Earth Day Barrage Set to Begin: Beware the Wine Institute's Message of "Sustainability"

The California Wine Institute's getting gussied up for Earth Day - all ready to tell you why they and their sustainability campaigns are great (they are - it's true) and to avoid the subject of pesticide use in wine grape growing in California. They've been holding webinars with vintners to help all of them communicate the message - aided by their professional marketing consultant.

And launching their Earth Day video on Youtube.


Sustainability, as defined by the industry group, consists mainly of limiting the inputs they use - water, energy (they get big rebates for going solar - rebates that taxpayers pay for), and other resources that cost them money. This is the win-win zone for the bottom line - and it gets them within the guidelines of retail giant Walmart's sustainability requirements. All good - but not the end of the story.

If only the Wine Institute would take equal interest in ridding us of the pesticides they are using - 411,000 pounds of Roundup annually. Is that sustainability? Maybe for the grapes but not for the humans.

You can see what a typical Napa vineyard shopping list at the local farm supply store is in this  2012 U.C. Davis report on wine grape growing in Napa which describes local vineyards practices:

• Twice a year, vineyard-wide application of Roundup (that's 30,000 pounds annually in Napa County) a systemic herbicide now so widespread that a 2012 German study found it in city dwellers' urine at concentrations higher than allowed in drinking water

• Fighting vine mealy bug with neonicotinoids (the chemicals most widely credited with bee colony collapse) [this week a group of British MPs added their voices to others in the EU calling for a ban]

• Spreading Rally (myclobutanil), a known reproductive toxin, annually [the insecticide was recently cited by the California Dept. of Pesticide Regulation as in need of a toxicity exposure update]

All this - in spite of the fact that between 10 and 30 percent of Napa vineyards are either certified (9%) or practicing (estimated to be another 20%) organic and don't use or need any of these inputs in order to make a tidy profit on their most-expensive-in-the-nation agricultural land.

If only the organic vintners and their professional marketing consultant were organized and speaking up - with the help of professional marketers - on Earth Day. (They don't have a YouTube video).

Two years ago when I first started asking wineries if their wines were organically grown, any that were not never said, "No." They always said, "we're sustainable."

If you ask again, why they're not organic, they'll usually say being organic costs too much, and takes too much paperwork.

I recently interviewed a prominent winery president (at a winery with more than 300 acres of certified organic vineyards) about this issue. The reply was that after all was said and done, it cost the winery about 4 percent more - in the overall cost of the winery - to grow grapes organically and be certified. Other consultants say the cost is 10% higher; others who are organic say it costs less than chemical methods.

Yes, there is paperwork, but wineries already have a lot of paperwork. Filing pesticide reports with the state is paperwork, too, and strangely nobody every mentions that. Shopping for pesticides and hiring pesticide control advisors is work and money, too - at least $100 an acre.

So beware the Earthy Day messaging barrage. Hurrah for sustainability - it's just not the end of the eco-trail. Keep asking for organic grapes in your wine.

Beekeepers Sue EPA Over Bayer Neonicotinoid Pesticides Associated with Bee Colony Collapse and Bird Deaths

Last week commercial beekeepers filed a lawsuit in U.S. Federal District Court in San Francisco charging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failing to ban two pesticides associated with bee deaths. The pesticides - clothiandin and thiamethoxam - are classified as neonicotinoids and are also the focus of a proposed EU ban.

The suit comes a year after commercial beekeepers filed a legal petition asking the EPA to ban clothiandon.

While most of the insecticides are used in the Midwest, the wine industry in California in 2010 contributed 2,389 pounds of clothianidin over 19, 553 acres and 537 pounds of thiamthoxam over 9,308 acres.

Bayer makes the insecticides in Germany where its use has been banned. More than $262 million worth of the neonicotinoids were sold in 2010. The insecticides were introduced in the 1990s.

France and Italy have also already banned neonicotinoids in order to prevent further harm to honeybees. The European Food Safety says that the insecticides harm bees; further research says the insecticides also harm butterflies and ladybugs.

A recently released 100-page overview of 200 studies shows the insecticides pose a serious threat to birds and persist in aquatic ecosystems. You can read the executive summary and full report here. The EPA has ignored its own scientists' warnings on this group of insecticides.

Coverage from AP said, "Experts say some beekeepers have lost up to 50% of their colonies."

Bees are responsible for pollinating 760,000 acres of almonds, which is 80% of the world's almond supply, in addition to pollinating a third of other American crops.

The suit also says that allowable levels are harmful levels of exposures.

A new peer-reviewed study released in the UK found that the insecticides makes bees fail to associate food with floral scents.

Joining the Center for Food Safety in filing the suit were four beekeepers, the Sierra Club, Pesticide Action Network, Beyond Pesticides and the Center for Environmental Health.

UPDATE: Bayer has now proposed a new program for bee health to avoid the proposed EU ban - environmentalists decry the program. See article here.