The Ecofarm Chronicles | Day One

Once again, the farmers went to the sea. The organic clan is gathering for its annual migration to Monterey's Asilomar conference center for the 40th Ecofarm conference. A stellar lineup of speakers enthralled, depressed and rallied the tribe.

Great science presentations are a tradition. This year, pesticide researcher and government whistleblower Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, kicked off the conference with an opening speech on the need for growing the grassroots movement for regenerative agriculture.

Jonathan Lundgren presents the case for regenerative ag in a workshop Thursday at Ecofarm. Video of his keynote was livestreamed on Facebook and will be posted on the Ecofarm YouTube channel.

A former USDA scientist, Lundgren's research on the effects of neonicotinoids on monarch butterflies was too hot for the chemical industry to handle and it was suppressed.

In 2015, he filed an official whistleblower complaint (during the Obama administration) and was later dismissed from his government position.

Today he works with the grassroots movements in regenerative ag from his farm in South Dakota, (Blue Dasher Farm) and Ecdysis Foundation with students.

"What we need is a Manhattan Project for bees. That is what we need for food production," Lundgren told workshop attendees at a morning session on bees and pesticides. "Millions of dollars have been spent on keeping a broken system. It's time instead to change agriculture."

"Our current systems are fundamentally flawed and heading for a cliff. We need to burn them all down and rebuild them."

Lundgren said new methods are also more profitable.

"Regenerative agriculture is more successful. The systems are transferrable, scaleable and successful. More organic matter in the soil increases yields."

Stacy Malkan of U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit that focuses on transparency in the food system, talked about the pesticide-propaganda chemical industrial complex, pointing out the heavy disinformation systems that chemical companies utilize to sway public opinion, government policy and science itself. Aside from direct subsidies, the companies employ an army of PR professionals and consultants, she said, pointing to newly released documents.

In a Jan. 2020 article entitled The Playbook for Poisoning the Earth by Lee Fang, Malkan said that recently released documents included in the article show the full scope of chemical industry's influence which is more entrenched and well funded than has been known.

"As Gary Kasparov says," Malkan stated, "the point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is too exhaust your critical thinking to annihilate the truth."

In another session, on vine mealybugs, U.C. entomologist Kent Daane and vineyard manager
Erin Amaral reviewed strategies for combatting vine mealybugs.

In the past, the dangerous neurotoxin chlorpyrifos has been used in attempts to suppress the vineyard pest. Its use has tapered off, and beginning in two years, the chemical will no longer be available for use in California.

Daane and Amaral outlined major biocontrol efforts with different types of predators and parasitoids and a discussion of the pros and cons of each.

The audience was captivated by Daane's videos of mealybugs secreting poison to kill predator ants.

Growers face difficult challenges in keeping vine mealy bugs in check whether they use conventional  or approved organic methods, though the organic growers' challenges appear to be greater. Growers using conventional methods are spending about $80-120 an acre at a minimum, Amaral said.

Organic solutions were more costly.

An audience member asked Daane about his view of drone programs to drop predator eggs into vineyards. Daane said he thought drone delivery may not be as effective as spot placement of larvae on infested vines.

"First of all, I don't like using the eggs, because they are not as effective as releasing larvae. And when they are dropped by drone, they might fall on the ground rather than the and don't get to the leaves, where they're needed. More work needs to be done to determine its efficacy" he said.

Bob Quinn's concluding slide in his presentation the past, present and
future of organic farming. After, lunch, attendees heard from keynoter Bob Quinn (a presentation that will later be posted on YouTube) who outlined a vision for the future of organic farming.

Quinn called on the audience to visualize a new form of homeland security - one that encompassed food sovereignty as basic to security. Tying food to health was another key component of his vision for the future.

"Sixty years ago we used to spend 18 percent of our income on food and 5 percent on healthcare (or sick care). Today we spend 9 percent on food and 16 percent on healthcare. It's roughly the same amount of money. We made food cheap and abundant at the cost of our health," he said.

Thirdly, Quinn said, regenerative, organic agriculture is the right way to address climate change.

Quinn, a grain farmer in Montana, went organic in 1991. He launched the KAMUT brand of durum wheat.

He called upon organic farmers to switch the economic system from Commodity to Community and told the story of a community project to help the local Indian reservation residents switch their diets.

"We live near a large Indian reservation where a many people have diabetes," he said. "Working together we were able to help them start growing their own grain on 500 acres and now they are putting in a new flour mill. We helped them start growing lentils, which they can use for oil, too."

The crowd gave him a standing ovation.

Surendra Dara and Pam Marrone at Ecofarm

U.C. scientist Surendra Dara presented an afternoon session on beneficials, an emerging area of research in agriculture. Dara has worked food crops but said he will soon be devoting some of his time to wine grapes.

Biopesticide entrepreneur Pam Marrone attended Dara's workshop and the two indirectly discussed possible new fungi based products they might collaborate on in the future.

SF Wine Competition: Best of Class - The Organic Winners

Three organically grown wines got Best of Class awards at the SF Chronicle Wine Competition this week.

1. McFadden Vineyards' Brut 

A local's $35 bottle once again bested brands like Domaine Carneros and other well heeled labels. McFadden's Brut has been a winner in the Brut category more often than not for almost a decade.

(Its sparkling rosé is also a top choice, but in limited production).

2. King Estate's Domaine Pinot Gris

A knockout wine (at $29) this limited production wine from the southern end of Oregon's Willamette Valley is made from biodynamic grapes.

It also got a 93 point score from Wine & Spirits magazine.

3. Carol Shelton's Wild Thing Zinfandel

Sourced almost entirely from organically grown grapes, this affordable ($19) Zinfandel is partially fermented on native yeasts, a feat few can match at this case production level (8-10,000 cases). The grapes come from Mendocino.

The annual public tasting of these wines takes place in SF on Sat. Feb. 15.

The Decade in Review: What You Were Reading 2010-2019 | Most Popular Topic (#1 in a Series)

Dear Readers: congrats, you're an inquiring bunch.  You've been willing to follow me over hill and dale into a wide variety of wine topics. I salute you for that.

I've just taken a look at the most viewed blog posts of the decade (well, only back to 2011, which is when I started this blog), knowing not much but wanting to learn a lot. Look where our collective curiosity has taken us, from zero to 450,000+ page views.



I've never been one to try to get page views (if I was, I would have been much more active on instagram et al), but it was helpful that Google Blogger counted them for me and could show me all the posts that got more than 1,000 page views. There were more than 25, so I've grouped them into major topics. Here's today's topic, which got the most page views as a group.

1. Wine Industry Green Marketing aka Greenwashing

Is the wine industry great a green marketing or what?

From rebranding government enforcement guidelines (Napa) to declaring 100% victory (Sonoma), the industry sometimes really outdoes itself.

Examples:

• The original Napa Green vineyard certification was a rebranding of the Fish Friendly Farming guidelines (which combined federal, state and local fish protection regulations), laws that were already in effect on growers. (Napa Green was modified over the years, but not a lot).

But wineries got to put a green logo on their websites and claim they were creating green farming programs.

Now sustainability is a great movement and a good goal, but the vintners proved to be extremely adept at overstating their accomplishments and understating what really changed in quantifiable terms, despite their annual sustainability reports. They also obscured the fact that sustainability doesn't have much, if anything, to do with pesticide reduction, which was not their program's primary goal.

And they were so successful that they were able to pay higher grape prices for sustainable grapes (versus organic grapes), leading to a reduction in organic grape production in Mendocino and leading Bonterra to court walnut farmers in Lake County (offering 20 year contracts for organic grapes) in an attempt to grow its organic grape supply chain.

• Sonoma's been the most visible offender in overstating what is not obvious to consumers. Their sustainability programs are so diverse even for one county that no wine professional (good luck to you WSET types) or consumers can even discern what they mean.

Sonoma lowered the bar as far as it could possibly go, letting growers and wineries choose four different standards (some with teeth, mostly not) for their vineyard certification and three other standards for their winery.

What Sustainable Means: Lots of Consumers Think It's Organic (But It's Not)

The two standards with teeth (that Sonoma recognizes among four total) were originally regional programs--Lodi Rules and SIP (Sustainable in Practice, from the Central Coast]--developed at the local level and not meant to get everyone into the tent, but to set a high--or medium high-- bar. They really were a challenge to do better.

Then Big Wine got into the game, and they've got a lot of power and money. Companies like Walmart decided to adopt sustainability requirements and required all their suppliers to meet them. Big Wine had to have a dress to go to the ball in.

So the Certified Sustainable Winegrowing program was created. The experts on using less in the vineyard were, of course, the organic folks, like Andy Hoxsey and Paul Dolan, who took leadership roles in trying to get their brethren to stop using so much water and so many chemical fertilizers.

But the CSWA program eroded the medium high bar, replacing it with a notion of continuous process improvement and until recently permitting anyone to use the worst neurotoxins on the planet (paraquat, chlorpyrifos, etc.) and be CSWA certified if they promised to do better next year.

But the CSWA has a lot of money to do marketing and suddenly there was a glossy book on sustainability for consumers and self promotional videos on what a great job sustainable farmers were doing (without ever mentioning pesticide use). And they continue to "educate" the wine industry in free seminars at the SF Wine School and elsewhere, which the organic and biodynamic folks never get to do.

Just like Trump voters, "persuadable" consumers were easily convinced to the point where the industry's own marketing studies find that 43% of consumers think sustainable means organic, an impression the sustainability industry does nothing to correct. In the case of the Sonoma growers, it is an impression they, in fact, actively cultivated (with Marimar Torres).

As the devoted Napa land use lion and organic grower Volker Eisele (who was influential in my education) put it:

"The wine industry is focused on "sustainability" - and not pesticide reduction - because the wine industry is the most adept at marketing and they know the market. The market wants something green. And so this is why you have all these euphemisms. You call it "sustainable" farming practice. You do all these things. 

"I say, "sustainable" farming practices is counting the bugs before you spray them. It is undefined. Nobody knows what sustainable practices are because the obvious thing would be that ultimately if you are sustainable, you get rid of poison. And you would have to have other standards - erosion prevention, and habitat restoration, and all of those things - they should come automatically. But it's all very nebulous."

Sonoma Certified Sustainable press conference amid vines that have nothing but BARE SOIL (a sustainability no no) between the vine rows. Green cover is recommended. These rows have either been extensively sprayed with herbicide or tilled until the soil is dead. Let's hope 99% of growers don't do this or we're not going to see any carbon drawdown.)

Here are the top posts on this topic:

6,687 page views
• Dark Side of Sonoma's Sustainability Movement: No to Organics, Deep Deception and When is a Standard a Standard? (Part 1)
(I removed this from the blog for 18+ months and only restored it as an archive post this week).

3,237 page views
• Part 2

1,855 page views
• Sonoma Gets Its (Toxics) Closeup: What's On Those Vines? A Look at Carcinogens, Neurotoxins, and More

1,057 page views
• The Emperor's New (Green Marketing) Clothes: "Sustainability" Program Ramps Up in Sonoma - Headed by Marketing Professor

Extra:
557 page views
• Sonoma's Certified Sustainable Glyphosate: Average of 81,319 Pounds Each Year for Four Years in a Row

Other stories include:

1,304 page views
Your Tax Dollars At Work: UC Davis Professor Dr. Carl Winters of UCCE Shares Song "I Sprayed It On a Grapevine" with Sonoma Growers at DPR Accredited Educational Event--"No Problems with Glyphosate"

The most wild ass video of the decade had to be the Sonoma viticultural "education" event that featured Carl Winters trying to get a group of growers to accompany him in singing his last song (while on the government's pay roll, but he still gets a pension), "I Sprayed it on a Grapevine" sung to the tune of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine."

Despite the latest medical reports on glyphosate's connection with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, thousands of lawsuits (three of them successful at the time) and UC medical research on the connection with liver disease, Winters told growers there were no problems with glyphosate and dismissed the UN scientists' assessement of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. (The IARC scientists, who tend to be conservative, are generally regarded in medical circles as the gold standard).

1,286 page views
In the New York Times, Another Greenwashing Story About Wine: Why?
Painful to witness was a New York Times piece written, not by a wine professional, but by a reporter apparently offered a junket by Kendall Jackson. (I am assuming actually that the paper would have paid for all of his expenses). Having been mentored by a former top NYTimes editorial board member and editor (James P. Brown, now deceased), I was particularly appalled.

Did David Gelles, a business reporter, really have no idea how he was being played?

My dream is that good folks at Columbia Journalism Review and journalism schools everywhere would use this post as fodder for how not to cover an industry. Gelles seems to have taken everything at face value and includes no corroborating sources. The part where the Jacksons take him on a helicopter ride should have been a clue as to how sustainable they really were. (And why are they meeting with the National Wildlife & Fisheries guy? Did they do something wrong?) If only Greta had been there.

I'll continue to on to the other major topics in The Decade in Review in the days to come.

Ding Dong the Wicked Witch—Chlorpyrifos (Used on 5% of Wine Grapes)—is Dead (But Only Sort Of): California Bans Sales (But Not Yet Use) Effective February 6

Five percent of California's wine grape
growers use Lorsban, a restricted material
linked for years to neurological diseases in
children and adults.

For decades, scientists—and especially pediatricians—have been calling for a ban on chlorpyrifos, an old school insecticide that is used by conventional and, sadly, yes, sustainable growers.

Starting Feb. 6, sales of the neurotoxin in California will be banned.

Glasses up! Break out the bubbly!

But maybe fill up the glasses only half or a quarter full, since this is not actually a full glass victory.

Over the years, I have written a number of articles about chlorpyrifos in the wine industry.

Sold as Lorsban, the insecticide has a dark history—invented by war chemists in Germany before World War II)—and has been in the cross hairs of public health authorities since the 1980's.

For the last year data is available—2017—California wine grape growers used 49,417 pounds on 26,430 acres.

Why should we care about this dastardly chemical? And will banning its sale in the state end its use?

• In a pesticide hair testing study conducted by the Greens in Europe, it was found in 10% of the 150+ participants.

• It's linked by numerous scientific studies to neurological conditions—including damaging child brain development—and neurological diseases like Alzehimer's and Parkinson's.

• It contaminates water supplies in California where it's used (now mostly in the Central Valley, but it's been used in Sonoma, Napa, Monterey and elsewhere over decades. It's becoming increasingly popular on wine grapes in the Tulare region). A story published by Environmental Health News about the study conducted by Beate Ritz (an expert who also testified in the Roundup trials, but that's another story) published in Environmental Health Perspectives summarized the study's findings:

People drinking well water within 500 meters of a dozen or more of the pesticides had a 66 percent greater rate of Parkinson’s, the study says. Airborne exposure only slightly increased the risk. [Boldings mine.]

• It also pollutes the air. 

• It is highly toxic to bees.

Heard enough?

• In 2015, the EPA said it wanted to ban the pesticide, but the wheels of government moved slowly. Cal EPA issued a press release in 2015 expressing its concerns over chlorpyrifos and worker safety. Its report stated,

"We are concerned about some workers who mix, load and apply chlorpyrifos to agricultural and other non-residential sites...We are also concerned about workers who work around areas that are treated with chlorpyrifos as part of their jobs." 

When Trump assumed power he killed the proposed nationwide ban.

Surprisingly

• Sustainable wine growers in the Wine Institute's Certified Sustainable Winegrowing program may use it but only during the first year of certification. (Why would this be allowed?) It is used to wipe out nematodes in replanting vineyards, controlling vine mealybugs and other uses. Basically, it's an exterminator.

• The California Association of Winegrape Growers, showing no compassion towards workers, residents or health officials (or the reputation of their industry) opposed the ban on selling it. According to an article published on Wine Business.com, the growers "and other agricultural organizations argued chlorpyrifos as another 'tool' in the farmers’ 'toolbox.'"

Sadly

• No one can legally buy chlorpyrifos in the state of California, but it is available outside of California. While California is now on the road to banning its use, that milestone, if approved, is two years away, according to state authorities. They are moving to cancel its use after a period of transition in which $5.7 million has been allocated to help growers using it try other products.

For now, its use was not made illegal—only its sale—so it remains a restricted material.

That means county ag commissioners must issue permits for its use. While ag commissioners are able to grant or deny permits, they cannot actually deny a permit for a legal chemical and it is still legal to use chlorpyrifos.

Just ask the Sonoma County ag commissioner's office: they had to give Sonoma Cutrer a permit to spray it on 100 acres in 2017. "We can't prohibit it because it is legal to use it, even though it's restricted," a spokesperson for the office said. Locals were alarmed. And rightly so. There is no requirement to warn when spraying is approved or about to take place.

UCLA researchers have documented the problem of ag commissioners' reluctance or inability to stop the use of restricted materials, writing a report on ag commissioners' track records. Read their full report here or local news coverage here. Certain counties will be more or less likely to continue granting permits.

A FEW CASE STUDIES FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY

• SONOMA

Gallo used 147 gallons of chlorpyrifos on 400 acres at its Two Rock vineyard.

Gallo sprayed 147 gallons of it over Gina Gallo's favorite Chardonnay vineyard, Two Rock, in Petaluma in 2015.

Sonoma Cutrer sprayed it on 100 acres in Sonoma in 2017. (Source: Sonoma County Ag Commissioner's public data—pesticide use report records—available from the county ag commissioner's office upon request).

Parents with children in nearby schools and homes are not required to be notified when the spray is used.

• NAPA

Laird Family in Napa (and Sonoma) has consistently used chlorpyrifos for years.

It is the largest land owner in Napa with 5% of the county's vines.

So why are Laird Family's wines sold even at Whole Foods in Berkeley? (You'll have to ask Whole Foods' wine experts or post on Whole Foods social media.)

Take a look at the second post on chlorpyrifos here to see maps of where wineries used it from 2000 to 2017 (latest year data is available).