further twenty yards he had stopped spraying, and turned to leave the field, which only goes to compound my fears.

If you lack at this in the 'large' view you can see his face.