Episodios
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To celebrate California Wine Month, we're highlighting winners of the California Green Medal Award. Allison Jordan, Executive Director at the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance shares the sustainable practices unique to each of this year’s winners. From farm hiking trails open to the community to a bio fuel powered fleet, you’ll be inspired by these stories.
Make sure you listen to the end. Our host Craig works at Niner Wine Estates, the 2023 Green Medal Business Award Winner. He has great insights into the benefits of applying for the Green Medal that extend beyond earning the award.
I have enjoyed working with the Green Medal on the steering committee and as a judge. If you are a California vineyard or winery, I encourage you to visit greenmedal.org to apply. Applications open in November of 2024.
Resources: 206: The Best Newsletter You Can Send | Marketing Tip Monday 231: Stacking Regenerative Practices to Create a Healthy Vineyard 2024 Green Medal Award Winners Allison Jordan Green Medal Awards Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript[00:00:06] Beth Vukmanic: To celebrate California wine month. We're highlighting winners of the California green metal award.
[00:00:11] Welcome to sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic executive director at vineyard team. Since 1994, we've brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both in-field and online education, so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.
[00:00:36] In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time sip certified vineyard and the first ever sip certified winery. Speaks with. Alison Jordan executive director at the California sustainable wine growing Alliance. She shares the sustainable practices, unique to each of this year's green metal winners. From farm hiking trails, open to the community, to a biofuel powered fleet. You'll be inspired by these stories. And make sure you listen to the end.
[00:01:07] Our host Craig works at Niner wine estates winner of the 2023 business award. He has some great insights into the benefits of applying for the green metal that extend beyond earning the achievement.
[00:01:19] I personally have had the pleasure of serving on the green metal steering committee. And as a judge, if you're a California vineyard or winery, I encourage you to visit green metal.org to apply applications open in November of 2024.
[00:01:34] Do you want access to the latest viticulture research and technology from the world's top experts, then you won't want to miss the premiere Winegrowing event of the year, the sustainable ag expo. Enjoy the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts, earn over 20 hours of continuing education and explore sustainable ag vendors. It all takes place November 11th through 13th, 2024 in San Luis Obispo, California. As a listener to this podcast, take $50 off of your ticket. When you use code podcast 24 at checkout. Get yours today at sustainableagexpo.org. Now let's listen in.
[00:02:14] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Allison Jordan. She is executive director of a California sustainable wine growing alliance. And today we're going to be talking about the green medal awards. Hey allison, thanks for being on the podcast.
[00:02:30] Allison Jordan: Great to be with you. thanks so much for having me.
[00:02:32] Craig Macmillan: So let's start with some basics. What is the California sustainable wine growing alliance? And in particular, what is it? What are its goals? And what's it doing to achieve those goals?
[00:02:42] Allison Jordan: Well, the California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance is a partnership that was created by Wine Institute and the California Association of Wine Grape Growers back in 2003 as a nonprofit organization that's all about promoting sustainability from grapes to glass. some of the ways that we do that, especially the whole idea of encouraging adoption of sustainable wine growing practices is also around communicating about it so we can really tell the story about California's leadership in sustainability.
[00:03:14] And we do that through education, through outreach, through certification, and also through partnerships. So for instance, the vineyard team is a great partner of ours and us. Fantastic work. Not only in the central coast, but also throughout the state.
[00:03:31] Craig Macmillan: Thank you. I know that we've really enjoyed and benefited from our work with you. And also around the Green Medal Awards. what exactly are the Green Medal Awards? how did that come about? What was the purpose of creating the awards?
[00:03:45] Allison Jordan: So during Down to Earth Month each April, which is a chance to really highlight California wine community sustainability leadership we also celebrate the California Green Medal. The full name of the awards is the California Green Medal Sustainable Wine Growing Leadership Awards. And it's our way of recognizing industry leaders.
[00:04:06] So those who wineries and vineyards that are really using advanced sustainability practices. They're innovating and they're sharing that information with their peers. It really was a way for all of the different California sustainability programs to come together.
[00:04:21] We're all really about elevating sustainability. And so we came together with not only the Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance, which of course is this partnership with CAWG and with Wine Institute, but also with the Vineyard Team and Lodi Wine Grape Commission. Napa Valley Vintners and Napa Green, and also the Sonoma County Wine Growers, so that we could all be part of celebrating and shining a spotlight on these leaders.
[00:04:46] Craig Macmillan: I think that's one of the really great things about this. And my understanding is that you actually have representatives from different organizations that are part of the review committee for the applications and also part of the cross promotion. Is that right?
[00:04:57] Allison Jordan: That's right. Yeah, so all of those organizations are involved and participate in the judging panel. We also have experts from universities, the wine education field some representatives from retailers and, and some somellier have. Participated in the past. So we try to have that really well rounded group that can be reviewing the applications from wineries and vineyards around the state.
[00:05:20] Craig Macmillan: that's really fantastic that you have expertise from around different fields and different areas. I think that gives it a lot of weight and a lot of legitimacy. So let's get to the purpose of all this. So who are the 2024 green medal award winners and what are some of the sustainable practices that they employed that garnered them this recognition?
[00:05:39] Allison Jordan: Sure. I'll just run down the list. So every year we give four green medals and they are in the categories of leader. So sort of the overall. Embracing sustainability also in the areas of environment, community, and business. And this again helps us really share in lots of different ways what sustainability is all about.
[00:05:58] So for the Leader Award this year, which again is all around that excelling in all three areas of sustainability, being environmentally sound, socially equitable, economically viable. It goes to the Lang Twins family winery and vineyards. They're based in San Joaquin County, just north of Lodi, and have been very involved in sustainability, both in the Lodi region, but statewide for, for many, many years.
[00:06:22] Really, since the inception of our programs. And if you think back further, because it's a generational business they've been embracing sustainability since the early seventies. just some of the examples of things that they've done. They've done a lot around habitat restoration projects. I've actually had the chance to just go in and do a walking tour just a couple of weeks ago, and it's just impressive how they've really repaired that riparian habitat, working with local youth and providing hands on environmental stewardship education for them.
[00:06:53] But they also started off as a family of growers and built a state of the art winery. Just within the last decade or so and they really included a lot of energy efficient design and solar power technology. So just a really great example. thinking back some of the other past winners in the leader category are Treasury Americas, Wente Family Estates, O'Neill, Vintners and Distillers, and J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines. So some really great examples of leaders in our industry.
[00:07:25] The next category would be community. of course, this is all around what vineyards or wineries do to enhance relationships, not only with their employees, but also with the broader community and with their neighbors.
[00:07:39] And this year it goes to Cooper Garrod vineyards at Garrod farms, which is a beautiful vineyard and winery, and also a horse farm in the Santa Cruz mountains. really I've known. Doris and Bill for years, Bill was a former chair of the California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance, and they just give their whole heart to their community.
[00:08:00] They have done things like pioneering the FireWise Community Initiative. They actively participate in benefits for their schools, for mental health. They participate in the Chambers of Commerce and the industry groups. And also to foundations. they really invite the community in so they can use their farm's hiking trails and participate in winemaker walks and all kinds of really fun ways to learn about sustainability.
[00:08:26] And just thinking back again on some of the past winners in this category, we had Cake Bread Cellars, McManus Family Vineyards, and Smith Family Wines. And there are two more. Do you want me to take a breath or do you want me to keep going?
[00:08:40] Craig Macmillan: no. Keep going. This is great. Yeah.
[00:08:42] Allison Jordan: All right. So the third category is the environment. Something that I think people think of a lot when they think about sustainability.
[00:08:50] there are those vineyards and wineries that are really maximizing environmental benefits. And this year it goes to Gloria Ferrer in the Sonoma region of Carneros. they use regenerative organic farming practice is something we're hearing a lot about. Regenerative is, is the new buzzword in the world of sustainability.
[00:09:06] they're introducing biodiverse cover crops implementing high intensity sheep grazing. They create biochar and really thinking a lot about how do you build healthy soils and minimize your overall environmental impact. They've also established wildlife habitat with things like hedgerows and pollinator friendly areas and nesting sites. So they're really attracting that wildlife into their property and fostering biodiversity.
[00:09:33] And I can think of some really great past winners too. Tobless Creek, Trefethen, Scheid Family Wines, and also Halter Ranch Vineyards.
[00:09:41] So again, some stellar examples of environmental stewardship.
[00:09:45] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Very heady.
[00:09:46] Allison Jordan: yeah, exactly, exactly. And we have the Business Award as the final category. And this is given to the Vineyard or winery that best demonstrates smart business practices. So things like looking for those efficiencies and related cost savings and innovation.
[00:10:05] And this year's winner for that category is Vino Farms. They are a vineyard management company based in Lodi, but they farm all over the state and they've used all kinds of different advanced technology, for instance, for water use efficiency, they've used Tule towers and soil moisture probes and ceres imagery.
[00:10:27] And the idea is to really understand water needs to prevent overwatering and to make sure they have uniform water distribution. And, of course, this can lead to substantial cost savings in addition to saving water. They've also done things like releasing beneficial insects via drones. To reduce the need for pesticide applications.
[00:10:46] And of course, again, the associated costs with that. And then they've also done a lot to embrace renewable energy. So they transitioned all of their trucks and tractors to biofuel since 2010. So going way back They use solar panels in their vineyards to power ranch shops and also water pumps.
[00:11:06] And some of the other examples of this category winners are Niner Wine Estates, Jackson Family Wines and Monterey Pacific. So some really good examples of both vineyards and wineries that have done some amazing work that are really driving that innovation.
[00:11:23] Craig Macmillan: Did you say this is the 10th year? Is that right?
[00:11:25] Allison Jordan: It's right. It's the 10th year. So we've now had close to 40 recipients of the Green Medals. We've had a couple of that have won multiple years Tablas Creek being one of them, Trinchero Family Winery being one. So when you look at the full picture, it's probably around 36 different recipients of the award.
[00:11:43] And if you visit greenmedal. org, you can see all of the current and past winners and some video highlights of the winners. And just, it's a great way to learn really delve into what does sustainable wine growing mean on the ground.
[00:11:56] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, it's, it's another way of having that kind of farmer to farmer, winery to winery contact to see what people are doing and, and how they've made it work and kind of encourages people to try things for themselves.
[00:12:09] Allison Jordan: Exactly. Get some good ideas of things that you might want to talk to them about. And I think that's another key thing about wine growing. Virtually all of our green metal recipients, I feel like are leaders in that they're willing to share that information and participate in field days and workshops and all of the things that all of our organizations do to advance sustainability.
[00:12:28] And when you look at it, it's amazing. We're the fourth largest wine producing region in the world. And today we have 85 percent of California wine being made in a certified sustainable winery and 67 percent of the acreage is certified to one of the California programs. So it's really exciting to see that level of adoption.
[00:12:47] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, we've come a long way.
[00:12:49] Allison Jordan: We really have.
[00:12:50] Craig Macmillan: We really have. Thanks to the efforts of folks like you.
[00:12:53] Allison Jordan: It's been a pleasure to be working in this field for now over 20 years, which is hard to believe.
[00:12:57] Craig Macmillan: I know, I know. Is there one thing that you would tell growers regarding this topic in terms of either applying for awards or how to use what you can find from award winners?
[00:13:10] Allison Jordan: Yeah. So I feel like the awards is one example of how you really have to think of all of the costs and benefits of sustainable wine growing. And as you explore specific practices to make sure they make sense for your operation. One of the things that I think comes to those vineyards and wineries that are adopting sustainable wine growing is the ability to share their story and the positive public relations around it.
[00:13:35] And we can help amplify that through things like the Green Metal Awards. The green metal.org website has lots of great information about, again, the practices being used by the recipients. But also you can learn how to apply if you're a vintner or grower for the 2025 awards the applications will most likely open up around November.
[00:13:55] So keep an eye out then and they tend to be due in January. So We will be getting the word out in lots of different ways through the vineyard team and all of our partners and through the California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance. But you can also just periodically check out greenmetal. org to see if there's any new information about it.
[00:14:14] Craig Macmillan: So we've got greenmiddle. org is a great resource. Where else can people find out more about you and your organization?
[00:14:20] Allison Jordan: Our organizational website is sustainablewinegrowing. org. We also have one for, basically for more our, our Interested consumers and retailers and other stakeholders. That's all around certification. And that's California sustainable wine.com. And then the last one I'll mention is, is again, just showing the breadth and depth of all of the different initiatives across the state.
[00:14:42] So in honor of 30 years of all of the different sustainable initiatives in the state, we put together a website called californiasustainablewinegrowing. org and it has a retrospective of some of the really key milestones. That all of our respective programs have done. So if you're looking for some of that history of how this idea and this approach has evolved in California, that's a really great place to look.
[00:15:09] Craig Macmillan: Cool. Well thanks so much for being on the podcast. This is really great. And I'm really happy that we can support some of these leaders and get some of these messages out there. I think it's really important and it's been the mission of all of these organizations. And so to be able to come together for something like this is really great.
[00:15:23] Allison Jordan: Yes. It's one of my favorite things of the year. So looking forward to celebrating the winners.
[00:15:28] Craig Macmillan: our guest today has been Allison Jordan. She's executive director of the California sustainable wine growing alliance, and we've been talking about the green metal awards here today. Please, by all means, check out the resources we've talked about and think about applying. So I worked for Niner Wine Esates, so we won the business category.
[00:15:45] And what we found as we went about it was, it was a great process internally, to list and think about all the things we've been doing. And what we realized was We were doing a lot of things in a variety of areas and you don't see that you're always focused on whatever the current project is, right?
[00:16:07] You're always focused on fixing whatever. And when we stopped and actually kind of meditated on it, it was like, wow, you know, there's a lot that we're doing and a lot that's going on. And then it also helped us identify areas where we thought, Hey, you know, maybe we haven't paid attention to this.
[00:16:17] Like maybe we should. And I just think that process, regardless of whether you're a winner or not is really valuable. It's a good exercise for people.
[00:16:25] Allison Jordan: Yeah, that's a great, great insight. And I do feel like, you know, certification is a great way to tell, to tell a story. your story, but to add credibility to what you're doing, but you still need those examples. And so taking the time to compile those and to really show what you're doing, what you're exceptional at I think is a really great exercise.
[00:16:44] So fantastic point, Craig.
[00:16:46] Craig Macmillan: All right. Thanks, Allison.
[00:16:47] Allison Jordan: Thanks.
[00:16:48] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by San Agro. Westbridge is now San Agro. When the opportunity came to expand their reach and improve the customer's bottom line, they took it. San Agro's commitment to deliver science based solutions for both sustainable crop health And nutrition remains the same.
[00:17:11] They offer a full line of plant nutrients, biopesticides, and specialty inputs. Visit san agro. com to learn more,
[00:17:20] make sure you check out the show notes for links to all of the 2024 green medal award winners to learn more about Alison and to apply for the 2025 green medal award. You could also listen in to sustainable wine growing podcast episodes. 206, the best newsletter you can send featuring Niner Wine Estates talking about their green medal award and 231 stacking regenerative practices to create a healthy vineyard with a member of the Langtwids family.
[00:17:49] If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam. org slash podcast, and you can reach us at podcast at vineyardteam. org. Until next time, this is Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team.
Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
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[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: While most consumers say that environmental friendliness plays a significant role in how they make purchasing decisions. Brands, messaging about sustainability only reaches about half of global consumers. Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry.
[00:00:24] These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.
[00:00:30] Your sustainable story can be shared across any of your communication channels, including social media, wine club, newsletters, tasting room signage, and so much more.
[00:00:39] Are you wondering what to tell your audience about in your next story? From cover crops to owl boxes and water collection, ponds to native landscaping. There are many sustainability topics. right outside of your window.
[00:00:51] At ancient peaks winery in Santa margarita, California. There is no shortage of natural. conversation fodder. Their sustainable story highlighting the value of habitat shows creative ways to support the native wildlife that lives around their vineyard.
[00:01:07] The Santa margarita ranch. Ava represents just one vineyard. Ancient peaks wineries estate, margarita vineyard. Which is home to an abundance of beloved wildlife.
[00:01:17] The team takes great care to respect and facilitate the presence of their winged and furry friends through the preservation of their habitat.
[00:01:25] Wildlife corridors are present through and around the vineyard to ensure animals have free and safe passage. Black bears, Bobcats, mountain lions, wild pigs turkeys, deer, and bald Eagles are among the many creatures. That you'll find.
[00:01:39] There's also aquatic life at the ranch. The team protects Creek setbacks and implements filter strips between the vineyard and waterways to keep the water healthy. With all of this life on the property, not all of it is beneficial to the health of the vineyard crop. To help keep pests at bay, the ranch attracts natural predators with bat boxes, Al boxes, and wrapped her purchase. They even invite a herd of goats to feast on their vegetation, acting as low impact herbicide alternative.
[00:02:05] They're affiliated margarita adventures is dedicated to nature and wildlife appreciation and education.
[00:02:11] The ranches natural list. Jackleen.
[00:02:14] offers a variety of guided wildlife tours. For guests, including nature, adventure tours, Eagle tours, forging tours, and photograph tours.
[00:02:24] Think about the habitat around your vineyard.
[00:02:27] How will you highlight preserving nature at your property?
[00:02:30] If you want more inspiration to help share your sustainable story, make sure you check out our newly updated online course. We've spent over 40 hours writing new sustainable stories for finding our training module and recording and editing video content.
[00:02:45] This simple yet powerful free tool will help you tell your own personal sustainable message. To get started. Just go to the show notes. Click on the title. Tell your sustainable story to sign up and start writing yours today. Until next time, this is sustainable winegrowing with the vineyard team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
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Microbial communities vary widely from plant to plant, even from rootstock to rootstock! Philippe Rolshausen, Professor of Cooperative Extension for Subtropical Horticulture in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California Riverside studies the phytobiome. This includes all organisms associated with the vine including bacteria, fungi, insects, and animals. Learn the impact these communities have on your vineyard from young vine decline under extreme stress to the wine’s terrior.
Resources: 78: Biological Control for Grape Vine Trunk Diseases A Method to Detect and Quantify Eutypa lata and Diplodia seriata-Complex DNA in Grapevine Pruning Wounds Endophytic microbial assemblage in grapevine Grapevine pruning strategy affects trunk disease symptoms, wood pathobiome and mycobiome Philippe Rolshausen Phylogenomics of Plant-Associated Botryosphaeriaceae Species Rolshausen Lab Soil Health Playlist Temporal Dynamics of the Sap Microbiome of Grapevine Under High Pierce’s Disease Pressure Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript[00:02:07] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Philippe Roshausen. He is Professor of Cooperative Extension at University of California, Riverside. And today we're going to be talking about the soil microbiome. Thanks for being on the podcast, Philippe.
[00:02:19] Philippe Rolshausen: Thank you for having me.
[00:02:20] Craig Macmillan: Well, when we do these topics, like to start from the very basics. And then we can go very deep from there. What is your definition of the soil microbiome?
[00:02:31] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, a microbiome is the collection of microbes. The soil microbiome is the collection of microbes associated with the soil. I have to say we work on the soil microbiome, but we also work on the phytobiome, which is the collection of organisms. associated with the, the, vine, and that can be fungi, bacteria, viruses, even insects. So we are more interested in fungi and bacteria in my lab. And especially those that live inside the vine and how it's connected to the roots and the soil.
[00:03:12] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, I'm very interested in that. Just for our listeners, other aspects of the soil microbiome could include things like microarthropods,
uh, nematodes, etc. It's a very complex Complicated
ecosystem.
[00:03:26] Philippe Rolshausen: I and I only focus on one part of it.
[00:03:29] Craig Macmillan: The work that I've done with soil microbiome in a very primitive way. We just focused on total bacteria, total biomass, things like that.
You just mentioned this and this is a good jumping off point actually. Because plants are an active part of this ecosystem, you will find different soil microbiomes around different crops. What is the soil microbial community like around grapevines in particular?
[00:03:50] Philippe Rolshausen: Well compared to, to what is the question. Let's give you an example. I work on citrus and grapes in the same soil environment, you would see differences between a grapevine and the citrus plant just because of the property of the host. Within grapevine, you know. Depending on the variety or the rootstocks, I should say then you would also have different microbial communities associated with the rootstock.
And this is like a plant effect because plant recruits their microbes. So, so you have sort of a template of microbial or a core microbiome, which is you would find across a different rootstock or varieties of grapes or even plants. But then. Some are very variety specific or host specific, and so you would tend to see some varietal specificity and specific microbe associated with some of those rootstock operants.
[00:04:47] Craig Macmillan: That's news to me. That's fascinating.
there is some commonality, but you will find some differences just based on things like rootstock?
[00:04:56] Philippe Rolshausen: Yes.
[00:04:57] Craig Macmillan: Oh, that is interesting. We may come back to that. one of the things about your work that I was really intrigued by, which I was unaware of, is the different microorganisms that one might find inside the grapevine, and what roles they play in the functioning of the plant. I mean, I think most of familiar with Our gut microflora. Right, where we know that we have organisms inside us. We have organisms on our skin and all that. I didn't realize that was true for plants as well. Tell me more about that.
[00:05:26] Philippe Rolshausen: You can make the parallel between the roots and the gut, actually.
Because they have similar functions. Especially with respect to nutrient assimilation Defense against disease, for instance. Now, the gut is inside, the root is outside. Someone made the comment that the plant where there are guts on the outside, just because of that parallel that between the rhizosphere and the gut.
there is a connection between what's going on inside the plant and what's going on outside the plant. We are interested to understand what the organisms that live inside the plant. Where they're coming from. in terms of diversity the endosphere, which is the the region of the, the organism living inside the plant, the endosphere is not very diverse.
There's only a few of thousand fold less microbe capable of living inside the plant just because it's a more. Stringent environment I work on the xylem a lot and, you know, there's a negative pressure for instance, there are, there's not a lot of food available, for instance.
And so microbes have to adapt to those environments, right? And it's not every microbe is capable of doing that. there's only A certain type of microbe that can live inside them. we're interested in those because we work specifically on vascular disease of grapevines, so fungi, bacteria especially.
And we try to understand how those pathogens interact with the plant, but also really understand those pathogen within the, context of the microbial community and how those pathogen interact with the microbes living inside the plants. to go back to your question, it's like, where are those pathogen coming from?
How did they get there? How do they interact with the plant and how do they interact with the microbes? within those interaction, what would be the, the disease outcome in certain type of interaction.
[00:07:35] Craig Macmillan: So what we're talking about is we have these pathogenic organisms Which could be in the form of like grapevine trunk disease Things like that or Peirce's disease. In the case of bacteria and what you're getting at is it that there's other types and populations of microbes that may be antagonistic to the pathogen?
[00:07:56] Philippe Rolshausen: Yes. So that was our hypothesis. Traditionally, you know, microbiologists were looking for biological control agent against diseases and they were culturing those.
That was the traditional approach. So you take a plant tissue, You put it in the culture media and you see what's growing and then you test if those organism are able to inhibit the growth of your pathogen. That would be the traditional way of doing it. Now, with the metagenomics , the development of those technology, we're able to kind of look, at the entire community of those organisms living inside the plant and using those tools, we could actually select those that have some.
That might be antagonistic to certain pathogens. the beauty of this is that you can actually look at the entire community. When you look at a traditional microbial approach, you kind of zoom in on, to those that can grow in culture and those that can grow fast in culture and sort of overpower the other ones.
when you use those molecular approaches, you look at the entire community and you can And sort of a broader view of really what's going on and who does what. and so that's the approach that we've been doing to try to identify biological control agents or beneficial organism to plants and to grapes in particular.
what we do is we select plants with different phenotypes. So we will select. Plants that, you know, that range from very healthy to poor health. And we're able to build those sort of correlations with organisms that associate specifically with healthy plants and those that associate with sick plants.
and from that, once we have identified the organism, we can go back and try to culture it and to reintroduce him in the system to prove that Actually, they are beneficial in some capacity.
[00:09:52] Craig Macmillan: does this mean that I could have plant material, and one of those vines would be healthy and one would be weak and showing disease, but they both would have the pathogen, it's just that the other one has the microbial community to help fight it.
[00:10:07] Philippe Rolshausen: That's right.
[00:10:08] Craig Macmillan: Wow.
[00:10:09] Philippe Rolshausen: there's a environmental factor that comes into play as well. because abiotic stresses also so like, you know, drought or heat play a factor into the plant, weaken the plant in some capacity and will change the disease outcome and the interaction between the pathogen and the microbe.
There are more layers than, you know, the simple pathogen, microbe. plant interaction There's also the environment in which those components are part of that really plays a big factor.
[00:10:43] Craig Macmillan: So, are you finding or pursuing how those abiotic factors can be manipulated?
[00:10:50] Philippe Rolshausen: A little bit. I'm really interested in those aspects of, especially in the eras of climate change.
plants are going to be subjected to a lot more stress than they used to be. I think we need to understand how this is going to affect the, the microbiome at large and because I'm a pathologist, how this is going to affect disease outcome. we are starting to only scratch the surface of that.
I think a lot of people are as well. It's a lot more complicated when you work with. Woody perennial than when you work with an annual plant, because you have the approaches and the logistics are more challenging, I would say. drought is the number one just because it's been on the radar of every grower in California, but so we, you know, we are interested to see how those factors really affect the Have an effect on disease.
Yes.
[00:11:44] Craig Macmillan: Are you doing that in the laboratory?
[00:11:46] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, yes. You have to sort of work in more controlled conditions and sort of dissect it one stress at a time. so it is in more greenhouse conditions or gross chamber conditions where you can, semi controlled environment where you can really control heat or, you know, water or, and see how that affects the microbiome.
[00:12:07] Craig Macmillan: I think this is fascinating. can you tell me more about what that actually looks like, like how do you set it up? How are you controlling it? What kind of ranges are you using? I love the details.
[00:12:17] Philippe Rolshausen: So we've done experiments mostly with irrigation so far. And we are only starting to tie irrigation to microbiome, but we have done the.
How irrigation affects severity of disease and impact on the plant. this is pretty straightforward, you have plants that are fully irrigated that are not on the deficit irrigation, and then you calculate what a deficit irrigation like a 25 percent deficit irrigation look like, a 50 percent deficit irrigation look like, measuring, you know, how much water.
How much irrigation you put in on your plants, you inoculate your tree or vine with a pathogen, and you let it incubate for, you know, weeks, because you know, those are slow pathosystems, they take time, and you see how that affects for trunk disease in particular lesion of the wood necrotic lesion, for instance.
And then we look at factors on the plant. We measure biomass, for instance, of the roots, the shoots. We look at gas exchange, photosynthesis, and so on and so forth. going down to the microbiome, you know, we would be sampling the tissue, extracting the DNA, and then sequencing, you know, all the microbial community, bacterial and fungal, to see how those communities have changed over time in a well watered versus a deficit irrigated plants.
[00:13:49] Craig Macmillan: And is that quantitative analysis, or is it simply the complexity of the diversity of the microbiome
[00:13:56] Philippe Rolshausen: it's semi quantitative so let's say, you know, like you're looking at a presence of a specific taxa.
It's a relative abundance of the taxa in comparison to the others. So when you see an increase of the taxa. in your community, it's either because it does increase or because the other taxa within that community decreased. So it increases in, in relation to that. So it's not really an absolute measure of abundance.
It is a relative measure of abundance, but you could still use it and make some correlation with that.
[00:14:34] Craig Macmillan: Can you explain, metagenomics?
[00:14:37] Philippe Rolshausen: That's not my field. To be honest with you, but the principle is that you're using primers that are universal primers and that allow you to, so there are.
Meaning that you can sequence conserved region. So those primers are aligned with conserved region across several taxonomic groups. Okay, so fungi or bacteria. And then you sequence a length of nucleotide. In our case, it's about 200, 250 nucleotides in length. In between, and this is valuable between those two.
Primers, that region is valuable. And so you could start making you can do a micro real fingerprinting and identify which types are, are present, you know, but it's the community of organism. So it's like all the fungal communities or all the bacterial communities. So some primers are better than others for special taxonomy group.
So for instance. I work with Dario Cantu at UC Davis, CBT Controlled Neurology. Davis uses field of knowledge, and so he developed primers for group causing grapevine trunk diseases. And so it's mostly what's called the Ascomycota phyla. his primers are mostly focusing on this group of, fungi, but it doesn't give any information on The basidiomycota, which is another group, or the glomerulomycota, which is the mycorrhizae fungi.
if you wanted to get information about this group, you would need to get a different set of primers, right? so it's really up to primer that you're using that gets you the right information. and also the database that you're using that gives you the right information because sometimes the database are not curated or they're not accurate, and those are getting better as we're getting more and more knowledge about the taxonomy and, and the biology of those organisms.
we're able to make more accurate prediction because we're gaining more knowledge about those organisms. So for instance, there's a lot more information about bacteria than, They are about fungi just because there are not a lot of reference genome for fungi compared to bacteria. so it's a lot more difficult to predict. Sometimes for fungi than it is for bacteria.
[00:17:01] Craig Macmillan: But it sounds like that would be coming down the road.
[00:17:04] Philippe Rolshausen: Oh yeah, yeah, it's a matter of time. I mean, really, you know, this technology is going so fast, so quickly that, in five years from now, I can't even predict what it's going to look like,
[00:17:15] Craig Macmillan: This thought just occurred. your work is obviously, I don't want to say infancy, but it's, it's pretty early work. You know, we're, we're working with tools that are still in development, basically. at this point, would you say that there are certain conditions or practices or manipulations that a grower could use to promote the most beneficial endo, um, microbiome in their plants?
[00:17:40] Philippe Rolshausen: In principle, yes, and I believe that this is true. We just don't have the knowledge yet to make recommendations that are solid. There we go. So, when you apply something to your soil, you know, if you're a grower and you apply fertilizers, or this is going to, or even if you if you till your soil or it will have some impact on the soil microbiology.
That we know. How that reflects to what's going on inside the plant, we are, we are not there yet. We, we don't have that knowledge yet just because like I've said before, only a few of those organisms move inside the plant. There's always a a gap between you know, what's going on outside the plant and what's going on inside the plant.
The inside the plant it's a buffered environment that changes very slowly compared to the root of, a grapevine. what we've done is we've looked at the microbiome of vines that we planted in the field and look at the rhizosphere microbiome, or the, the The macro bill community associated with the root and the macro bill, community associated with the trunk, the graft union, and so forth.
And we see right after planting that the microbial communities associated with the root changes really quickly, whereas the the microbiome in the trunk are the graph union. changes very slowly. whatever growers do and cultural practices that they implement in the vineyard will have a limited effect inside the vine or it will take years for this to see the effect.
the rhizosphere microbiome drive a lot of, of biological function, you know, they, they, they fix nitrogen metabolize phosphorus detoxify compounds and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of, benefits of, using some cultural practices, beneficial practices and how they affect microbial communities associated with the roots.
[00:19:48] Craig Macmillan: We know that for like the pathogenic organisms, like the fungal ones, you know, they come in through wounds, whether that's a grafting or whether that's a pruning, we know that bacteria are introduced through things like piercing sucking insects. Like Leaf Hoppers and Peirce's disease. what is the, pathway for the bacteria and fungi that you find inside of a vine that are not the pathogens?
[00:20:10] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, you said it. the pathway is like from inside the vine, it's first of all inherited from the nursery. That's, that's the main pathway.
And then. Some of those organisms come from the soil, there's a fraction that comes from the soil and move throughout the plant systemically through the sap, the plant sap. So that's another pathway one of the major pathway. But again, that takes time. Right. And then, you have fewer introduction that comes through, you know, the plant natural openings, stomatas on the leaves, for instance.
Right. Or pruning wounds. Some organism when vines are pruned some organism common pruning wounds and are able to colonize down into the vascular system. That's another path. Or introduction through insects. And, you know, OSA is, you know, one of the best example of that being introduced with shop shooters. during feeding So, but I would say those, are minor introduction compared to what's already there when the vine is being planted and secondary to movement you know, sap movement throughout the plant, from the root to the upper part of the plant.
[00:21:29] Craig Macmillan: One thing that I saw mentioned is that these variations in The microbiome inside the plant may also have kind of a role in our concept of terroir in terms of how different areas have different characteristics. Is there, something to that idea?
[00:21:46] Philippe Rolshausen: the characteristic of wine region or the terroir is not only linked to the soil, the variety or the weather condition.
. It's also linked to the microbial communities associated with those vines. There has been a study that's very famous that was done 10 years ago at UC Davis that showed that. But it's mostly true for organisms that live on the plant surfaces the surface of the berries or the surface of the leaves.
It is not so true for organisms that live Inside the vasculature of the vine, just because of what we've talked about, just because it takes time for those communities to change over time. really those the microbial composition of the trunk is, from what we understand today, mostly inherited from what's coming from the nurseries.
you know, nurseries have a huge impact in shaping. the microbial communities of the trunk and the vines and you know, can you talk about terroir when it comes to the endosphere of the vine? I don't think so. I think it's, it's a debatable question. I think it's mostly true on epiphytic organism, organism that live on the vine surface just because they are more subject to the environment. Whereas it's not so true for trunk organisms,
[00:23:11] Craig Macmillan: , Even though we've been talking about the endophytic side, what's some of the things that the other parts do you were just talking about, we have a different community in the environment that's on the surface of the plant and that, that has a role in, you know, differences between regions in terroir. What impact are those kinds of organisms having on the physiology of the vine that contributes to those differences?
[00:23:35] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, that I don't know because, you know, that's not the field I've studied. But they, could influence the fermentation process, but I'm more interested in the one that live inside.
Do they have an impact on the wine quality itself, perhaps, you know, that's a question we're interested in. they have an impact on disease. We know that much because they, they affect disease outcome and we've shown that.
The question also, I think, from the standpoint of A grape grower or a winemaker is like, well, do they also affect winemaking?
we found some bacterium in the sap of grape vines that are present during the fermentation process. So lactobacillus, for instance we found those in the sap of grapes and some bacteria that also that spoil the wine fermentation process will also. Found them in the sap. So the question is like, are those, are those coming from the soil?
You know, where are they coming from? We find them in the sap and then can they go inside? Can they be moved to the berry of the grapes and then participate in the fermentation process later on? We don't know the answer to that question. The only thing we know so far is that we can detect them inside the plant stem.
And so. What is the impact? That's the question mark, but those are really relevant questions questions we're interested in because, if you can connect the root system to the cluster, and then if you can influence the root system or the microbial community of the root system, then perhaps you can influence the communities living in the cluster and then, you know, Later on, influence your fermentation process.
So that's the idea behind it. It will take time to decipher those questions.
[00:25:27] Craig Macmillan: Coming back to the pathology side. we have testing programs for virus in the nursery system. And we have the ability to test for fungal diseases, of course.
Do you see a role for testing for bacteria and fungi other than the pathogens at the nursery stage?
[00:25:48] Philippe Rolshausen: I don't think it makes sense. So we've been working with nurseries for several years now. And we are looking for where diseases are coming from prior to vineyard establishment. there's no certified program for fungal diseases and some bacterial disease like Crown gall.
there is a fraction of those pathogen that is coming from the nurseries. That's a fact and this is true for California, but this is true for everywhere else in the world. So if you get any. any vines from a nursery, you are going to find fungi causing grapevine trunk disease. And the reason is that there are over a hundred taxa of fungi causing grapevine trunk disease you will likely find one of them and not only that, but they are able to live on a different environment. And so they can live in soil, they can live in water, they can live in plant debris for some of them. And so you cannot get rid of them. I think that growers have to have the mindset that you are not going to be able to have plants free of pathogens causing fungal, grapevine, and trunk disease.
That's just not possible. Viruses, you can get rid of them and there is a certified program that works for that. This program would not work for fungi. It's just not realistic. Right. It would be too costly to do it. Right. Right. Right. Right. The question is like, can you live with it, right? Do pathogen causing grapevine trunk disease will cause the vine to die?
If that were the case, you would have no grape production in California because virtually all the vines are infected with one fungus causing grapevine trunk disease. that's not the case. It happens, it's called young vine decline, you know, when sometimes growers plant their vine. And the vine dies within five years.
But this is because what we understand now is that it's related to the stress factor that I was talking about earlier. there is something going on with the environmental stress that caused the vine to decline after five years. what we've done is to monitor the microbiome and the vine, like I've told before, following planting.
And we do capture those pathogen from the nursery to the vineyard. And they are evolving in the vineyard just and we can detect them. But under no stress conditions the vines are doing just fine. So every year a vine will lay out new wood, right? It will grow out some wood. The trunk gets bigger and bigger.
the fight between the trunk disease pathogen and the vine is if the vine can grow wood faster than it loses some to trunk disease, then it's fine, you know, it will be able to survive. Plants and grapes are able to compartmentalize the infection. They lay out walls to compartmentalize infection, and if they do that successfully, you know, Then they will survive now when you have a stress factor that comes into play and here you have to Go back and define well define stress this is where we go back and go back to your question about what stress are we talking about?
Heat a drought I think overcropping can be one of them also, when growers take tend to push the vine early on after the establishment to get into production quickly after two years. I view this as a stress factor, so this will influence the microbiome of the vine, living of the microbiome living inside the vine, and as a result, it will influence disease outcome.
[00:29:34] Craig Macmillan: I will not look at grapevines the same way. , is there one thing, one takeaway from this conversation that you'd like growers to hear
[00:29:44] Philippe Rolshausen: what we're trying to do is to identify cultural practices that are beneficial to production.
I think you, you have to look at it from a probiotic or prebiotic. Standpoint, just like we do for humans, you know. when you look at the prebiotics, those are similar to the cultural practices that you implement in vineyards to support the presence of beneficial organisms. that can be, you know, adding compost to your soil or cover cropping because they provide some benefits to the microbes living in the soil, and as a result, the microbe associated with the vine.
that's one of them. The probiotic is the addition of single microbes to the system identify which one of those probiotics using the metagenomics approach. And we've made some some stride in, in, in that research, we've identified several organisms that are beneficial to the plant and that are antagonistic to some of the disease.
So for instance Pierce's disease we've identified several organism living inside the vines that are antagonistic to PD. And today we are testing those organism in field trials at UC Davis. Because we've demonstrated that they, they work on the greenhouse condition. And now we moved on to field trials.
And when we inoculate those beneficial organisms to, or those probiotics to vine, they are able to stimulate the vine health in some capacity, or are being antagonistic to the pathogen in some capacity. And the vines are able to sustain the disease. So, the takeaway message from that is that we are making progress, you know, understanding what those probiotics and prebiotics are for viticulture.
[00:31:39] Craig Macmillan: That is great. and I'm really happy, That you're doing this work. It takes time Oh yeah, It takes time. Absolutely, that's, and that's, part of what we do here is we, bring people kind of what the future is looking like and what's possible because if you understand it, then when it does come along, The learning curve is already hopefully down the road a little ways. doing your homework, basically. thank you in your lab. This is really exciting. interesting stuff. Where can people find out more about you?
[00:32:09] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, they can go to the University of California, Riverside Botanical and Plant Sciences website. I'm a faculty member, so they will find me there.
I have also my personal website. Rolshausen. Slash lab. com. The problem is like the spelling of my name, right? It's not easy to do.
[00:32:27] Craig Macmillan: We'll have a link to that show page plus A a number of your recent publications.
[00:32:33] Philippe Rolshausen: Yeah, we have several publications about what we've talked about today.
We have just had one released about how pruning practices affect also the microbiome and, and disease. So. You know, this is an active area of research. I'm not the only one doing this. Like I've said, I've collaborated with Dario Cantu at UC Davis. And I think he should be mentioned because he's doing some excellent work.
And we are a great team working together. As a cooperative extension specialist, I collaborate with others. I collaborate with other faculty. And this is a collaborative work that I'm talking about. I'm not the only one,
[00:33:11] Craig Macmillan: there's a network. want to thank our guest, Philippe rolshausen. He is professor of cooperative extension with the university of California riverside and doing some very exciting work. And thanks for being on the podcast, Philippe.
[00:33:24] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, that was great. Thank you for having me.
Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
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[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: For your wine club members. Is there anything more exciting than delivery day? Unboxing the latest assortment, stir sweet memories of their last visit to the winery and welcomes them to once again, connect with your community.
[00:00:13] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While, our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable. Winegrowing.
[00:00:32] Your wine club newsletter prepares your customer for the delights ahead, but does it invite them to relish in the social and environmental virtues of their loyalty?
[00:00:42] Next time you send out a newsletter, include a sustainability tidbit. So your brands enthusiasts know that they're sipping sustainably.
[00:00:50] You can start by including a brief description of the sustainable practices at your property. For SIP certified brands, we talk about the seven values. Which includes social responsibility, wiper management, safe, pest management. Energy efficiency, habitat business, and always evolving.
[00:01:08] A great way to help your customers really see what you're doing to be sustainable is to share your sustainable story.
[00:01:15] You can talk about attracting barn owls and releasing beneficial insects to help manage pests naturally.
[00:01:22] You can share pictures of the native plants in your cover crop and explain how they benefit pollinators and help improve soil health.
[00:01:28] Or you could talk about how you treat winery, process water. So that it can be reused to irrigate the landscape or the vineyard.
[00:01:36] Your customers will love learning how your brand conserves and protects natural resources.
Tell Your Sustainable Story[00:01:42] If you need more ideas, make sure you check out our newly updated course. We spent over 40 hours writing new sustainable stories, refining our training module and recording and editing video content to bring you an updated online course.
[00:01:58] The simple yet powerful free tool will help you tell your own personal sustainable message. Go to the show notes, click on the title. Tell your sustainable story to sign up and start writing yours today.
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
For thousands of years, wildfires have produced a byproduct known to improve soil and plant health - biochar. Today, researchers like Kelpie Wilson of Wilson Biochar Associates, Consulting and Manufacturing are learning how to use this form of charcoal for carbon sequestration. Kelpie explains the different stages of combustion, what types of material to include in your burn pile, incorporating biochar into compost, how to use biochar to amend alkaline or acetic soils, and an easy way to remove vineyard wires from your pile.
Resources: 56: Conservation Burning and Biochar 106: What? Bury Charcoal in the Vineyard? 167: Use Biochar to Combat Climate Change 215: Biochar Production on a Commercial Scale A Case of Biochar Use in Vineyards – Doug Beck A magnifying glass on biochar strategy: long-term effects on the soil biota of a Tuscan vineyard Biochar Use in Viticulture (US Biochar Initiative webinar link) Deep incorporation of organic amendments into soils of a ‘Calardis Musqué’ vineyard: effects on greenhouse gas emissions, vine vigor, and grape quality Long-Term Application of Biochar Mitigates Negative Plant–Soil Feedback by Shaping Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Fungal Pathogens Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln The Biochar Handbook: A Practical Guide to Making and Using Bioactivated Charcoal Vineyard Field Trial with Biochar and Compost_ 5th Harvest Report Wilson Biochar Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: For thousands of years, wildfires have produced a by-product known to improve soil and plant health. This is known as bio char. Welcome to sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth organic executive director. And since 1994 vineyard team has brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both in-field and online education, so that you can grow your business.
Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years. In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery. He speaks with Kelpie Wilson of Wilson, biochar associates consulting in manufacturing.
Kelpie explains the different stages of combustion.
What types of material to include in your burn pile? Incorporating bio char into compost. How to use bio char to amend alkaline or acidic soils and an easy way to remove vineyard wires from your pile.
If you love this topic, then you won't want to miss Josiah Hunt's presentation. Practical applications of pyrogenic, organic material, AKA biochar in vineyards. He shares his expertise at the sustainable ag expo taking place November 12th or 13th, 2024 in San Luis Obispo, California. joy, the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts.
Earn over 20 hours of continuing education and explore sustainable ag vendors. As a listener to this show, you can take $50 off of your ticket when you use code podcast 24 at checkout. Get yours [email protected]. Now let's listen in.
[00:02:00] Craig Macmillan: Our guest, today is Kelpie Wilson. She's the owner of Wilson Biochar Associates, consulting and manufacturing. And as you may have guessed today, we're going to talk about biochar. Welcome to the podcast, Kelpie.
[00:02:08] Kelpie Wilson: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:11] Craig Macmillan: What exactly is biochar?
[00:02:13] Kelpie Wilson: Biochar is just charcoal, but it's special charcoal that, uh, you can use in soil or for purposes of carbon sequestration. That's the official definition from the International Biochar Initiative.
[00:02:27] Craig Macmillan: And what does biochar do for us in the vineyard?
[00:02:30] Kelpie Wilson: Well, it sequesters carbon, so it's a very stable form of carbon. Uh, Carbon comes in a lot of different forms. I mean, we're all made of carbon, and, you know, carbon can be a diamond, which is really stable, or it can be in a sugar, which, uh, you um, oxidized into CO2 pretty quickly. So uh, in is very, in a very stable form um, it's called aromatic carbon, so it's fused carbon rings.
which are the basis of all organic chemistry. biochar is. It's carbon. The thing about biochar and charcoal is that charcoal can have, you know, widely ranging different properties depending on how you make it and what it's made from. And I should add also that uh, in the definition of biochar, For use in soil or for use in carbon sequestration, it needs to be made from organic you know, that is clean.
So there are some environmental kind of limits around it that ensure that it's, it's really contributing to the carbon cycle in a positive way and that we're not making Materials that have, you know, toxics in them that could hurt soil.
[00:03:41] Craig Macmillan: So we're introducing carbon in a fairly stable people have told me that the carbon that you put into the soil in the form of biochar could be there for thousands of years, but it's obviously available somehow, or it's involved in the soil microbiome somehow, or it's involved in nutrient cycling somehow.
What are some of the properties that contribute to that soil health component,
[00:04:00] Kelpie Wilson: Well, There's there's quite a few. The interesting thing about biochar is that it's naturally present in soils in many, many parts of the world because of fire, from vegetation fires, forest fires, it's it's supposed to be there in many cases. Uh, Especially here in the, in the in the west coast where we uh, natural fire regime in the forest.
And if you look at the most productive soils in the world, for instance, the mollisols in Iowa or the um, in the Eurasian steppe, they have large amounts of biochar Um, In the case of the steppes and the plains, that's because of prairie fires. So you have these tall, tall grasses that would periodically burn off very regularly, like every 10 years or so, and the top would burn off in a flame, and that heat would radiate you know, kind of just above the root zone, the grasses are bunched up really thick, and some air is excluded, so they wouldn't burn all the way to ash, but the heat would turn it to char, the flame would move on, and you'd be left with char, and so this char builds up over years and centuries, and, you know, hundreds of centuries to make this a very black soil and then there are other places around the world historically going back thousands of years where it was deliberately to add to soil.
So those are the terra preta soils in the Amazon naturally normally didn't have a lot of fires. And look, also can look at charcoal middens around ancient villages and even city states where people would dump their manure and their, you know, their hue manure, their night soil, and they would always deodorize it with charcoal and ash, and you find very fertile black soils in those places.
So, it's not a new thing um, but we just kind of recently rediscovered So, as far as what it does in soil, you know, it doesn't break down. Like, you know, you asked, well, then how does it feed the It it sets the table. So It's the stable carbon with these fused carbon rings. It doesn't break down easily.
And we'll also have the mineral ash. from the vegetation that burned. And so that's food. And then it also needs the carbs and the protein. So, and that comes from all the fertilizer that you add to it. So it basically sets the table for soil life because microbes like to sit down when they
eat. And so you have all these little surfaces.
In the charcoal, it's very, very porous. You know, think of activated carbon. People know that activated carbon is used for filtration. It's got all these pores. And so, in that way, it's kind of like a sponge. It can hold air and soil, which is beneficial. But also, there's the surface area. So, each of those tiny pores has a surface around it.
And when you add up all the surface area, and this is kind of mind boggling, It's But you take a teaspoon of, of or, you know, that's got a lot of surface area or an activated carbon and it can have a football field's worth of surface area all inside It's, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing to think about, but all those surfaces are where the microbes can sit down and attach themselves.
And if we, if we have added fertilizer as well, there are nutrients and water. Attached to those surfaces by electrostatic attraction. So the microbes just can hang out there and, and it's all there for them. So that's how biochar promotes um, the soil food web by, uh, promoting the microbes. And then the their mycelia in there to, you know, get it's a foundation of good soil.
[00:07:42] Craig Macmillan: And you were talking about the fertilizer part. Is that one of the reasons why it's a good idea or a common practice to mix biochar with compost and spread it in that form?
[00:07:50] Kelpie Wilson: Yes, but I would not just mix it with compost if I have any choice at all. I would put it in the beginning of the composting That's where you're going to get the most benefit know, it just takes time for all these things to come And so If you start it from the beginning, not only do you get the nutrients and the biology in there right you're um, having um, beneficial impact on your composting So, You'll have fewer greenhouse gas uh, the compost will get hotter quicker uh, and you know, the char will absorb any kind of nasty stuff that's in there, reduce odors, etc. it's really, The thing about biochar and to make it really work for you in a, in a farm um, is to get every, Benefit you can out of it.
And there's a whole cascade of benefits that come with biochar.
[00:08:40] Craig Macmillan: we can talk about that some more, but let's get to some practical things. Let's say I'm interested in this. I've been hearing about it. I'm excited about it. I want to try this out. How can I make some high quality biochar with the least amount of emissions and the highest biochar production on my farm?
[00:08:57] Kelpie Wilson: Great So I've been working on this for quite a while. When I first heard about biochar, it was, I think, 2007, and it was the terra preta soils that we were all hearing about. I immediately got involved in it. I went to work for the International Biochar you know, was in close touch with people all around the world.
that we're trying to find ways to start making and using biochar, and a lot of the first people to actually do it were people who uh, you know, making little cook stoves or just making biochar in burn piles, and I saw that myself because I live in the woods here in Oregon, and I'd go out to where they did burn piles to, you know, We had a lot of extra vegetation that had to be thinned to protect from wildfire.
And I'd go to these burn piles and I'd find little chunks of charcoal left in them. And so we started making, doing experiments to see if we could optimize that. And we figured out make, take a burn pile and light it from the top. So it burned from the top down, and that would burn up a lot of the smoke so it was cleaner, and also leave us with a little pile of glowing coals at the end.
And anybody who's made a campfire has seen this. You have that pile of glowing coals, and if you just walk away and leave it, it'll all go to ash. But if you just simply put it out with water, hey, you've got biochar. So that's the way to start, and you can can do it in your a, with a kettle grill.
You know, just a little container that will improve the biochar recovery because if you cut off the air that comes in from and the sides of your you, you will just burn less of it to And again, you just put it out with water. So then I started making containers to improve the efficiency.
compared to making biochar in an open burn pile, if you put it in a container, You can make three or four times as much so, I've been working with little containers ever those, We call those flame cap kilns. Because the idea of how they work is you put your, make your burn pile in a container.
It's cutting off air from the bottom and the sides. So all the air comes from the And as it burns down, you keep adding more. And every time you add more material, it flames up. And the char that you've already formed on the bottom is protected from air by the container. And it's protected from air from the top because all the air that comes in is used in the flame of the currently burning material.
And so what you've already made is, is protected from oxygen. So you can build up a huge pile of char in a container, and you're only limited by the size of your container, really.
[00:11:34] Craig Macmillan: So the practice is put your feedstock in a container something that cuts off the bottom the sides from the air Light it from the top with kindling or something I would assume something lighter weight and then as that process goes and you can see the material come back Well, is it truly combustion if there's not a lot of oxygen?
[00:11:51] Kelpie Wilson: Well, uh, I call it combustus interruptus. So basically it is combustion, but combustion happens in stages. Okay. myths combustion. One is um, wood wood burns, wood does not burn. Wood gas burns in a And you can see this if you look at your charcoal grill, you see, there's not a flame.
Because the gas has already been mostly, you know, burned out of it. And so it just glows. So there's different stages of combustion. The first one is dehydration. When you heat a stick of um, water's going to come off of it, because water doesn't burn. And then the gases come out, and those are, methane, carbon burnable, burnable gases, and those make the flame.
And then when the flame goes out, you know, you just, that glowing coal stage. So it's, it's really staged combustion, and you're just interrupting and saving the char.
[00:12:49] Craig Macmillan: If I understand you correctly by putting more material on the top I'm continuing that process. The stuff on this top is heating up. You're getting that, flame cap. So you described it. And I can just keep layering on until my container's full. Basically.
[00:13:04] Kelpie Wilson: Yep, that's how we do
[00:13:06] Craig Macmillan: I want to come back to the kiln idea, but first, what are the, what are good feedstocks to make biochar from? What are feedstocks that are not good for making biochar? Right. Right.
Uh
[00:13:19] Kelpie Wilson: Good feedstocks are dry.
You don't want a lot of wet stuff, because you use a lot of energy burning the wet. , Good feedstocks are also appropriately sized. So grapevines, for instance, are good because they're not really big. Even the trunk of a vine is not really big. And so if you try to put a big log in your container on your fire, you use so much energy to get the heat into the center of the log.
So it's a progressive thing, right? You're charring the outside, and the heat's moving in, it's charring and charring and charring. But meanwhile, the outside of your char is starting to burn to ash. So it's not very efficient to try and char a big log. The kind of limit depends a lot on the fuel moisture.
In Utah, we're We have really dry wood. People are putting six and eight inch diameter logs in a kiln and doing fine. In Oregon, I kind of keep it to four inches, usually. But you know, we could do bigger stuff. It's just not quite as efficient. So dry less than 25 percent moisture is ideal. We can do wetter stuff, and we often do because we're here in the middle of winter trying to get burn piles taken care of. So we go ahead and do it, and there's some techniques for optimizing how you do that, how you load it. But dry, less than 25%. and not too big, but also not too small. I've really tried hard to biochar hemp stalks, for instance, which are abundant around here, and they're just a little too small.
if they're dry, they do pretty well, but you have to really make sure you don't pack them in too tightly because, small, small things like straw, and crop waste like that, they will pack and cut off the airflow and you'll get smoke.
[00:15:07] Craig Macmillan: Oh,
okay.
[00:15:08] Kelpie Wilson: That's the main issue is you get smoke.
And then as far as what species, the main difference between different species of wood, for instance, is density.
And because we're making biochar in a flame, we're making it at a very high temperature. So it's, as long as we're not smoldering it, As long as we have the flame present, we know we're making it at a high enough temperature to burn out most of the volatiles. Know, some species like eucalyptus or walnut might have chemicals in them that are allelopathic, I think is the term.
And if you add a lot of that to soil, you could have problems. But as long as we're making it at high temperature, we burn most of that out.
[00:15:50] Craig Macmillan: Got it. So we want things that are dry. We want things that are woody, that are relatively high in concentration. Things like grasses are probably not going to work as well or work terribly well. It sounds like you want chunks basically, you know, something about the size of your forearm or a little bit bigger chunk would be a really
great, size.
[00:16:09] Kelpie Wilson: that's a great way to look at it. I like the physical measurements. You know, I was telling woofers here the other day about how to, make biochar compost. And so we're doing it in layers. And I just said, think about Parmesan cheese. When you add the biochar, if you really like Parmesan on your pizza, just add the biochar like that.
So those kinds of physical measurements are really helpful for people when they're learning how to use biochar.
[00:16:33] Craig Macmillan: and returning to that topic you recommend putting biochar in your composting windrows at the beginning as part of the whole process.
[00:16:41] Kelpie Wilson: Yes.
The very beginning when I think about a vineyard, especially one where you're actually making the wine know, you're pressing the grapes and you have the is it called
pomace? I think the grape skins that's easily degradable stuff. It's hard to, compost just on its own because it doesn't have much carbon, but if you add biochar to that, you can make a beautiful compost.
And then great for reducing on farm inputs. contributing to the circular economy. And that's always how I recommend people use biochar if possible, is find whatever other organic waste streams are there, whether it's grass clippings, grape pomace, leaves, anything else, manure that you might have, mix it right in there.
[00:17:27] Craig Macmillan: Makes tons of sense. Okay. Let's get down to the nitty gritty here. We've touched on kilns as a way of getting the highest production. Tell me about the Ring of Fire Kiln system the concept in general. And then what might, what might be a biochar production day like?
[00:17:42] Kelpie Wilson: The Ring of Fire kiln is my latest, greatest design. Just bin kilns, but they were heavy. So They were, weighing a lot, and you had to, move them around, and very hard for one person. So I came up with this modular design of panels. And so you can hook them together.
They're four feet long and 40 inches tall, and they have a bracket that hooks them all together, and you can make a kiln any size you want. with that. I mean, not too big, but usually we make kilns that are between six feet and 12 feet in diameter. And so that can accommodate the piles you already have, for instance.
And then the other innovation with that kiln is it has a heat shield. And that's really important for two reasons. One is it holds more heat in the kiln so you get more production. It's more efficient. But the other one is that it protects the worker. Because when you are around a giant , flaming pile, you know, you can really get fried just from the radiant heat.
You know, you're not burning up, but you, the radiant heat, I would come away from some of my sessions with very red skin and very dehydrated. And so we really think a lot about the workers who are doing this. Because it's mostly hand labor, although we can also load the bigger kilns with, machinery. that's the Ring of Fire Kiln. It's also very, very clean, and there's a gap between the heat shield and the inner ring that allows, um, air to come through, and then so you have preheated air that's going in from the top into the kiln. And that also helps a lot with, uh, Reducing the smoke. And I have lots of pictures and videos showing the smoke being sucked into the kiln from the top.
It's really cool to see these loops of smoke kind of coming up and then being sucked back down into the kiln. Those are the advantages of the ring of fire kiln in addition to the fact that it's modular. One person can take it apart and move it one panel at a time. The panels only weigh less than 40 pounds and set it up somewhere else.
That's, that's the other advantage of the ring of fire kiln. So a typical workday, and I'm going to quote some numbers from my colleague Eric Meyer, who has Napa char, and he's done some incredible work in vineyards in the last couple years. Here's what he says He can make up to 12 cubic yards of biochar per kiln per day, which is two bone dry tons.
And that is equivalent to two to three acres of pulled mines. he'll do this usually with one helper. Sometimes he'll have a, a mini excavator that he uses to load it, but a lot of times he's just doing it, you know, as hand labor. And so that's a ;lot of biochar, two tons of biochar in one day. He'll start by arriving at the site, setting up his kiln, and then just hand loading the biochar initially, fill it full, light it on top.
There's a little break where you let it burn down till you start seeing glowing coals at the bottom and, some ash on the top. And then you just load it one layer at a time. And the loading rate is really critical. If you overload, you get smoke and you'll end up maybe even with unburned pieces in the bottom because the flame moves up in the kiln as you add more material and the bottom starts cooling off.
You don't want to leave any big pieces at the bottom. We load small pieces initially. And if you have bigger pieces, you would load them kind of toward the end or in the middle. And then when it's all full of biochar, or you're just done for the day because you're tired, you get some water out and you spray the kiln down with water just to cool it.
Then you open up the panels, and rake it out, and you spray it with water and rake it at the same time. So you end up with a big, big patch of biochar on the ground.
[00:21:29] Craig Macmillan: Perfect. Then you take that to your composting spot and away you go. .
[00:21:32] Kelpie Wilson: another piece about making biochar from vineyards, especially vineyard removals, is that a lot of times there's wire, trellis wire, in it. And you could have a big pile and you could build a kiln around the pile because you're not untangling that pile, right, with all the wire in it.
And then at the end, uh, you know, you pick the wire out of the char. You can use a magnet.
[00:21:52] Craig Macmillan: That's cool. What are some things that we should be concerned about not doing? If we are newbies to biochar production.
[00:22:00] Kelpie Wilson: Yeah, that's a really good question too. So, you need to know a little bit about your biochar. If you have a lot of ash in it, it can be alkaline. So if you have an alkaline soil, and you have alkaline biochar, you need to think about how you're going to apply it and maybe, usually composting will take care of any pH issue.
If you have an acidic soil, you might want to just add it directly. You know, take the most advantage you can get of that liming ability. You also don't want to add too much at one time, especially without composting it first, because it can, , lock up nutrients for a short time. Most likely you're not gonna have too much biochar for a, for a big field. Um, It's great to be able to do it a little bit every year. That's the best way to incorporate it.
[00:22:47] Craig Macmillan: Oh, and that's another question. I've seen different strategies here. Some folks believe that it has to be incorporated into the soil. Other folks say, no, that's good, but you can go ahead and spread it at the surface and you'll still get some benefits. Is that true?
[00:22:58] Kelpie Wilson: Well, it's going to depend a lot on what you're trying to grow. So the vineyard trials that I've seen using biochar, a lot of times they're putting it in at planting and they're putting it in deep in the root zone. That seems like a good idea to me. One thing I'll say is when I look at the literature, I read a lot of the biochar research literature.
There's some really interesting new material out about replant disease. So if you're replanting in a vineyard, you know, in an old vineyard, new vines. The soil can harbor pathogens that the older vines were able to resist, but the new vines have a hard time with. And biochar has a lot of benefits for disease resistance, just because it promotes a lot of microbial diversity, so you don't get the dominance with some of the pathogenic fungi and other organisms.
So, you know, adding it, deep You know, when you're doing the replanting, replacing a vineyard is probably the most beneficial way, to add biochar. But if you already have a vineyard and you're using cover cropping, for instance, it'll go really well with a legume cover crop like clover and you don't even need to compost it because clover and legumes fix their own nitrogen and And biochar is especially wonderful with legume crops because it promotes the nitrogen fixing bacteria. If I just had a couple bags of biochar and I wanted to use it right away, and I was, planting a cover crop, I'd just use it in the cover crop. I think vines are like any other plant, where they have roots that come up close to the surface, they can get benefit from surface applied biochar as well.
[00:24:39] Craig Macmillan: So if I'm following this idea, so from a cover cropping standpoint, what am I going to do is broadcast it and then plant my cover crop. That'd be one way of building the health of the whole floor, which is a really good idea. What about banding? It's very popular to band compost right into the vine row.
If I have compost that's got biochar in it, will I get those benefits as well?
[00:24:59] Kelpie Wilson: I would totally think so. The other thing about biochar is that it holds water. So, you know, in, droughty areas that would be helpful to,
[00:25:08] Craig Macmillan: If there was one thing, just one piece of advice that you had for folks, Who are interested in starting to produce biochar and use biochar. Let's talk about it one for production and one thing for use. What would that be? What would that two part advice be?
[00:25:25] Kelpie Wilson: first of all, uh, get one of my ring of fire biochar kilns. It's a, you know, it's really economic. And second of all, buy my book, the biochar handbook, because I have all kinds of information in there about composting, you know, different ways to culture biochar, build soil. Well, you know, so sorry to be so nakedly promotional there, but
[00:25:50] Craig Macmillan: Well, you know, you're directing, you're directing people towards resources,
[00:25:53] Kelpie Wilson: right.
[00:25:53] Craig Macmillan: Anything else?
[00:25:54] Kelpie Wilson: Oh, well, I'll send you some other resources, too, that you don't have to buy the book. Check out the U. S. Biotar Initiative website. There's a Biotar Learning Center there and USBI has collected a lot of resources there. fact sheets, their seminars, webinars. There is a lot of biochar information out there.
And I will say I've watched a few YouTube videos that are just. Make me cringe it is so easy to experiment with it yourself, which is great. It's really great that people experiment with it. And I think, feel free, you know, do your own experiments. , there's some not so great information out there that, you might want to just do your own work and look at the more authoritative sources like that the USBI before you take what a YouTuber says as, as gospel about biochar.
So I guess my one advice really on both, topics of production and application is just jump in and try it. It's so easy. You know, make it, make a bonfire in your backyard or, any kind of little container. You could dig a little shallow pit in the ground and, just make some biochar, then you've got some.
Now do some, greenhouse trials. You know, see how it interacts with your soil because every soil is different. And so, check the pH, add it to, you know, your soil, and, grow a seedling. it's very easy to do some experiments. I actually have, in my book, a whole procedure for how to do a, scientifically valid experiment. Uh, Pot trial in the greenhouse, so you can really, step by step, you can really look and see how it compares with other amendments, try it in your compost pile, use a compost thermometer, it's not straightforward how to use it in compost, because again, compost like soil, it's going to have a lot of different kinds of ingredients, biochar does really interesting things, in compost, so.
Just try it.
[00:27:46] Craig Macmillan: Just try it. Like that's great advice. Our guest today has been Kelpie Wilson. She's the owner of Wilson Biochar Associates Consulting and Manufacturing. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been some really great practical, actionable information, which is what we like to bring our listeners.
As Kelpie mentioned, we're going to have a lot of links to things and resources and whatnot on the show notes. So be sure to travel to that page. I'm finding that this is a growing topic of interest, but I'm finding that there's more and more folks that are trying it, and we're all very excited for what the potential might be.
[00:28:17] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by San agro. WestBridge is now San aggro. When the opportunity came to expand their reach and improve their customer's bottom line, they took it. San Agros commitment to deliver science-based solutions for sustainable crop health and nutrition remains the same.
They offer a full line of plant nutrients, bio pesticides, and specialty inputs. Visit San agro.com to learn more.
Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Kelpie her new book, the bio char handbook, a practical guide to making and using bioactivated charcoal loads, more links to bio char plus sustainable Winegrowing podcast episodes. 56 conservation burning and bio char. 1 0 6, what? Barry charcoal and the vineyard. 1 67. Used bio char to combat climate change and two 15 bio char production on a commercial scale. If you'd liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend. Subscribing and leaving us a review.
You can find all of the podcasts on vineyard team.org/podcast. And you can reach [email protected]. Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
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[00:00:00] Customer sense of urgency around climate change is rising. In fact, 78% of global consumers feel that environmental sustainability is important.
[00:00:10] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable while our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.
[00:00:29] Customers like the idea of being sustainable and want to live more sustainable lives. While, many brands and retailers today are making eco-friendly claims. Some chalk up to little more than greenwashing. A marketing ploy designed to make products seem more sustainable than they are. Because of this consumers can feel that they can't always trust green claims.
[00:00:50] It is more important than ever for sustainable brands like you to share your sustainable story in a meaningful and authentic way.
[00:00:58] In this week's marketing tip. We share a great example. With Niner wine estates, sustainable story on the value of energy efficiency.
[00:01:06] Electricity use in the winery accounts for a large proportion of the end products, energy demand. From keeping buildings and tanks at proper temperatures to powering equipment and lighting energy use in the winery adds up quickly. Anticipating increasing energy demand and cost. Niner wine estates built its winery into a hillside. Because of this, the ground level on one side of the building is a couple of stories higher. Then the ground level on the other side. This wasn't a flaw in the design, rather, a strategy to allow for a gravity flow winemaking system. are brought into the facility at the top level, instead of being transferred by machines, the grapes move with gravity down the tiers of the building through each stage of the winemaking process.
[00:01:51] Another other energy efficient benefit of the hillside is that the earth surrounding the building works as a natural insulator, reducing the need for a cooling system to keep the facility at optimal temperatures. is another element that Niner wine estates utilizes large windows in the production facility and tasting rooms allow sunlight to fill these buildings during the day. When they do need electricity. The grid is not their primary source. Since 2015, the majority of their tasting room restaurant. Wineries and Wells have been powered by the sun. There are two banks of high efficient solar panels on the property. One at the top of their winery building and the other on the ground next to their tasting room.
[00:02:33] Additional solar panels can be found in the parking lot, but they aren't used to power business operations.
[00:02:39] solar banks are on top of EVs charging stations, welcoming staff and guests to plug in while they enjoy their time at nine or wine estates.
[00:02:47] Together. All of these components have a significant impact on Niner wine estates, energy efficiency. them to symbols of sustainability, achievement, sip certified and lead a certified level. Silver. Make sure you check out the show notes. For the link called stacking energy savings, sustainable story at Niner wine estates to see pictures of their energy efficient facility.
[00:03:13] here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the sustainable story program. This simple, yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal and it just got better. With the upgraded online course, go to the show notes, click the link titled tell your sustainable story. To sign up and start writing yours today.
[00:03:35] Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
Tell Your Sustainable StoryWe are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** 240: Stacking Energy Savings | Sustainable Story: Niner Wine Estates Apply for SIP Certified Wine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
We regularly hear about eclectic tractors but have you tried an electric truck? Duff Bevill, Founder and Partner and Brooke Parsons, Viticulture Analyst at Bevill Vineyard Management were part of the Ford Pro Pilot Project. They tested the capacity of an electric van, truck towing capabilities, and battery life of electric vehicles during day to day farming operations. The pair discuss the benefits of tracking GPS and maintenance through Ford’s Telematics and the things you need to consider when looking to add an electric truck to your fleet.
Resources: 120: Autonomous Drone Vineyard Spraying 219: Intelligent Sprayers to Improve Fungicide Applications and Save Money 225: California’s Ban on Autonomous Tractors Bevill Vineyard Management Farming of the Future: Ford Pro, Sonoma County Winegrowers Join Forces to Electrify Business of Farming Sustainable Farming in Sonoma County Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year - PODCAST24 Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript[00:00:05] Beth Vukmanic: We regularly hear about electric tractors, but have you tried an electric truck? Welcome to sustainable wine growing with Vineyard Team. Where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, executive director. Since 1994, we have brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools. Through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.
[00:00:37] In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time SIP Certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery. Speaks with Duff Bevill. Founder and partner. And Brooke Parsons, viticulture analyst at Bevill vineyard management.
[00:00:55] They were part of the Ford probe pilot project, where they tested the capacity of an electric van. Truck towing capabilities and battery life of electric vehicles during day-to-day farming operations. The pair discussed the benefits of tracking GPS and maintenance through Ford telematics and the things you need to consider when looking to add an electric truck to your fleet.
[00:01:17] . Because you listened to this podcast, you won't want to miss the premier wine growing event of the year, the Sustainable Ag Expo. Enjoy the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts earn over 20 hours of continuing education. And explore sustainable ag. Vendors. It all takes place.
[00:01:38] November 12th through 13th, 2024 at the Madonna Inn expo center in San Luis Obispo, California. As a listener to this podcast, take $50 off of your ticket. When you use code podcast 24 at checkout. Get yours today at sustainableagexpo.org. Now let's listen in.
[00:01:56] Craig Macmillan: Our guests today are Duff Bevill and Brooke Parsons. Duff is owner of Bevill Vineyard Management in Sonoma County. And Brooke Parsons is Viticulture Analyst with Bevill Vineyard Management. And we're going to talk about the Ford Pro Pilot Project that they're involved in. Thanks for being on the podcast.
[00:02:19] Duff Bevill: You bet, man.
[00:02:19] We're happy to be here.
[00:02:20] Craig Macmillan: So Duff, what exactly is this project? How'd you get involved in it? Give us a little history.
[00:02:26] Duff Bevill: Yeah, back in I think it was September, October of 2021. Well, I'm involved with the Sonoma County growers organization and Carissa Cruz, our president and Carissa.
[00:02:37] Got a name of somebody to call. And she made a cold call to a Ford motor company. And then I think one more phone call after that. And she got in touch with Ford pro told him what we were interested in doing. Thought whether it was a perfect fit because our sustainability program that we've you know, managed now for more than a decade, well over a decade.
[00:02:54] And Ford sent someone from Detroit out here to meet with us over dinner and another representative out of Sacramento that was, I think, a lobbyist for Ford, I can't remember exactly. His role, but both of them came out here and she cold called a couple of us to come and have dinner with his middle of harvest and yeah, we hit it off and she went back to I guess, technically Dearborn and told them back there that we were legitimate and she thought that they should pursue something with us.
[00:03:19] So that, that was in September, October, then in November around Thanksgiving. A team from Ford came to meet with us. They want to know size of our fleet of vehicles. They're just trying to get some, to find out how legitimate we might be. And they went back positive. And then the following January, so it'd be January of 2022 Ford came out full blown to Sonoma County, out to the Dutton Ranch.
[00:03:43] And we had a big, giant press release. President Jim Farley came out from Ford, all on film, gave a talk and that sort of thing, and it was a big deal. So that really launched, it's really January of 2022. Roughly probably March, I think it was, of 2022, they didn't have the lightened pickup trucks available yet.
[00:04:01] That was still, suffering from COVID, you know, and, and Production was down. So , they actually had some Ford vans, electric vans, which they just gave us a try and Brooke she was basically assigned that van and tried to figure out what to do with it. And so we, all collectively came up with an idea on how to use the vans, although you know, they're just not a fit for farming, but we made, we made it work out.
[00:04:23] And then I think it was in June, we finally pick up the lightning. So June of 2022, we've got the lightnings. And then what we did was we gave Ford feedback. We met with engineers, either Zoom or in person on a pretty regular basis for the better part of a year. More than a year probably.
[00:04:40] Just getting feedback from a farming point of view, you know, from us using vehicles in the field. And each one of the three companies used them differently and to gather information. I personally wanted to drive it so I could see. How it would work if I want to buy more, would actually work for me .
[00:04:56] I know one of the other companies used to have their shop mechanics use it and another company had one of their field foreman use it. So all of us really tried something different with it and for different reasons. But anyways, that's how it worked out. And we just fed information back and forth, making recommendations, you know, see if there's any flaws that Came up and we'd report back immediately to them.
[00:05:14] We saw something that Could be improved or or ask why it was the way it was that sort of thing
[00:05:20] Craig Macmillan: And we're talking about a completely electric vehicle that's designed for farm use Is that right?
[00:05:25] Duff Bevill: The concept of ford pro so I got my ford hat on right now the concept of ford pro It's a division that was created to really focus on business people with fleets so farming was a connection I don't think they thought of until we reached out to them.
[00:05:42] I think on paper, originally they were looking at the local contractor. You know, the guy was he drove it personally, he was the contractor, or he had a couple carpenters working for him. I think that was probably it initially. Whether they were thinking of farming at all until we reached out to them.
[00:05:58] I don't know. They almost certainly weren't thinking of wine grape growing on the west coast. I think that the whole name Ford Pro, it was really targeted to professional business people who would normally have a pickup truck and how they could adapt using electric vehicle.
[00:06:15] Craig Macmillan: I wasn't familiar with this until this came up for this episode. Is this product line is, is that commercially available at the time that you approached them? Is it available now? Is it still in kind of a testing state?
[00:06:26] Duff Bevill: They weren't available yet, but they were marketing in the summer of for sure the fall, but certainly the summer of 2021.
[00:06:33] I saw ads on TV or Something that would pop up on a website. If you're on Googling something else on a Ford pro for a lightning come up for 10 seconds and disappeared on it. It was a little bit of a tease at that point. But I know the one I got or the one that we have now was number one Oh nine.
[00:06:48] Craig Macmillan: Okay.
[00:06:49] Duff Bevill: I used to kid them asking, tell them I wanted number one, but they wouldn't give it to me. But I got number one oh nine and, they were just beginning to market it you know, shortly after Covid hit. And so they continued to in, in 2021, you know, we were basically all shut down in 2020.
[00:07:05] And 2021 was still pretty disastrous, but they were but all their production facilities were shut down. I mean, they came to a halt just like everybody else. So I think they anticipated getting out there, marketing earlier, making it available earlier. But I think the biggest stumbling block was for, I think a lot of manufacturers, they just didn't have the chips from the big chip manufacturer in Hong Kong.
[00:07:25] And that was what it boiled down to. I think it was true for all the car companies. Yeah.
[00:07:30] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. I remember that.
[00:07:31] Duff Bevill: That was, you had to get that out there. And so they had a marketing plan. They created a division. They had a president of the division identified. The marketing team was in place.
[00:07:38] All the engineers were shifted to the Ford pro team. You know, we got to meet almost all those people, I could, make a phone call to one of the head engineers anytime I wanted to, or send them a text or an email.
[00:07:49] Craig Macmillan: Wow.
[00:07:50] Duff Bevill: It was a real interesting experience.
[00:07:53] Craig Macmillan: And you said you got a van first, is that right?
[00:07:56] Duff Bevill: Yeah, Brooke drove it, yeah.
[00:07:57] Craig Macmillan: That got handed over to you, Brooke. What was that like? Did you have experience with electric vehicles prior to that? Did you have experience with vans prior to that? Were you, Pickup truck person.
[00:08:05] Brooke Parsons: Good questions. Yes. I had never driven a van much prior, especially for viticultural tasks. Before using the e transit, I used a pickup with a trailer that I would load a four wheeler onto the trailer and the e transit took the place of the trailer and the pickup. So I loaded With a ramp. The four wheeler inside.
[00:08:31] Craig Macmillan: Oh, it was a pretty good sized vehicle then.
[00:08:33] Duff Bevill: Yeah. A half ton chassis. It was basically F-150 chassis, but the van, you know?
[00:08:38] Craig Macmillan: Oh like a panel van.
[00:08:40] Duff Bevill: Exactly.
[00:08:41] Craig Macmillan: Oh, okay. I was thinking like in a condo van.
[00:08:44] This is more like a panel van. You got room to put stuff in. That makes sense. More like a, more like a service truck.
[00:08:48] Brooke Parsons: Like a service truck. So I'd open the back of it to load the four wheeler, but I could also open the side to access my tools and whatnot. It was nice.
[00:08:59] Duff Bevill: They actually outfitted it with shelving. Which would have been perfect if you were like a plumber or an electrician. But with the shelving it made the bay too narrow that we couldn't even fit the four wheeler and ATVs, so we had to take the shelving out so we could use it for that purpose.
[00:09:14] You know, we just substitute trailer and a pickup truck for the van. But how long did you drive that van?
[00:09:20] Brooke Parsons: I drove it for one full season, so May or June through the end of harvest.
[00:09:25] Craig Macmillan: How did you find that? Cause you see that all the time. You see the truck with the trailer, with the ATV in the back.
[00:09:30] How did you find that moving up to a van? Did you find it easier to drive? More difficult? Were you not as confident
[00:09:34] Brooke Parsons: I loved it because I didn't have to worry about a trailer and I didn't have to unload it each night to put it in the barn. So I just closed it all up and it was safe inside the van.
[00:09:46] If I went anywhere. I felt safe to leave the four wheeler locked inside and it wouldn't be tampered with. It was simple enough to bring back to the shop and charge every day and be ready to go the next morning.
[00:10:01] Craig Macmillan: That was gonna be my next question, Brooke. So when you first started with this, did you have any concerns about range?
[00:10:05] Duff Bevill: All of us do.
[00:10:07] Brooke Parsons: Yeah, that was the number one concern was range. For our operation, we farm all in Sonoma County and in a given day, I wasn't driving more than say a hundred miles in the van and it did make a difference in the range, whether or not I had weight in the vehicle or not, or if I use the heat or not.
[00:10:32] I didn't have as much range in the van as the Ford Lightning. And I had to be careful there were a couple of scary moments that I thought I'd have to call Somebody to come get me, but I never ultimately ran out of power
[00:10:48] Craig Macmillan: So with a little practice and a little experience, you knew
[00:10:51] Duff Bevill: If you were to buy a a ford lightning, I don't know about the other electric vehicles in the ford product line But for sure the lightning you would have a choice of, I think, two different battery packs.
[00:11:02] One they refer to, I believe it's just standard. And then they had a second option or an option that would be the extended battery. My understanding at the time, the Ford, pro version of the Ford Lightning came with a standard battery. But when they heard I was, you know, initially I was getting over 300 miles in a charge, I asked them about that and they said let us get back to you.
[00:11:22] Well, a week later they got back and said, oh yeah, that's right, we set yours up, or the three, but for sure mine, the one we still have, with the big battery. They sort of custom built that truck. These three are one offs in that first early run of the heavier battery pack, which to me and I suggested this to him, if the marketing is intended to be to the professional business owner driving a pickup truck, I think Ford pro should just be, you have a standard big battery in it for those reasons.
[00:11:50] They may do that. I have no idea. You're got a professional driver. He's in there going from. The lumber yard to the job site down to the Supply depot for something else. I would just think that's just based on our habits in the farming industry.
[00:12:03] You're shuffling around and it seems to me that'd be a good option, but anyways, It worked out great for me.
[00:12:08] Craig Macmillan: So you've been driving the lightning now for a little while, right?
[00:12:11] Duff Bevill: I drove it for the first two I guess nine months just so I could assess How I might want to buy more of them for , our operation here.
[00:12:19] We buy a couple of pickup trucks every year. I gave , the, pickup to Brooke. So she now drives the pickup cause we turned the van back in.
[00:12:25] Craig Macmillan: I figured that might get kicked back to you so Brooke now you've driven the van now you're driving the truck How do you feel about the truck?
[00:12:31] Brooke Parsons: It handles better than any vehicle. I've ever driven. I love to drive it. I'm very proud of it and I Like it a lot zero complaints
[00:12:41] Craig Macmillan: Even though you have to have a trailer again
[00:12:42] Brooke Parsons: Even though I have to have a trailer again, that's okay.
[00:12:45] Duff Bevill: It was remarkable how it seemed like it was luxurious riding because the electric horsepower, . That thing is so powerful. One of the things, again, my understanding of the engineers, they redesigned the chassis on it.
[00:12:57] So Ford that F one 50 has four wheel, all four corners, independent suspension. Soon as we got to, we put it up on the rack to take a look at the, Technology underneath it. Look at the batteries, you know, you're not touching anything, you're just looking at everything.
[00:13:10] And they designed this beautiful cast aluminum suspension for the back end of that truck. That you'd find in a, I don't know, luxurious European automobile, I think. But it's built heavy to handle all that, torque. You know, oh, it's like, I don't know, 800, horsepower when you push the special button on the dashboard, you know, and it's pretty stunning the performance and that's all torque.
[00:13:31] That's twisting power. And so the engineers had to design into that thing, something capable of handling that much torque is beautiful. But the point is a four wheel independent suspension just rides beautifully cars heavier. So about a thousand pounds heavier, I think because of the batteries. So the comments, the extra weight.
[00:13:47] And a very sophisticated suspension. It's just like a luxury sedan. And you're driving pretty nice.
[00:13:52] Craig Macmillan: And so Brooke, you've been driving this truck now, one of the things that has come up around electric vehicles has been the question of horsepower end of torque.
[00:13:59] How do you feel this truck performs compared to like, let's say a diesel dually,
[00:14:03] Brooke Parsons: It accelerates very quickly, so getting onto the freeway is no problem when it's busy. And the other biggest factor that I notice is braking. You hardly have to brake and it takes a little bit of time to get used to because when you take your foot off of the accelerator, it naturally stops because the engine isn't going.
[00:14:29] And you hardly have to use your brakes, which is very nice.
[00:14:33] Duff Bevill: When I first got it, my wife had a Prius many, many years ago, and she pretty much drove it right off the lot. The way it was set up from the dealer. Well, I discovered that you could switch to regeneration on electric. So when you did let off the throttle, it would break by regenerating electric motors, regenerate electricity, put it back in the battery.
[00:14:52] Well, that's the first thing I did on this lightning. Find that setting I think in the nine months that I drove it I told the guys at Ford I said, I'll bet you I didn't touch the brakes ten times in those nine months
[00:15:03] Brooke Parsons: but to answer your question I've only pulled light things behind it and So I haven't really put it to the test in that way.
[00:15:13] Craig Macmillan: I was doing a little research on this and I understand that there's like a data collection and management component to this that's attractive.
[00:15:19] What can you tell me about that? Have you used that feature? It can tell you about your fleet, I guess?
[00:15:24] Duff Bevill: Aside from electric vehicles Ford was really interested in us, Using and learning to use, and hearing back from us, their telematics. That's what they call it, Ford Telematics.
[00:15:37] And I think it was initially launched with the Ford Pro division, where you sign up every vehicle in your fleet. We've got like 20 Ford pickup trucks, something like that. If you go back all the way, I want to say like to 2014.
[00:15:49] Prior to that, I'm not sure, but for sure, like 2014, the electronics in those vehicles have the capability of just hooking up to the telematic system. The Ford is promoting, and if you get it into your fleet and get your, your vehicles in entered in your fleet, you can monitor them. Of course, like GPS, that's what everybody's doing nowadays, but much more than that, your shop manager could know, have a better use of knowing when it's time for an oil change, you know, we just do it.
[00:16:14] We track that kind of stuff, hard copy paper, put a sticker on the dashboard and the drivers relay to us when the mileage number comes up, they notify the shop manager and we schedule for a service. Typically the oil filter change and then in general inspection we inspect the brakes and all that kind of stuff.
[00:16:31] With the telematics they have the potential setting up where you could punch in a timeline that you wanted either by the calendar. Like every 12 months on the vehicles that we don't run very much. We do a major inspection every 12 months. And then the ones that actually have the mileage being for somewhere between five and 7, 000 miles, something like that.
[00:16:50] Depends on the vehicle. Depends on the tractor or it's a pickup truck or a full size class eight diesel truck. And so all that stuff is available. And one of the pluses and this happened to us. It was a perfect, we've used this as an example. Typically in modern vehicles, the components that fail first are the sensors that measure your NOX exhaust pipes.
[00:17:11] Those are the ones that are going bad. Probably because of the heat cycle they go through because of their exhaust pipes, right? So about anywhere between 40, 000 and 60, 000 miles, those are the devices that fail. So one of our foremen called the shop, our shop manager, and said check engine light came on.
[00:17:27] I guess he got the code through telematics, identified it as an oxygen sensor, ordered the part. The truck never came back to the shop. It's still out on the job site. We're supposed to be with the crew. He gets the parts ordered. The delivery guys bring the part to the shop that day. And it's interesting how it works is that is the analysis is it is 90 percent likely it's your oxygen sensor. They come up and then when the guy back that night, they bring it right into the shop and change that sensor. At the end of the day, confirmed that that was the part that needed to be replaced.
[00:18:00] The next day was back on the job site, all repaired. The only other way around that would have been. Bring it back to the shop. Get your, your analysis device on it, you know, on the onboard computer or mechanic drives out to the job site, does the same thing at the job site.
[00:18:16] And then it comes back or it comes out, orders the parts on a telephone or something like that. So it's saves time. There's no doubt about it. And there's a lot more to, manage a lot of the of systems we have already in place Ford doing the same thing with their telematics.
[00:18:28] So some of the things Didn't have any added value because we already have that kind of technology, but they were expanding a lot of that technology for fleet management. So that's a real plus. And they were constantly tweaking that in making improvements on the usability of it and that sort of thing.
[00:18:44] So that was a big deal. That was a big one.
[00:18:47] Craig Macmillan: The fleet management aspect of having an electric vehicle like this with this kind of a technology going into the future could be huge for a farm, could be huge for a management company like yourself that has properties all over the place. That kind of remote diagnostic is really amazing.
[00:18:59] The idea of like, Hey, the light's on. Okay, I'll fix it tonight. No problem.
[00:19:03] Duff Bevill: Well, the other big plus is when we put that lightning up on the rack, just to take a look at it, you know, we're just kind of noodling through the, , there's no oil to change in an engine. We found one plug access to a transmission on it.
[00:19:18] But even the owner's manual says don't touch any of that kind of stuff. You know, they can be serviced, but there's no schedule for servicing. The disc brakes, I don't think you'd ever If you use the vehicle to its maximum value, I don't think you'd ever put brakes in it. There's no transmission transitions made up of hundreds and hundreds of parts. It's not electric motors or a simple, simple mechanical device and the internal combustion engine has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parts that aren't there. So it has the potential of being over the ownership timeline of it.
[00:19:52] A lot less cost per mile. Even when you, you calculate in your Cost of electricity charge, but we have here and we've got solar panels here too. We already had installed From a number of years ago So we've got sort of that added advantage whether the electric vehicle made a little bit even more sense because we're already kind of using discounted Power
[00:20:11] Craig Macmillan: that was going to be my next question. i'm assuming your solar is connected to the grid So it's an offset so you're not islanded, but you still have the, you're generating power on your own.
[00:20:20] So you've got onsite power generation to power your fleet to a degree. That's brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic. I remember years ago people were complaining about diesel engines and friends of mine were like, well, if you build us a solar truck, I'll freaking drive it. I got no problem with that.
[00:20:33] Well, here we are. What do you know? It's 30 years later, we have solar trucks, in effect. There has to have been some obstacles to adopting this. Were there some roadblocks or some things you had to learn along the way before you really felt like you were totally comfortable?
[00:20:46] Duff Bevill: Well, like I said, I was familiar with a hybrid.
[00:20:49] I still drive a hybrid. I drive a hybrid Ford pickup truck now. We had to get a charging station installed. Here at the office and then, you know, there's a decision. Do I do it at home or do the office? I wanted to hear at the office because that's where the fleet is parked and I had to think through, you know, get the one installed and how many more can I have and how many trucks will it eventually service without a major infrastructure redesign.
[00:21:11] So we've got that one put in and I, in the process, I had the electrician who was recommended to us. I had him install extra conduits underground. That are dummy right now. I assume we'll, we'll, extend for more pickup trucks.
[00:21:25] That was really the big obstacle. And then that's why I drove it because I want to know firsthand exactly what I was up against. I accomplished what I wanted. I want to learn as much as I could about it. Being there, having access to the Ford people, especially the engineers. Was on the fast track of having a better understanding.
[00:21:40] I got to talk to the guys who actually, one guy designed the grill, the other guy designed the dashboard. I mean, I was talking to those,
[00:21:45] Craig Macmillan: you had access. Yeah. That's, that's pretty amazing. Brooke, what was your learning curve? Like you talked about a couple of things, but were there obstacles that you felt you kind of ran across that you had to figure out, or that could be improvements
[00:21:56] Brooke Parsons: just forming the habit of charging.
[00:21:57] One time I forgot and. I was responsible for getting people someplace in the morning and it made me nervous. But you do that once or twice and you don't forget. So that was the real only obstacle. When traveling a longer distance, I did have to learn how to find charging stations that work well, are compatible with the lightning.
[00:22:25] And Ford is making advances in that area, now partnered with Tesla to use their system. And so that will only improve. But really it's around learning how to use the logistics of electric charging.
[00:22:44] Craig Macmillan: Right. And that's true for electric charging. For all of that. And you're right. I think a little bit of practice.
[00:22:49] Most of the folks that I know with electric vehicles, they're scared at first, and then they kind of figure it out. Now that you've had a chance to work with this, I think I already know the answer to this question. I mean, there's a question for both of you. When you were looking to your crystal ball, how do you see this technology being applied in the future?
[00:23:03] Duff Bevill: Think there's a place for it. I'm not so sure that one type of energy source is going to be the, solution for everything. I think practically, I think it's going to be some kind of a combination of energy sources and I don't discount nuclear.
[00:23:14] There's probably a place for everything, certainly in a transition period that that'll work best for all. Electrician put in the the charging station for us. He said, , if everybody's gonna go electric, the package must be solar panels, um, battery storage, either a large battery storage in a community setting, you know, like in a neighborhood or a small city size.
[00:23:37] Or you'll have battery storage areas that is appropriate, like maybe at our farm shop. Because we're commercial, we would be a candidate for battery storage, at least for our operation. So you'd have a solution for, you know, we're back to Sonoma County weather conditions again for the first time in quite a few years.
[00:23:55] I mean, it's overcast and rainy a lot of days out of the year. If you have solar panels, they're just not going to be working as efficiently and you still have to go to work every day and get your people to work. If you are relying. Let's say exclusively on electric, you've got to have something other than solar panel on the roof
[00:24:09] so windmill, solar panels, battery storage, there's some combination of multiple technologies. I just think that's sort of realistic of what it is. Do you want 95 percent of it to be coal? No, none of us do, you know, cause we all know the story there, but is, is there a place for coal for 10 percent of it?
[00:24:25] 15 percent of it. Don't know. I have no idea. It's good. I mean, we liked it. It's you know, just, we're not relying on it entirely right now, but we'll phase into it as time goes on.
[00:24:33] Craig Macmillan: Well, that was going to be, and and maybe Brookie also can kind of speak to this. I mean, is there a time when there isn't going to be a diesel truck on the farm?
[00:24:40] Duff Bevill: We're more concerned about diesel tractors. You know, the evolution went from, steam, you know, the early 1900s. The steam to, and then, you know, both in automobiles and, and on, on the farm, the competition was steam or gasoline because diesel wasn't invented yet.
[00:24:58] diesel engine wasn't invented until the 1920s. So turn of the century, 19th and 20th century, it was a competition between steam and gasoline, gasoline won. So gasoline surge forward all the way into the 1930s and with a few exceptions and in the 1940s, but by the 1950s. There was a clear transition that diesel was much, much more efficient, you know, pound for pound and horsepower for horsepower.
[00:25:24] I can't even think of where you could buy a gasoline tractor once you got in the 1970s. I'm sure you could still, but it represented a really small percentage. And by the 80s and 90s, it's all diesel.down to almost lawnmower size you can get it John Deere ride along more, you probably have a choice between gasoline and and diesel power to mow the golf course,
[00:25:42] that's actually transitioning to electric now too, you know, those, those small ones will plug it in and then mow for two hours, we're not even in the transition part of that story yet.
[00:25:52] There's a couple, manufacturers that have electric tractors the, inconvenience of them is really insurmountable right now, but changing batteries at lunchtime in your barn and that kind of stuff, tough. That's, tough technology.
[00:26:05] Craig Macmillan: It's still new. Yeah, this is still new. We're still finding our way there. I've talked to people about that topic quite a bit. It'll get better. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. Hey, Brooke, what is one thing that you'd recommend to listeners if they're thinking about adopting electric vehicles for the farm?
[00:26:20] Brooke Parsons: Would say be open to trying new things. It expands your mind and. It allows opportunity that would not be there otherwise. And be okay with mistakes. That's how we learn.
[00:26:37] Craig Macmillan: That's great advice. I think that's really, really good. Where can people find out more about you at Beville Vineyard Management?
[00:26:43] Duff Bevill: Look at our website BevillVineyard.Com Get you right to the, right to the website.
[00:26:47] Craig Macmillan: Well, I want, to both for being here. Thanks, Duff, and thanks, Brooke, for being here.
[00:26:51] Duff Bevill: Well, thank you for reaching out to us.
[00:26:53] Brooke Parsons: You're welcome. Thank you.
[00:26:55] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by Valent. Bio-sciences a leader in biostimulants constantly delivering, cutting edge innovation to maximize their customers yields and ROI.
[00:27:14] Their are 40 plus products span the three bio stimulant brands providing solutions for every acre. Make sure you check out the show notes. For links to Bevill vineyard management. Articles on the Ford Pro Pilot project and sustainable Winegrowing podcast episodes. 120 autonomous drone vineyard spring. 219 intelligent sprayers to improve fungicide applications and save money. And 225 California's ban on autonomous tractors.
[00:27:44] If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. That helps us reach more listeners. Like you, you can find all of the [email protected] / podcast, and you can reach us at [email protected].
[00:28:00] Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
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[00:00:00] By acting environmentally and socially responsible today, we get future generations, a healthy place to call home. The actions that you as an individual take, have an impact.
[00:00:11] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.
[00:00:29] So you can show your customers that you share their values.
[00:00:33] The summer months, bring more staff and guests into tasting rooms across the country. Invite your whole team to join in your brand sustainability efforts. When you practice these five sustainable tasting room habits. Tip one is to conserve. Simple actions like completely shutting off water faucets after use and notifying management of leaks help conserve this limited resource. Turning lights and appliances off when not in use reduces electricity. Consumption.
[00:01:02] Although the commercial end use energy sector uses the smallest amount of energy of the four sectors, which include transportation, industrial, residential, and commercial. The majority of the energy used comes from fossil fuels, small efforts in the workplace, reduce reliance on non-renewable energy. Tip two is to recycle responsibly.
[00:01:24] We know the importance of recycling, but when heading to the bin with recyclables in hand, it's easy to forget the nuances. Some items can be recycled together, like cardboard paper and some plastics and metal. Glass is, usually recycled separately. And sometimes that's separated by color. It may be tempting to line up a recycle bin with a plastic bag. But it can actually be detrimental to your good efforts.
[00:01:48] Plastic bags can clog recycling machinery. Contaminate other recyclable materials and potentially lead to recyclable material ending up at the landfill. Instead, keep those items loose or use a paper or reusable bag to line the can. Your wine bottle corks can also be recycled and turned into many useful items.
[00:02:08] Start a collection container and send it off to be repurposed.
[00:02:12] Re cork has a map of drop off locations that makes it easy to find a cork recycling partner near you. Consider teaming up with neighboring tasting rooms to send your corks together. Tip three is to reduce and reuse. Upgrade to glass and metal dishes in the break room to cut down. On single use plastics, Sanitize and reuse water bottles for serving water. These small changes can drastically reduce your weekly waste. Tip four is to source locally. Check out local artists and small businesses for crafts, snacks, and knickknacks to offer for sale in your tasting room. This is a great way to introduce your guests to local talent and support your community. And tip five is to bike or carpool to work.
[00:02:58] There are several alternative transportation options available today For eco-conscious commuters. Trips can be shared by carpooling or using public transportation to reduce the number of cars on the road. Riding a bike e-bike skateboard or one wheel has The added bonus of getting your blood pumping.
[00:03:17] We are here to help you tell.
[00:03:19] Your customers, how your brand protects natural and human resources with the sustainable story program. This simple, yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal message. And it just got better with the new online course. Go to the notes. Click on the link titled to tell your sustainable story, to sign up and start writing yours today. Until next time, this is sustainable.
[00:03:42] Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
Tell Your Sustainable StoryWe are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
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Farmers and ranchers have some of the highest suicide rates of all United States occupations. Misty Oebel, Health and Farm Stress Extension Educator at Michigan State University works with a team to help farmworkers manage depression and anxiety. Their educational initiatives, outreach, and teletherapy give farmworkers who often live in remote areas access to help without a commute or social stigma. Misty highlights the importance of community support, recognizing signs of stress, and maintaining a resilient mindset through learned optimism. She reminds listeners that the farmer is the most important asset on the farm.
Resources: 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (USA) Agriservice professionals play important role in suicide prevention How to cultivate a productive mindset Michigan State University Extension – Managing Farm Stress Resilient Minds: Managing Stress on the Farm Youth farm stress Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
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TranscriptBefore we jump in, please note that this episode contains discussion on suicide. If you prefer to skip this one, there are nearly 250 other episodes to choose from. If you need resources or support. Call or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 9 8, 8 for 24 hour free counseling services in the United States.
[00:00:26] Beth Vukmanic: Of all occupations in the United States, farmers and ranchers have some of the highest suicide rates. Welcome to sustainable winegrowing with vineyard team. Where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, executive director. Since 1994, we have brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.
In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with a long time sip certified vineyard and the first ever sip certified winery. Speaks with Misty Oebel. Health and farm stress extension educator at Michigan state university. Misty works with a team to help farm workers manage depression and anxiety. Their educational initiatives, outreach and teletherapy, give farm workers who often live in remote areas.
Access to help without a commute or social stigma. Misty highlights the importance of community support, recognizing signs of stress and maintaining a resilient mindset through learned optimism. She reminds listeners that the farmer is the most important asset on the farm. Before we get into the interview, I wanted to share a message from Lupita, a vineyard team.
Juan Nevarez is Memorial scholar. She says my parents left Mexico to give my siblings and me a better future. I want to make them proud by finishing school and pursuing my dream of becoming a pediatrician and the Salinas valley so that I can give back to my community.
We know that higher education is important to many students, but paying for college could be challenging.
This unique program provides financial and support services to the children of California's vineyard and winery workers. So they can earn a higher degree. You can help a student like Lupita, make their dreams come true by making a gift. By visiting vineyard team.org/scholarship. Or look for the link in our show notes. Now let's listen in.
[00:02:35] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Misty Oebel. She is a health and farm stress extension educator with Michigan state university extension. Thanks for being on the podcast.
[00:02:44] Misty Oebel: Well, so much for having me.
[00:02:46] Craig Macmillan: And today we're going to talk about a concept called farm stress. When I first heard the term farm stress, I was thinking of farms that were stressed, you know, land that had been overworked or was in decline and that kind of thing, cause that's a lot of the stuff that I talk about and study, but that's not what we're talking about in this context.
What does farm stress mean in your world?
[00:03:05] Misty Oebel: So in my world, I'm focused on behavioral health. I look at providing education about stress, particularly chronic stress and its impact on the agricultural community. So I think it might be more accurate if we went by the term of like farmer stress or stress on the farm, but that's not the way it's titled.
So farm stress is what we go by.
[00:03:25] Craig Macmillan: One of the things that brought your project to our attention, and it's really extensive. MSU Extension is doing a lot of work in this area. It's really impressive, and we'll hear some more about that. Suicide rates are one of the highest in the occupations of farming and ranching of any occupations in the United States, actually.
Which a lot of people might be surprised to find out. And related to that, there's also very high incidence of Depression and or at least meeting the criteria for depression and for generalized anxiety disorder. And, you know, by these, I want to make sure that we're clear that, you know, we're not talking about simply being like, Oh, I'm sad.
Oh, I'm depressed, but actually things that impact your ability to function, your actual mental illness conditions
[00:04:05] Misty Oebel: Right. That's exactly right. When we're looking at these numbers a lot of we're studying it through self report. So it's asking questions. It's not asking a question like, do you feel depressed? It's asking a question like, are you having problems with your appetite? How is your sleep changed? How are your relationships with other people?
Are you experiencing irritability on a regular basis? Those are the kinds of questions that they ask. And then those are the criteria that they're looking at when they're saying agricultural workers are you know, we're finding that about 60 percent of the people that are participating in these studies are meeting the criteria for.
depression, about 55 percent for generalized anxiety disorders. So this is significant because that does impact your ability to function.
[00:04:50] Craig Macmillan: And are also risk factor for things like suicide and substance abuse.
[00:04:54] Misty Oebel: And that's exactly right. We see much higher rates of suicide rates amongst agricultural workers than other occupations. We do see, really high substance use rates as well. Alcoholism we see is reported with heavy use for alcohol amongst farmers is about 38 to 50 percent of farmers in America, which is pretty significant.
The other issue we see is farming or agricultural workers also have the highest rate of stress related death. due to disease. So that's a very major concern for us.
[00:05:25] Craig Macmillan: It's a major public health health issue. Issue around this. When you said you were , asking these questions, getting this, this data, how is this data being collected? How do we even find out, this is an issue?
[00:05:36] Misty Oebel: There's a preliminary study that's coming out of Illinois State University. It's being done by Rudolfi and Berg. They're the ones that are leading a lot of the information on this. And so there's the study that I'm going to quote most because those the numbers that are most they're the most relevant to me because I do work in the Midwest.
And so what we're looking at is we're just when we start to see those statistics like the high suicide rates, the high rates of death by stress related disease we start to see the amount of issues we're having with alcohol and opioids and even we're seeing some stimulant use. increase at this point.
Those are all things that start to trigger us to do a lot of research and try and figure out what this impact is and why it's happening.
[00:06:13] Craig Macmillan: And I'm guessing that is where the MSU extension managing farms for stress program came from.
[00:06:18] Misty Oebel: Yes, there was a significant need. The USDA was asking for people to participate in and start providing education and support for farmers because we were noticing that there were some pretty significant issues within the community.
[00:06:32] Craig Macmillan: This is one of those things that's true for a lot of areas of public health. How do you. Get to the populations that need the help because people don't always come forward looking for help or there the demand there? People are having issues and they're coming looking for help. What's the what's the the interface?
between the farm stress program and the target population
[00:06:56] Misty Oebel: Sure. So one of the things that we're doing through our program, we spend as much time as possible in rooms with growers. Speaking at a lot of conferences, speaking at a lot of meetings. We spend as much time as possible, putting our faces out there and trying to build that rapport.
And I have yet to speak in front of a group of people on a farm stress and not have people waiting in the wings afterwards to talk to me about that. So there is some face to face connection there. Sure. We also have people who hear about us through like news or hear a podcast or read an article and then they go looking for our website and then they connect with staff that way where they're reaching out to us and saying, I might need a little bit more help.
Can you help me with this? So that's pretty common. We also receive phone calls and emails from people all the time who say, Hey, my veterinarian said I should reach out to you or my accountant or, you know, my Miller, it's these people who they have professional established relationships with who are saying there's something that's not right.
right? There's something going on here and you need to talk to somebody about it. And so we connect with people that way. But I would say quite honestly, the number one way that we are connecting with people is we get an email or a phone call from someone who loves a farmer. So it's a parent or a spouse or a sibling who says, you know, my, sibling, he has this farm, he's been working on it for a long time.
He's really, really depressed and he's not doing anything about it. And we're getting really, really worried about him. So there's a lot of different ways that we come in contact with these farmers. I would say probably the number one way is because somebody noticed something was going on and then they connected them with the appropriate resources at that point.
[00:08:32] Craig Macmillan: And that's an important point the role of community and family and our social networks The old see something say something Sometimes it can be hard to do when it's a loved one and probably the most important to do when it's a loved one.
[00:08:42] Misty Oebel: I agree with that. Just this year alone, I've talked with six different families as they're surviving the loss of a loved one to suicide. And one of the things that keeps coming up is I noticed something was going on, but I didn't want them to be mad at me. I didn't want them to be upset.
I didn't want to hurt their feelings. And it's one of those things that I think we would all rather have somebody be upset with us than to lose that person. And so that's really important. If you see something, say something, notice something, refer them to somebody. It's also really important to start learning about how we can communicate.
You know, how to ask open ended questions, how to ask difficult questions and how to practice those active listening skills so that when somebody is answering the questions, you're hearing what they're saying and you're not just waiting for that opportunity to start talking again. Those are all really important.
There's trainings that we can offer through MSU Extension. There's an open course that's available on our website. It's called Rural Resilience. It's open to the community and it's free and it's online. So it's, it's really useful, but it's literally trained to teach you how to recognize signs of stress in yourself and how to manage that stress, but then how to recognize signs of stress in other people and then how to communicate with them and have positive communication that could be helpful.
[00:09:52] Craig Macmillan: So you mentioned this website. We just talked about how you kind of get in contact with the population. What are some of the other methods that you folks are employing around this to get people help? What is the kind of help that you can provide?
[00:10:03] Misty Oebel: Some things that I think are really useful, again, that referral process is really important to us. So if you know about us and then you see somebody that you care about is struggling, please let us know. Through MSU Extension, we offer a lot of other programs that aren't necessarily related to farm stress.
So it's not unusual for us to talk to like a field crops educator or a fruit crop educator, and they're coming to us and they're saying, Hey, I'm working with this farmer. And we're seeing these behaviors and I'm talking to them and I'm trying to get them to talk to you. That's pretty common as well. So those are all resources we have available.
We offer through the website, we offer a lot of things. And I always tell people if you're interested in the Farm Stress and you want to know more about our program, if you go to our website, and it's usually pretty easy if you type in like MSU Farm Stress. we're usually the first result. We come up pretty quick.
And that website has everything. It has articles we've written. It has educational materials. It has those programs like the training materials available as well, that online training. And then it also has a form that you can fill out for our teletherapy program, which is also really beneficial.
[00:11:04] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, so I was just gonna ask about that. So you are able to put people or connect people to talk therapy services either tell therapy or face to face.
[00:11:12] Misty Oebel: Yeah, it's actually, it's one of the programs we're really proud of. We have this opportunity to provide it to people who are connected to the agricultural community. And it helps because there's a lot of barriers within the farming community to getting, you know, mental health services. You know, most farming is done in rural communities.
So we know rural communities have less access to medical services, let alone behavioral health services. We know that then if somebody is interested in going to like counseling, it's going to take them longer to travel to a therapist. And then they're going to sit there and they're going to come back.
There's also some stigmas attached still to like mental health issues within rural communities. So you know, when you talk to a farmer and they say, you know, I just don't want them to see my truck sitting in that parking lot. I'm just really concerned about that. I don't want people to think something's going on.
And so teletherapy is a resource then that it removes those barriers for them. You can do it from the comfort of your own home on a laptop or a smartphone. They use cameras, so you're still able to see the person. You're able to have a conversation and talk with them.
It's completely confidential. And then it's a really great resource then because then It removes the barriers and makes it accessible to everybody. The other piece of that is sometimes one of the barriers is cost. That can be really prohibitive for people, especially farmers who are independently, you know, they work for themselves, so they're not always insured, you know, so this can be a problem.
And so MSU extension has the availability. We actually provide for and cover the costs for any agriculture workers within the state of Michigan. At this point, our funding is limited, but we're able to then cover the cost of that. So there's no cost to the farmer either.
[00:12:44] Craig Macmillan: How many folks are you getting in contact with? How many folks are taking advantage of this?
[00:12:48] Misty Oebel: At the moment, I don't have the numbers. That would be something my program lead would have. I just refer people. It is something that we refer people on a pretty regular basis, probably one to two a week we make a referral or we talk to somebody about sometimes more. So I think that that's a pretty good estimate that we are definitely reaching people this way.
[00:13:06] Craig Macmillan: And that actually just reminded me of something else. So is this referring folks to behavioral health professionals that are outside of the MSU system. Is this, is this program funneling folks to other existing folks or is this counselors and therapists and prescribers inside the MSU system?
[00:13:23] Misty Oebel: We work with partners. This is one of the things we wanted to do. Like for example, I have a background in counseling psychology. Our program lead has a background in psychology as well. We have the backgrounds in it, but we don't want to be doing therapy because that takes us away from that education piece.
So we refer to licensed therapists and it's been really good so far. I think it's been a really great program. We try to look for therapists that have a background in agriculture as well. We recognize the subculture of farming is unique, and we don't want to send them to people who are not going to understand where they're coming from.
We want to make sure that there's that background there already.
[00:13:56] Craig Macmillan: In your experience so far can you describe what some of the aspects of a agricultural subculture are like? Because I agree with you. I think there's very much some commonalities. And there's a cultural component that's different than other aspects of American life. What are some of the things that you've seen and what are some of the barriers that come from that?
[00:14:18] Misty Oebel: Oh, goodness. Yeah, there's a lot. There are things that are so unique to farming that you don't see literally in any other profession. You rarely see people who identify so much with their work as growers and farmers. People who, you know, It's so inherently ingrained into who they are. It's becomes part of their identity.
I could use an example. It's kind of how I came into the firm stress work. My dad grew up on a farm and, you know, just a little farm had six brothers and sisters, parents. They worked this farm and his father passed away when he was 17 years old. And within a couple of years, they realized that without.
Their father, they really couldn't continue the operation. They started selling equipment, selling animals and leasing the farmland. And when I asked my dad about it, when I was a kid and was asking questions about what it was like when he grew up, one of the things he said that's always stuck with me is he said, you know, it was really strange to be a farm kid without a farm.
Even after the farm was gone, he's still so identified with that aspect of his identity that it just. never occurred to him that you're not really a farm kid without a farm mate. He still was. And so that's very unique to farming. There's a legacy aspect of farming that we don't see in every other profession as well.
There is an understanding that this is something that we want to continue to go on. And we passed into the family. So kids are growing up knowing there's that expectation that, that This is going to be passed on and we will be taking this over. So there's that legacy aspect of farming. There's the idea that you're in a rural community, so you have fewer neighbors than people in urban areas.
So sometimes that can mean that you have really strong community nets, but other times it can mean that you feel really isolated as well. As we're entering a more modern area and we're seeing less individual farmers. I want to say it that way.
We're seeing bigger operations, less small farms that can also feel really isolating for farmers because less people understand what they're going through, less people are able to relate to them on that level. There's so many things that are so unique to this subculture. And and they're also just so, so much, when we say salt of the earth, we're literally talking about farmers.
They are the people who are out there day to day. They feed us. They're taking care of the land, and they take such pride in their work, and they're so conscientious about that work. I think that's really important to recognize. They're a completely different culture of people, and so I think it's really important.
It's really valuable that this work exists just for the fact that this is a culture we can't lose in our country.
[00:16:40] Craig Macmillan: Absolutely. And you know, having programs that say, Hey, we we understand you and where you're coming from, I think might help a lot. And I was very impressed by what I've seen online. It's very welcoming the way that it's presented. It can be very daunting to try to reach out for something that you've just assumed no one's going to understand, right?
And if you kind of get the sense that there are people there for you who understand who you are and where you're coming from, I think that definitely helps. There are a couple of things that I noticed that I thought were really cool. One thing is the idea of resiliency. A resilient mindset and a productive mindset are two things you have.
Materials about developing and maintaining and etc. Can you tell me about those two ideas? I just think that's just so interesting
[00:17:24] Misty Oebel: I'm gonna argue, and I'm always gonna argue this, that a resilient mindset is a productive mindset, because a resilient mindset I think we could define it, if we're going to define it just at its simplest terms, it's, it's learned optimism. I think there's already innate optimism when we're talking about agriculture anyway, because otherwise, how do you face a drought one year and then go back and do the same thing the next year?
You have to be optimistic. I mean, you just have to, it's innate. But I think that a resilient mindset is that learned optimism, which is we're able to accept that, you know what, things don't always go the way we want them to. Things often happen that we did not hope for. We face uncontrollable circumstances all the time, especially in farming, when you're dealing with weather or, you know, pests, things like that.
So we have to be able to accept when things aren't going well and still be able to move forward with the idea that things are gonna be okay, even though things aren't going well. Now they're gonna be okay and we're gonna get through it. I've survived everything up to this point. I'm gonna survive this.
I'm gonna go on to the next thing, and it might look different, but it could still be good. And I think that's that resilient mindset that we talk about. And there's so many benefits of a resilient mindset. You know it decreases depression and anxiety. We see better physical health because our cortisol and adrenaline levels, those stress hormones are lower.
We also see again that ability to move forward and to be adaptive and to be more focused on problem solving than getting stuck on just what the problem is. So that resilient mindset, I always argue this resiliency is is productive. If you're not resilient, you're going to struggle and you're going to get stuck.
And then you're not going to be very productive.
[00:19:02] Craig Macmillan: I'm gonna call on you as a practitioner now? What are some examples of techniques or tools or things that I can that I can do that. They will help promote this in myself
[00:19:11] Misty Oebel: The two most important aspects in resiliency is making sure you have that community. So making sure you're building a community, you're finding people who support you, who understand you and who care about you. That's the number one thing that is actually the most influential factor we have found in resiliency and whether somebody is going to bounce back from a difficult situation.
Community social connection. We actually find isolation is really, really dangerous. It increases depression and anxiety, it increases cardiovascular issues, and suicidal ideation goes up when people feel lonely. So, community is number one. The second thing I always argue is really focusing on that emotional health piece.
And we can do that in a lot of different ways. But one of the simplest ways is to start practicing those mindfulness techniques. And sometimes when I say that people are like, Oh, that's that hippie, dippy stuff. And I don't want to do that. You know but what we're really talking about there, did they just put a name to it?
It's just being engaged. It's just being present in your moment. Cause sometimes we get into the habit of. I'm stressed and I've got a lot to do and we get into this autopilot mode and we just keep working and we plug away at it and we feel really good because we just keep going. But when we're doing that, we also have to ignore a lot of other things that are going on and we're not really aware of what's happening.
So practicing mindfulness. Because practicing mindfulness allows us to be engaged enough to be aware of what's going well so we can be grateful. Gratefulness is really great for you know, resiliency. The other thing that it does is it allows us to notice when things aren't going well, and that allows us to do that problem solving and be like, okay, what can I fix?
And then if something can't be fixed, okay, I can accept this can't be fixed, it's out of my control. And that's also really important for resiliency. And then that third piece to when we're really aware of what our moment is like it allows us to be aware of our emotions and to recognize them as they're happening and to process them instead of doing the thing where we like are just shoving those emotions down because I'm busy.
So I'm going to shove it down and then I'm going to keep working and then another emotion flies in and you know what? I don't want to deal with that right now either. So I'm going to shove that down too until we blow up because we have just this overwhelming flood of emotions we've been ignoring. And so when we're practicing mindfulness, it allows us to process them as they're happening and they never get to that huge overwhelming stage.
And we can practice mindfulness in a lot of really simple ways. It's not complicated. It's not something that you have to go through a class or something to learn how to do. You know, it's a journaling. I'm going to sit down every night and write down what went well today and what didn't. It is meditation or prayer breathing exercises, really, really simple breathing exercises that just make you pause.
and stop and notice what is happening around you and in your body. That's it.
[00:21:53] Craig Macmillan: And I'm guessing You're communicating these ideas in various forms. I mean, there must be print form, there must be video form, there must be face to face form. I mean, are you doing clinics, trainings, newsletters? What are all the different avenues that you're using to communicate these very, very, very practical, very specific things?
What routes are you using to get those to people ?
[00:22:14] Misty Oebel: Like I said before, if there is a room with growers in it, we try to be in that room. We, we speak at every opportunity that we possibly can because we do want to make sure the message is getting out. We participate in podcasts. We write articles, we write a lot of articles. We are actually in the process of re updating a lot of our program materials right now to make sure they're all fresh and all the information is new and current.
So we do that. Those are all available online. The training programs that are available online. We talk to families who are in the middle of it. And so we talk to people on the phone. It's not unusual for us to spend an afternoon at a farmer's kitchen table. talking with them and figuring out what their next steps are.
Literally any avenue. So we have all of these print materials that are available, a lot of stuff available through our website, but we are also people who are available. Should there be a need for that as well?
[00:23:03] Craig Macmillan: Something else that I noticed that I thought was great is, you know, obviously farm stress doesn't just affect the adults that are involved. It also affects youth. And like you talked about this generationality aspect and how important it is. Just like you said, farm kid without a farm. It's farm kid.
You know, that's part of the kid. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that's fit into your program?
[00:23:23] Misty Oebel: Yeah. That same study that I was talking about earlier by Rodolphe and Berg, as those numbers have come out, they also did study on farm youth. And what they found is that the numbers for depression are the same. About 60 percent of farm youth meet the criteria for general depression. We see slightly lower on generalized anxiety, it's about 45%. The number that I find really interesting, I want to know more about, is 62 percent are reporting the, the diagnostic criteria for separation anxiety, which is very, very interesting. Yeah, that one kind of throws me. I don't know where that's coming from, but it's really interesting. And I'd like to know more about that one.
What this tells us is that as parents and adults, we're not doing as good as we think we are and hiding how we're doing. It tells me we're not doing as good as we think we are in hiding, you know, when stress is occurring, when we're depressed, when we're anxious. Kids are pretty intuitive and they pick up on that.
I know my kids have called me out on stuff like that before and like you weren't hiding it as well as you think you were. So that happens. I think there's also when we go back to it, there's that legacy aspect of it where there's an understanding that if this farm is going to continue, somebody is going to step up, somebody is going to take over it.
And so you see really young kids who start assuming the responsibility of the problems. well before they really need to do so. So that is absolutely impacting them as well. I think it makes it really, really, really important for parents to be paying attention for those signs of stress in their kids as well as in signs for themselves and their neighbors.
They need to be paying attention. Are they showing mood changes? You know, are they suddenly really irritable? Are they having problems sleeping? Am I seeing differences in their appetites? Are they shutting down? Are we not talking as much as we used to talk?
There's a lot of things that we need to pay attention to when it comes to our kids just to make sure that they're okay and so that we're able to connect them with the support that they need earlier rather than later.
[00:25:13] Craig Macmillan: Is there one thing, just one piece of advice or one observation that you would recommend to our listeners around this topic?
[00:25:20] Misty Oebel: Can I go with two? Is that ok?
[00:25:22] Craig Macmillan: Two is great, do two.
[00:25:23] Misty Oebel: Okay. One of the first things I want to come back to. It's something that we've talked about a few different times. Is this idea of the generational aspect and the legacy piece? Because that is absolutely a barrier in farmers in, seeking behavioral health support.
There is kind of this idea of like, well, my dad was a farmer and he never saw a therapist and my grandpa was a farmer and he never saw a therapist. So is there something wrong with me now if I need additional support? And what we kind of forget is that depression and anxiety are not new. And if you're facing it, your dad probably had it too.
Your grandpa probably had it too, but they were struggling silently and never got the support that they needed. And I think that when we're looking at generational stuff, we always try to do it a little bit better with each generation. We want the farm to be a little bit bigger, a little bit cleaner.
We want to make sure that our processes are a little bit smoother. With each generation, it gets a little better and we do the same thing with parenting. You know, we want to be a slightly better parent to our kids than our parents were to us, and we hope that they do the same thing with their Children.
So I think that makes it really important that we recognize that just because past generations weren't receiving help, that doesn't mean we shouldn't receive help. It actually makes it more important because we're trying to prioritize that, and we're trying to make those changes in the family. So that's the number one thing I can think of.
And then the other thing, this is something I tell farmers all the time is the growers and the farmers that I know are very, very conscientious when it comes to caring for their land. And their animals and their crops and buildings and equipment, and they invest a lot of time and money into the maintenance of all of those things, because their assets but I'm always going to argue that the farmer is the most important asset in any farm.
And so I really feel very strongly that it's important that we prioritize caring for ourselves and we recognize that self care is not selfish. It's very important. If you're the most important asset on your farm, you've got to make sure that you're taking care of yourself.
[00:27:21] Craig Macmillan: I think that is a fantastic observation. Absolutely. Where can people find out more about you and more about the Farm Stress Management Program?
[00:27:30] Misty Oebel: I'm always going to recommend you go to our website. Not only do we have all of those great resources, but you can connect with staff through that website. We have all of our pictures on there. I'm on there. Dr. Remington Rice is our program lead. He is phenomenal. He has his information even in multiple places on the site.
So please reach out to us if you have any questions, thoughts, concerns want more information, that's the best way to get ahold of us.
[00:27:53] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. Our guest today has been Misty Oebel. She's a health and farm stress extension educator with Michigan State University Extension. Thanks for being on the podcast. This is one of those areas we don't talk about very much. And I'm really glad that we did. And I think the work you guys are doing is fantastic.
And I hope that this model gets picked up in other states. We see it more widely applied because farming is important. And because farming is important, that means farmers are important. Just like you said, it's our asset. So thanks for being on podcast, Misty.
[00:28:22] Misty Oebel: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:28:23] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by vineyard professional services. Vineyard professional services works throughout the central coast of California, providing vineyard management, financial planning, vineyard development, equipment services, and a range of consulting services to wineries, growers, and investors. Established in 1997. VPS has leadership in San Louis Obispo, Santa Barbara . San Benito and Monterey counties. Their primary focus is effectively growing vineyard assets for quality and client profitability. Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Misty. Tools on how to cultivate a productive mindset.
And managing stress on the farm. If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the [email protected]/podcast. And you can reach us at podcastatvineyardteam.org. Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
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What does it mean to farm sustainably?
Sustainable farming is a collection of practices spanning from water and energy conservation, to soil health and biodiversity, and social equity.
Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.
There are so many examples of sustainability in action to point to right outside of your window:
Native landscaping: minimal irrigation and maintenance needs. Cover crops: promote soil health and provide refuge for beneficial insects. Alternative energy sources: reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Owl boxes & raptor perches: birds of prey feast on vertebrate pests.One topic that sustainable farmers get asked about often is pest management. In this Sustainable Story Marketing Tip, learn how Presqu’ile Vineyards utilizes technology to manage bird pests in a more environmentally and economically sustainable way.
Safely Keeping Birds at BayBirds like finches and starlings are common vineyard pests. They damage fruit and canopies, and will even create nests in the vines.
To protect their crops, vineyards typically use bird netting. While effective, netting comes with un-sustainable downsides: they break down in the sun, installation and removal necessitates a lot of labor, and they create waste over time, as nets must be replaced every few years.
Presqu’ile Vineyard knew there was a more sustainable way to handle their unwelcomed feathered visitors. In 2023, they installed five bird lasers.
Spooked by the beams of light, the birds stay away. But if the light beams repeat a consistent pattern, the birds will ignore the lasers and reenter the vineyard.
To maintain the perceived threat, the laser beams are programmed for a variety of motions.
As for the effectiveness of the lasers, Andrew Heilbrun, Vineyard Manager, says that “monitoring bird pressure visually is pretty easy. We saw very little damage this past season after installing the lasers.”
On top of serving their main purpose as an effective method for bird abatement, Andrew notes that their new laser systems offer several other benefits:
Removes tripping hazard for employees. Doesn’t affect non-target animals. Reduces waste. More financially sustainable.The bird lasers at Presqu’ile Vineyard have proven to be a Safe Pest Management strategy with benefits that touch all 3 P's of sustainability: People, Planet, and Prosperity.
Tell Your Sustainable StoryWe are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
To understand fungicide resistance in the vineyard, a group of United States scientists formed the Fungicide Resistance Assessment Mitigation and Extension (FRAME). Sarah Lowder, Assistant Professor and Viticulture Extension Specialist at the University of Georgia describes a nationwide sampling project to test for resistance markers. To get samples, they are promoting a new collection method called glove sampling. This process leverages the time that fieldworkers are in the field running their hands through the vines. They collect samples by rubbing their gloved hands on a cotton swab and sending the sample to the lab. Research shows that glove sampling results are very similar to spore trapping, a process that samples the air flowing through the vineyard.
Resources: 117: Grapevine Mildew Control with UV Light 219: Intelligent Sprayers to Improve Fungicide Applications and Save Money A Rapid Glove-Based Inoculum Sampling Technique to Monitor Erysiphe necator in Commercial Vineyard Fisherbrand™ Plastic Handled Cotton Swabs and Applicators Grape FRAME Networks Glove swab sampling tutorial for collecting grape powdery mildew (video) Glove Swab sampling tutorial for collecting grape powdery mildew - silent (video) Identification of Putative SDHI Target Site Mutations in the SDHB, SDHC, and SDHD Subunits of the Grape Powdery Mildew Pathogen Erysiphe necator Rapid sampling technique to monitor Erysiphe necator more effective than visual scouting Sarah Lowder Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript2024-07-04_235_Sarah Lowder - glove sampling for mildew_Otter
[00:00:00] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Sarah Lawder. She is Viticulture Extension Specialist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Georgia. And today we're going to talk about some exciting new advancements around monitoring for powdery mildew and other related topics. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.
[00:00:16] Sarah Lowder: Thank you very much, Craig. I'm very excited to be here.
[00:00:18] Craig Macmillan: First though, I want to start with something I just found out about that applies to this, and that is the grape frame networks. Can you tell us exactly what that is and kind of how it came about and what it does? Okay. Thanks, Craig.
[00:00:29] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Yeah, the FRAME Network is part of a USDA SCRI grant.
This is a project that was funded several years ago, I believe in 2017, as part of the Specialty Crop Research Initiative Project System. And FRAME Networks literally stands for Fungicide Resistance Assessment Mitigation and Extension. networks. And so this was a grant that was really intended to look and learn so much more about how fungicide resistance works in the vineyard for powdery mildew specifically.
But this was a group, a very large group of scientists from all across the country from a wide range of different disciplines looking into how we can better address fungicide resistance for vineyards and for powdery mildew specifically.
[00:01:12] Craig Macmillan: But there's also applications either now or in the future for other fungal diseases like downy mildew, et cetera.
[00:01:18] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Yep. They are currently working on getting a new iteration of this grant, Frame 2 as it were that will hopefully be able to address also resistance in Downy Mildew and Botrytis Bunch Rot.
[00:01:29] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. This is really exciting because what I saw was that there are people at Washington State, Oregon State in California, and then on the East Coast.
So hopefully this work will continue. What exactly kinds of things does Frame do?
[00:01:45] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, so we had a multi pronged approach for this project. One of the big parts that I was a part of is looking at the assessment of the fungicide resistance. So one of the things that we did was collect powdery mildew from all across the country, from states and vineyards all over, all over the place, and then look for different fungicide resistance markers in that mildew.
That can hopefully help us much more quickly assess if we have fungicide resistance present in a sample. One of the big groups of fungicides that we looked at was the QOI fungicides, the Sturbulurins, also sometimes they're called or the FRAC Group 11, with FRAC is the Fungicide Resistance Action Committee.
Is what the FRAC group would be for that and those just kind of group your different fungicides based on the mode of action. So how they work on the different diseases that they're attempting to control. And so we were looking at this group, this group 11, the QOI products which operate by attaching to the mitochondria, so the powerhouse of the cell.
And just preventing them from being able to produce energy and so the, the spores die and you don't get any more growth of that disease. But because it's one of those products that works like a binding site if you get resistance presence it just means that your fungicide can no longer attached to the disease and then it can grow in the presence of that fungicide and then you can even no matter how much you spray that product it can still continue to grow.
By looking at there's one particular mutation that occurs that causes that resistance in this group of products and we're able to run a test much more quickly than you can otherwise do a lot of different fungicide resistance testing And tell whether or not you had QOI resistant or sensitive Mildew in your field so you knew whether or not you could use that product or not
[00:03:35] Craig Macmillan: What about frac group three?
That's another one that we have known Resistance issues with the demethylation inhibitors. Is that part of the project as well?
[00:03:43] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely Absolutely, the DMIs demethylation inhibitors, absolutely, the FRAC3 Group 3 are a group of products that have a little bit more complicated unfortunately of a resistance pattern rather than just having one particular mutation.
There, there are a bunch of different things going on in those products. But we do have a marker that can help us get a sense for the resistance. It's not as necessarily reliable as the QOI. Frack Group 11 product resistant testing, but we can test that as well and give us an idea of whether or not we might have resistance to DMIs present in the field as well.
[00:04:19] Craig Macmillan: Are there other frack groups that have potential or have found some resistant populations coming down the pike?
[00:04:28] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Anything that has a very specific mode of action really has some potential for having a resistance develop in a population.
[00:04:36] Craig Macmillan: Great.
[00:04:38] Sarah Lowder: We're, we're looking at some of the modes of action. We have not heard as much of field failures due to resistance to a lot of other products, but we wanted to, like, kind of get a, get a jump on looking for some of those other modes of action to see if we can develop. Test to be able to monitor that, monitor that much more quickly before resistance becomes as much of an issue.
And we were able to get a lot of that information for like the SDHI groups, which is the group 7 products. Although again, we're not really hearing too much yet of any field failures for powdery mildew control from the SDHIs. As well as looking much more into some of the mechanisms for how group 13, quinoxafen how well how the resistance might work in that system.
All of those are stuff that we were able to do because of the Frame Network project team.
[00:05:26] Craig Macmillan: That's really great. I hope that we can continue that. That's really important work. In order to do that kind of thing, you need to get samples. And you and your colleagues are promoting a new method for monitoring for powdery mildew and collecting, I guess, ASCA spores, I would imagine, is what you're collecting.
Tell me about it. There's videos on YouTube. It's really exciting.
[00:05:47] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely.
[00:05:47] Craig Macmillan: It involves a glove.
[00:05:49] Sarah Lowder: Indeed, we call them glove swabs, which is one of the projects that I was able to help lead as a part of the system. Because you hit the nail on the head when you are trying to monitor fungicide resistance.
The first step that you have to do is actually find the mildew. And you want to find this before you have a control problem. You want to find it while there's still not very much mildew present in the field. We looked at, we looked at a bunch of different ways. Not everything worked very well. But one of the ideas that we had was, oh, We have vineyard workers moving throughout the field all the time.
Could we potentially use these people who are already in the field doing normal stuff to also potentially collect powdery mildew? And we found that as you're moving through the vineyard, as you're moving your hands along the canopy, you're able to collect powdery mildew. Conidia spores, actually, it's generally, it's their summer spores.
are collecting and you're able to take a, just a cotton swab. So many of us have taken a COVID test that you've had to stick up your nose. It's a very similar, similar swab that you take with your hands. And you can stick that in a tube and send it to the lab for processing. This system worked, I think, way better than any of us were expecting it to.
It was actually much better than trying to go out there and look for it physically. And you can do it much faster because it's just literally, you can be walking through the vineyard with your hands in the canopy, take a swab. and collect it, and you can find that so much faster if you're already having to do a lab test for that product.
[00:07:16] Craig Macmillan: And also the potential here is that, let's say I've got a crew out and we're doing a shoot thinning in the spring, so they're handling the canopy all the time, we could swab some gloves and then send that out to be tested and get an idea what's out there.
[00:07:27] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Absolutely. And as you're already testing for whether the field is out there, you can also use the same test to tell whether or not you have resistant mildew to the QI fungicides.
[00:07:38] Craig Macmillan: Is this quantitative?
[00:07:41] Sarah Lowder: So, it is run on a quantitative quantitative PCR. So, in theory, it does give you some information on how much mildew is present. In the QI QPCR test, in the test that tests for the fungicide resistance pattern, it tests a piece of DNA in the mitochondria, and you can technically have different numbers of things.
Mitochondria per cell, individual cell, and so the, the quantitative, it does give you that information, but it's not necessarily the most reliable information. So as, as a scientist, I'm always hesitant to say that, oh, you can get quantitative information, but it, in theory, it does give you a little bit of information about how many spores at least you were able to collect.
You can tell a little bit of that information.
[00:08:21] Craig Macmillan: Can it tell me something along the lines of, I can go out and sample at the very beginning of the season, maybe even post bud break, and say, oh, we have nothing there yet, and then come by later and test and say, oh, we have something there now. Is there a qualitative aspect to it?
[00:08:41] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. So we tested it and compared the glove swabs to visual scouting to compare it to someone actually physically going out and looking and found that the glove swabs were much more sensitive. They were able to find the powdered mildew much faster, and also much sooner than the OR than our visual eyes were able to do So.
But we also tested it in comparison to impaction spore traps. So these are tests that actually had come out of a lot of the lab that I worked in the foliar pathology lab with Walt Mahaffey at the USDA for a couple years previously with like Lindsay Thiessen that they were able to test these impaction spore traps which sample the air that flows through the vineyard.
We're collecting that many of the vineyards in the Willamette Valley of Oregon which we did a lot of the testing in that area as well as in Areas like Napa, California have a bunch of these spore traps present that we were able to test it in comparison to these spore traps, which have been used pretty widely in the system.
And what we found was that our glove swabs were showing us very similar information to these impaction spore traps which was really cool because a lot of these growers absolutely do use already these impaction spore traps to look at when they're going to initiate their fungicide spray programs.
So, in theory, yes. You could absolutely potentially use these glove swabs as a fungicide initiation indicator.
[00:10:01] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, that's what I was getting at, and that's, that's a really exciting technology. Because obviously we're trying to control the amount of material we put out there, and obviously part of resistance management is being careful what you put out and when.
And so having a good idea of what the timing should be, I think, is really important. And then of course, as everybody knows, People who listen to this podcast know, by the time you see it, it's too late, baby.
[00:10:24] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely.
[00:10:24] Craig Macmillan: You know, it's, it's, it's, you're chasing a ghost. And so, here's, here's our Ghostbuster tool, where we can catch that ghost before before it comes too much of a problem.
Now you said, send these off for, to a lab for analysis. What what labs are we talking about?
[00:10:39] Sarah Lowder: The initial frame grant project is technically at a, has come to an end and so the funding that originally funded a lot of this testing has ended, but now we're able to supply all of these protocols and testing materials and stuff to a lot of the different private labs elsewhere.
So I know one of the private labs that does the impaction trap testing. service in the William Valley of Oregon has taken over that process, as well as I know a bunch of different labs like I know at UGA here, where I am currently, they have some tools and able to do some of those testings or do some of those tests as well with the qPCR.
And so even if you, a lab where you send a lot of your materials, if they happen to have a qPCR present and you're strongly interested in doing it, you can talk to them to see if they might potentially be willing to add this into their repertoire.
[00:11:24] Craig Macmillan: So, this technology is starting to make it out into the world of commercial plant pathology.
[00:11:29] Sarah Lowder: Yes.
[00:11:30] Craig Macmillan: I may have a plant pathology lab that I already work with, I can talk to them, I can make some phone calls, and for instance, a commercial lab in Oregon, they're a business, so they still may do samples from California or from Washington or from Ohio.
[00:11:44] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, potentially.
[00:11:45] Craig Macmillan: It's not limited by territory.
[00:11:46] Sarah Lowder: Correct. You can send these samples and as long as you're not leaving your samples out in the sun and in the heat for a long period of time they can be shipped off elsewhere as well.
[00:11:55] Craig Macmillan: Where do you see this technology going? What's, what's the future here? We, we, we've just kind of touched on it a little bit, but what, in your, when you close your eyes and imagine the long term impact of your work, where do you see this kind of thing going?
[00:12:08] Sarah Lowder: One, I would love to see a lot of this information being used more regularly to be able to test this a little faster. And eventually, one day, we may be able to test for all of these different resistance genes, all of these different resistance patterns within the same sample. So you could be like, okay as a normal part of my practice, I'm going out and taking these glove swabs or whatever else that I'm looking to test.
Even if I don't use a glove swab, but I can come in and take my powdery mildew sample and send it off to the lab and get a, just a score sheet of exactly what fungicide products could be used or could be not used. That would be really awesome, because no one wants to buy a product that it's not going to work, and no one wants to put a product out that's not going to work for any reasons, environmentally or financially.
In the wallet or just for labor purposes. It's just a win, win, win situation. If you know, you don't have to use a product and instead you could choose a different one.
[00:13:01] Craig Macmillan: Oh, this might be a related, very practical matter. So gloves, touching vines, no problem. I can have workers. I could have actually my VIT tech go down a row and then swipe the canopy.
Where do I get the swabs because we're talking about something has to be a sterile protected swab, just like the COVID test swab. Where do I get those?
[00:13:17] Sarah Lowder: Yeah so a lot of the times, or at least for a lot of this test that we did originally they were groups that we sent out, or like just kits that we would send out to the different cooperating practices.
But essentially, it is literally the same tool. It's a polystyrene cotton swab tip and we normally will put them into these little half tubes that kind of keep their tip protected, and then you will stick it back into the plastic wrap that it came in, and then wrap it up so that it stays more protected. But it is, it is literally the same tool that you often will use for those COVID tests, which made it really hard to get that right at the beginning of the pandemic.
[00:13:54] Craig Macmillan: Where, where can I get them? Where can I order them from?
[00:13:56] Sarah Lowder: So I can send a link for the type of material that we're looking for. And then you can shop around for the same tip at a couple different locations and find the best price.
[00:14:06] Craig Macmillan: That'd be perfect. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. So folks, you can go check that out and find the materials that you need.
And then you can also shop around for the labs and see who's doing what. And again, if a lab is getting a lot of phone calls. That's going to encourage them to adopt this new technology. What is kind of the, the current state of the nation, if you will, in terms of fungicide resistance, what are the hot new topics, what's getting funded?
What are people working on and where are they working on it?
[00:14:33] Sarah Lowder: Fungicide resistance is certainly a hot topic that has a lot of different research happening in a lot of different areas. I could literally fill your entire podcast probably with talking about this topic. One thing that I'm very excited about is to hopefully see this Frame 2 iteration happen that is, being submitted for funding for this next funding cycle this year, but it is looking to hopefully also add in testing for downy mildew and betritis bunch rot, which are also two big diseases that can cause a lot of issues.
Especially now that I'm over here in Georgia, I'm very excited to hopefully get to test much more of the downy mildew which can be quite the struggle in the vineyard. And we're getting much more information on a lot of the other modes of action that we're working with. I'm excited to see a lot of the information come out about some of the quinoxephins.
Some of this information that we have started to work on and we haven't seen much field resistance to these products yet. But if we continue to use them, then they may still pop up. And so hopefully making sure that we can get ahead of the game for these other products.
[00:15:37] Craig Macmillan: I'm very happy about that because I'm old enough to remember when the DMIs came out and it was like, Oh my god, it's a secret.
It's the silver bullet. We're never gonna have to use sulfur again. Yay, and then it was literally within a couple of years they failed in some places. Now, the Fungicide Resistance Action Committee is publishing better information, more information, more accessible information every year about what's new about the different code groups.
And they're also now putting a category in, or they have for a long time, but they have a category in there about the potential for resistance. So they'll say, yeah, there's known resistant populations for this. This one has got high potential, even if we haven't found it yet. And that's directing research in that direction.
And I think that's really important that we stay ahead of these things. things, looking at where the potential is, as well as where there's known issues. So that's really fantastic. This is going on at what OSU, MSU, I think, Tim Miles in Michigan Walt Mahaffey in Oregon. I think Washington state.
[00:16:35] Sarah Lowder: Mm hmm. Michelle Moyer is the viticulture specialist at Washington state university, who's been the project director for this project, led with Walt Mahaffey, who is the foliar plant pathologist at the USDA located in Corvallis. the horticultural crops units. And then a whole, a whole group of scientists from across the nation.
There are people at UC Davis. There's people at Michigan State University. Even while I worked on this project in my role at Oregon State, I'm at with the USDA in Corvallis, Oregon. I'm now here at the University of Georgia working with Phil Brannon, who was the University of Georgia, Scientist working on this project and who actually was the person that convinced me to actually apply for the job that I currently now sit in.
[00:17:20] Craig Macmillan: That's great. You know, we do still have a little bit of time left. This is a huge topic, but I found it interesting as I was doing research on you and looking at your publications. One of the things you've been involved in is research on collective action. and information transfer among growers related to disease management.
And I am really fascinated by this topic. My background is in sociology. So my background is in people, talking to people, doing people stuff. And as we know, things, not just diseases, but also insects like mealybugs, etc. It's an area wide issue. And what you do or do not do on one farm affects what happens or doesn't happen on another farm.
Can you tell us just a little bit about what that research was like, what you did?
[00:17:57] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. So that was really coming from how do we branch out from some of the fungicide resistance? Like how do we use a lot of this information that we are getting? One of the things that we were realizing is that some of the vineyards that we were working with, that we were getting some of these tests from, even organic vineyards who were not using any, they weren't using the QIs.
They also weren't using any other synthetic product. We're still seeing sometimes very high rates. of the fungicide resistance to these different products. And what we really found was that a lot of the information that we were able to look at was really so much more useful on that larger scale when we were able to look at all of this data in the aggregate.
And so one of the things, which I'm going to talk about my experience with the Oregon State, in the William Valley Vineyard growers especially, that they took all of this information, that they took the data, powdery mildew information that we are getting from their impaction spore traps. They were taking the fungicide resistance data that we were giving them, and they were sharing all this information with each other.
And we're able to say, Hey, oh, I was using this product, you know, on my field this year and next year. And then I started to see a lot of issues. You didn't see it immediately, but you saw it pretty closely after I did, even though you followed the patterns elsewhere. And so they were able to take a lot of that information and aggregate it and share together and be able to use that much more quickly.
I didn't talk too much about how much of the fungicide resistance that we were seeing. We definitely did see some differences in some of the states. that we were looking at, although it was generally pretty high rates of resistance to the QI products across the nation. That degree was less in a lot of the places in Oregon where a lot of this information started and where they shared a lot of this information from the get go.
So one of the things that we wanted to look at was how does this information come across and then what do people do with that information? Absolutely. So when you get into the area wide management, when you, when you start talking about it, you're like, okay, while I manage my property, Unfortunately, a lot of these diseases aren't just staying on my property.
If we could, if we could keep everyone isolated, then we wouldn't have to talk about a lot of this information management information management across all these different regions. What do we do once we have that knowledge and once we're sharing all of these spores back and forth even if we don't necessarily want to share that.
But if we can also share some of the information on what we're all seeing, we can all manage it a little better. Even if it's just as simple as like, Oh, my sprayer was not calibrated correctly and I'm starting to see More powdery mildew in my vineyard blocks. If you communicate that to your neighbor, then they may be able to increase their spray intervals a little bit more in order to not lose their crop because they're going to have to deal with a much higher crop load.
And they could be looking at the spore information. They could be looking at any of these monitoring effects that they're collecting. But if you can know that a source population nearby is going to be pushing more spores more readily, that's even before it's hitting your vineyard. So it's getting that information even a little faster than you would with some of the spore monitoring efforts, if that makes sense.
[00:21:01] Craig Macmillan: That does make sense. And so, in terms of the collecting the information, this doesn't just have to be glove swabs or, you know, impaction traps. This simply can be people saying, hey, I'm seeing mildew pressure that's pretty intense, or I'm seeing it earlier, or whatever. Other people are saying, I'm not seeing it yet, but I know I'm downwind of you, for instance.
Or, I know that my conditions are still very conducive, so I might be able to, like you said, increase my spray intervals, maybe check my calibration, check my coverage. It's a, it's a heads up. Basically from from one grower to another. How is this information shared?
[00:21:34] Sarah Lowder: So there are lots of different ways that this information is shared One of the ways that we wanted to look is at just what did people find the most useful when they were Looking for different information on either new diseases or old diseases or all that kind of thing And some of the stuff that we were finding was that people really found their colleagues, just those person to person conversations that they were having to be the most useful information when managing any diseases.
And while people certainly found, which I was happy to hear, that people found their viticulture specialists, their extension agents, to be extremely useful when helping to find this information, they really were still, the the most important part was their colleagues and their neighbors, the other growers in the area.
And so you can look at different ways that people communicate, which we, one of the things that we did was look at a communication network. So just exactly how is that information flowing in the system? And there are certain people, which this may not necessarily be a huge surprise. But there are certain people that a lot of people go to, to learn more information about stuff, especially as someone that is looking at a region and be like, Ooh, I have one, this super great new tool, mate, I have something even cooler than the glove swabs.
And now I need to tell. the growers about it. I need to see if we can actually use this in a commercial way that'll be viable. You can go to some of these more influential individuals within a region and then hopefully see that information spread a little bit more quickly than it might otherwise if you just kind of picked your people based on just where they were located or even just the closest ones you get your hands on.
As it were.
[00:23:09] Craig Macmillan: Gotta find the node. Gotta find the hub,
[00:23:11] Sarah Lowder: find the node. .
[00:23:14] Craig Macmillan: This is an interesting topic to me because one of the things that I think we've lost from a cultural standpoint is the coffee shop. People who are now retired growers have talked to me about how you're on your farm. You know, before sunup you get things running, you get going.
People are doing what they're doing. Everything's fine. And then you go to the coffee shop about nine o'clock and everybody's there. And that's where the information would get transferred. And this goes back to the, you know, basic farming decades ago. We don't do that anymore. What we do is we're there at Sunup before Sunup, we get things running, we get done, then we're back in the truck and we're on the phone and we're going to the next ranch and we're not connecting with people.
In that kind of social conversational way, the way that we used to. And so hopefully we can revive some of that either through meetings or through internet or through just simply networks, like you said, if there's a relationship, you can just simply call somebody and say, Hey, I'm starting to see this and hopefully we can build those social networks and see the collective benefits
[00:24:12] Sarah Lowder: and find more ways to bring us together.
[00:24:15] Craig Macmillan: Find more ways to bring us together in a world that seems to be forcing us apart, right? No. On this topic of managing diseases and monitoring diseases, is there one thing you'd recommend to our listeners around this?
[00:24:27] Sarah Lowder: There are lots of different diseases in lots of different ways that a lot of things are managed and we talked a little bit about Collective action in the sense that a lot of times some diseases are more effectively managed on a much wider scale than an individual Farming unit so like you could do the best practices in your own vineyard but if you have Someone next door doing lawn best practices that could just mitigate all of the hard work that you just put into it.
But it's hard to say anything on the large scale other than the fact that Talking more with those around you has a much wider benefit for disease management on all scales And just also grow better cultural practices, better more information on learning. I may be someone in the academia realm, but I always think that the more you can learn, the better.
And your neighbors are in the same game as you are, especially in vineyards. I feel like the mantra of the rising tide lifts all boats is very much in effect.
[00:25:24] Craig Macmillan: So we can learn from extension and from all that great stuff that's out there, but we can also learn from each other. Sarah, where can people find out more about you and your work?
[00:25:31] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, so now that I'm over here at the University of Georgia, where I'm most easy to find is through the Viticulture Extension website. It's called the UGA Viticulture Blog. We post a lot of information relevant to those growers in the southeast, but we also have a blog posting that sometimes will go out via email if you would like to sign up for that, backlog of what we've posted.
It's the easiest way to find me. I'm all around the University of Georgia system.
[00:26:00] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Our guest today was Sarah Lowdre. She's a Denture and Viticulture Specialist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Georgia. Thanks for being here. This was a great conversation.
[00:26:10] Sarah Lowder: Thank you, Greg. I had a great time.
Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
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Your tasting room may be the most customer-facing facet of your wine business. This makes it the perfect setting to display your dedication to sustainability.
Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.
On a recent Vineyard Team staff trip to Oso Libre, we immediately noticed how they showcased their passion for sustainability through out the property.
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I highly recommend going to the show notes and clicking on “Sustainable Tasting Room Tips” to see pictures of all the great signage we found at Oso Libre.
Sign SustainablyOso Libre highlights their sustainable certification right from the front gate with a custom sign. Their passion is seeded throughout every area of the property. From sustainable signs posted on the fence line to informational pieces at the tasting room bar, every wall has a message that connects guests with what sustainability means to Oso Libre.
Consider where your guests meander to at your property and how you can place signage to tell them more about your brand.
At Oso Libre, curious tasters are enticed by a plaque as they walk along the vineyard rows to the tasting room front door. This sign defines the seven values of sustainability; Social Responsibility, Water Management, Safe Pest Management, Energy Efficiency, Habitat, Business, and Always Evolving.
By creating a piece of in-depth material, you welcome your customers to dig a little deeper and learn exactly how your brand embodies sustainability.
Philanthropy is very important to Oso Libre’s owners Chris and Linda. A sign in the shade by the outdoor seating shares information about their Por Vida Foundation. Proceeds from various winery activities like events and bottle sales are donated to cancer research, veterans’ services, animal services, and family support programs.
Consider how you give back to your community and tell your customers about it. They will love learning how you take care of our most valuable resource - our people.
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This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Sustainable Tasting Room Tips *** *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Center of Effort's Sustainable Story feature in Grape and Wine Magazine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
The goal of the NASA Acres Consortium is to bridge the gap between space and farms to create sustainable food systems now and in the future. Yu Jiang, Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering and Data Analytics, School of Integrative Plant Science Horticulture Section Cornell AgriTech explains how this group of researchers is using land-based robots to ground truth data from satellites and aerial imaging to create predictive models. The project aims to bring cost effective solutions for disease management, breeding, pruning, and more to farmers of all sizes.
Resources: 117: Grapevine Mildew Control with UV Light 129: The Efficient Vineyard Project 191: CropManage: Improving the Precision of Water and Fertilizer Inputs 199: NASA Satellites Detect Grapevine Diseases from Space Convolutional Neural Networks for Image-Based High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping: A Review Deep Semantic Segmentation for the Quantification of Grape Foliar Diseases in the Vineyard Deep Learning-based Autonomous Downy Mildew Detection and Severity Estimations in Vineyards NASA Acres - applying satellite data solutions to the most pressing challenges facing U.S. agriculture Yu Jiang Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
TranscriptCraig Macmillan 0:00
Our guest today is Yu Jiang. He is an assistant professor of systems engineering and data analytics in the School of integrative plant science horticulture section at Cornell agritech. Thank you for being on the podcast
Yu Jiang 0:12
Thanks Craig for having me for these podcasts.
Craig Macmillan 0:15
I found out about you, because you're connected to the NASA acres Consortium, which is doing a bunch of really cool stuff for all kinds of crops around the world and winegrapes turning out to be part of it. What is what is NASA acres,
Yu Jiang 0:28
So I got to adopt the some of the official description about a NASA acre so our audience can better understand what's our mission and what's our approach. So NASA acres consortium is commissioned under NASA Applied Sciences program, and brings the value of Earth observation technology down to earth. NASA acres consortium established the march 2023 And then led by Dr. Alissa Witcraft from the University of Maryland. NASA acres is NASA's second consortium devoted to strengthening food security and agriculture, followed by the success of NASA harvest, a global focus a consortium but this time, NASA Acers specifically emphasizes on the US own agriculture land in NASA acres, we bridge the gap from space to farm and adaptation to impact to gather with US farmers, ranchers, and other agri food system decision makers who are charged with addressing the most pressing challenges to sustainable, productive, resilient agriculture now and in the future. to ensure our missions, NASA acres utilize a consortium structure to bring together a geographically, semantically and personally diverse group of agriculture actors, and partners from both public and private sectors collaborated within a model that matches ivory cultures own highly dynamic and diverse needs, and flexible partnerships and rapid actions on tools in NASA acres that will help ensure that a satellite based Earth Observations applications are user driven and free for all the preppers we envision .
Craig Macmillan 2:25
a huge mission. There's a bunch of different technologies that are involved here. And you're involved in a bunch of them. One that I'm particularly curious about was we had a guest on the podcast from Cornell Katie Gold, she was working with hyperspectral imaging and the detection of plant stress, but as a plant disease. And that's the that's the sky. Right? That's the information coming from satellites or whatever. You are the boots on the ground person. Is that right?
Yu Jiang 2:49
Yes, correct. I'm on the ground, I'm doing the groundwork.
Craig Macmillan 2:53
All right, we're literally grounding. So as far as that project goes, I understand that you're using robots and with sensors and artificial intelligence and whatnot to detect and predict disease spread. You tell me more about that.
Yu Jiang 3:09
For my account of a personal program, and the involvement of with NASA acres, you know, project, we bring in new, especially ground robots, we use various internet of of things, sensing network technologies, that we can offer the information as the ground truth matterments that many of these you know satellite or Earth observation data streams can use to try and various models for prediction, or estimation of various things of interest. And disease is definitely one of the biggest things for the ineyard management's currently adding in the future.
Craig Macmillan 3:50
Absolutely. If I understand what this work is on the ground as its ground truthing what the hyperspectral imaging is telling us is that right?
Yu Jiang 4:00
Roughly yes, if you can see there, all the current paradigm of doing remote sensing work. Most of the time, people are really focusing on the modeling, or how we can find the best and model to link or connect the hyperspectral signals collect data from, you know, satellite based or airborne based imagery systems, we use the ground truth data collected by a human on the ground. And these have been proven very successful in the past to produce various models that we are using right now including weather forecast, but with the very rapid and unprecedented climate challenges, and also the induced disease pressures. We are kind of lagging behind with the speed or pace we need to develop new models to tackle these problems. And that's a reason we want the robot to do so so that we can catch up with the disease. This can Have a fashion or progression speed, but also offer new tools for our viewers to use for their management decision making.
Craig Macmillan 5:08
So tell me about the robots, what are the robots doing?
Yu Jiang 5:12
So we developed a customized robot called the phytopathobot short for PPP. So basically phytopathology there's, my colleague, Katie Gold right is a scientist, that who really work on plant disease, and the bot is just the short name for the robots. And we put these two together, and basically just shows we integrated the kind of advantages offered robotic or automation systems with the new AI capability. So this robots can really bring the human experience and intelligence to all the fields that can do for example, if you see scouting recommendation, or some other, you know, checking functions that otherwise currently we have no human resources to do so for every single farm at the present time.
Craig Macmillan 6:06
Right? Is it fair to say that the training part would be described as artificial intelligence? Or should we call it neural network hearing? Or what would be the appropriate technical term for that part of it? Because I have a question about that.
Yu Jiang 6:17
Yeah, I think, broadly speaking, is a part of the artificial intelligence.
Craig Macmillan 6:23
Okay.
Yu Jiang 6:23
And that is more off the AI application for agriculture.
Craig Macmillan 6:28
What's happening is there's cameras then or there's some kind of a, either hyperspectral, or there's something that's getting information that's mounted on the robot, right?
Yu Jiang 6:40
Yes, correct. Our robot is currently equipped in ways both RGB multispectral thermal and the hyperspectral sensors, which many more on the road.
Craig Macmillan 6:52
And then you get readings. And then you know, human, I would assume says yes, this is disease, or yes, this is not. And then over many, many iterations, then the artificial intelligence learns what that is. And then it can be autonomous, you can send it out and it'll find it on its own, identify it on its own.
Yu Jiang 7:14
Yes, so I would see the autonomy is achieved at two levels. First is all the AI system for disease identification and quantification. We have a twin various models, with the expertise from our like, it's 30 plus year career technicians. And now we just a brand Hey, spray into the AI system that we can rely on to detect the disease in the field, specifically for a grape downey and powdery mildews at the moment. But at the same time, we also train the AI systems to guide the robots, autonomously navigating in the vineyard. is much more like the similar technology Tesla or other you know, EV car manufacturers are using for autonomous driving, but now just say, equipped those technologies with this ag robot that can do with autonomous navigation in vanguard in alternative in many of the different fields for agriculture purposes.
Craig Macmillan 8:14
the future of this technology, or the robots gonna continue to be a part of it, or are we going to be at a point where we're relying solely upon the aerial or orbit based imagery?
Yu Jiang 8:26
That's a great question. And I actually want to set up some of the context. information for our audience,
Craig Macmillan 8:33
please.
Yu Jiang 8:33
So yeah, the robots we kind of referred to here, actually those intelligent, you know, agent that can perform certain tasks in your backyard, or do the actual right to do all these operations, like a spring harvesting, you know, picking samples, all these, then when we consider how are we going to strategically and effectively deploy those robots? That's a big question is not a trivial because each robot at the current, you know, time would cost roughly 50,000 to $60,000. I think for many of the large farms, or wineries, the company will be able to afford that. For many of the small to medium sized farms, these can be a barrier for them to adopt the latest digital technology, which I hate, you know, that part as technologist. So one of the possibility is actually linked to the NASA acres project and the mission is a how we can use all sorts of information that can be affordably available to the growers to really use that for decision making. And a while of the concept we propose here is to make a closed loop joint training system that can connect the proximal sensing from the robots and other drone systems, we use the Earth observation data offered by federal agencies such as NASA, so that later all the growers can really enjoy, you know, using a very low cost or affordable platform offered from NASA or NASA acres consortia to make decisions on their individual farms. But largely training, the costs of a training such a model is taking over by large growers, largely, you know, stakeholders and some sort of a, you know, public and research institute that can balance the way or how the disadvantages you know, community can't adopt the latest technology.
Craig Macmillan 10:44
That is fascinating. You mentioned tasks, what kind of tasks are you talking about?
Yu Jiang 10:49
The current account of the PPP robots can do two tasks. First thing is for disease recognition, and the qualification, as I mentioned, for downey, and powerdy, and then now PPP can also generate a map right after the scanning off your vineyard, where those disease really severely infected your plants right now. And we working in progress try to use these PPP derive the map to correlate with the satellite maps or hyperspectral imaging so we can get so we can find which hyperspectral signals gone and correlated with diseases infection on the ground. And this is especially important for crops like grapes because of manual for the disease, or occurred from the bottom of the canopy, or the side of the canopy, where many off of the you know, satellite or Earth observation systems may not easily see at the beginning. But those signals will be embedded in the hyperspectral signatures.
Craig Macmillan 11:55
Got it. Okay. So I could get a map that would allow me to spray pesticide a fungicide very, very targeted way is kind of where we're going with this.
Yu Jiang 12:06
Yes, correct. I'm actually gonna just share some other ongoing effort here. Also, while also my colleague Dr. Devika Daughtrey from plants, Plant Pathology at Cornell agri tech, who identified the use of the UV, as treatment, powdery mildew or Downy Mildew for our grapes. And our account of ongoing efforts is to synchronize that map generated by PPP and the transfer to the UV robots. So now UV robots are gonna rely on that map to apply the UV treatment to balance the power usage and the hopefully to also maximize the contents of the disease spreading in the vineyard.
Craig Macmillan 12:52
That's really exciting. I understand the USDA also has some some role in this technology or related technologies.
Yu Jiang 12:59
Yeah, you ask the actually is a big partner of the whole team, especially for the grape genetics research unit, here in Geneva, New York. And we have a very multidisciplinary team, I will see I can see is from like a plant breeding to genetic to plant pathology now, including myself from engineering and robotics. And we also have about informatics, and we some colleagues from other universities on economy and marketing. So the whole team's efforts is back to a systems engineering approach, I would say. So when we look at the whole production, right, it's not just that, yeah, we have this robot that can do proceed and spray or deliver the UV treatment can solve all these questions. It's just hard to imagine that simple. So then we when we look at the whole agriculture production system, we started with the best plant material. And if we started with the building a candidate or a successful candidate data, usually just to make the rest of the whole production management much easier than ever before.
Craig Macmillan 14:14
Yeah, absolutely.
Yu Jiang 14:15
That's where, you know, all the scientists on the team really excited about how we can breed a new plant materials that have more like a natural resistance to plant the disease or maybe other stresses so that later on the in season management, it can be much more easily, you know, controlled or conducted by the growers. That Castile enable sustainable, you know, agriculture while maximizing the profitability for many of the growers in the future.
Craig Macmillan 14:45
I understand that one of the projects you've worked on had to do with phenotyping. So if I'm reading plants, there's a particular trait that I want and there's a particular expression of that trait that I want, whether it's disease tolerance or drought tolerance or salt tolerance. answer whatever it is, but that aspect of plant breeding is very difficult and takes a long time traditionally, and takes a high level of expertise. What is this idea of high throughput? phenotyping? What's that all about?
Yu Jiang 15:13
If you can have a think about the whole history of plant breeding, all the way you treat the back to mon Tao, we are human phenotyping is the best way, we just go to the field, plant and various plant materials, and just watch their performance in the field and find the best suitable for us. Right? So so then we recognize the traditional breeding, it becomes a numbers game, the more we test, the higher the possibility, we're going to find something, going t obe suitable for us, right? So we say it's a matter of who can email you this account of a traditional breeding way that requires the highest throughput phenotyping. Because the more you testing in the field, the higher the possibility we got to get something successful, and how to evaluate in the field is the biggest question right now. And that's where the high throughput plant phenotyping plays a vital role to address that bottleneck. So instead of for a breeder, to raw, only, you know, hundreds of 1000, you know, testing materials, the now can run, you know, 10,000, or even 100,000 in a year. That's how we hope to speed up the entire breeding cycles.
Craig Macmillan 16:25
So tell me the details of the tech of the details of the so I get some, I breed some plants, I've got some seeds, I'm gonna plant some seeds, right, I've got genetic recombination, now we gotta cross. How does this technology actually play a role? I put a bunch of plants in front of it, or how does it work?
Yu Jiang 16:46
Yep, so So in my understanding, there are actually two different paths ways to use that. One is along the traditional ways, as we just described, basically, we just find the best performancer from the field, right, and the system would just behave like a human in the field, we just find the tallest one, then we just a mirror the height of the plants in the field using the AI system with the robot, or if we want find more disease resistance is more like a what the PPB is helping right now, go to the field check a differente. And though gene all types off with a group of eyes, and then we find the least the infection as the candidate for the next one, right, this is a more like a traditional way. But now the second pathway is even more exciting is through the genetic studies. So once we kind of forget these phenotypes, especially there are differences, we have many different ways now can sequence them to understand their DNA markers and sequences, so that we will be able to work with the bell informaticians, to find which genes are associated with the phenotypic trees have a desire. Okay, so certain genes in my show, okay, the high disease resistance always associated with certain region in your DNA, and that's very likely being the gene or the region really control the resistance right to that particular disease. And if we ran multiple of these experiment, we get more and more as a candidate of Regents, and lead her on instead of keep running the field of trials, which still consume a lot of resources and the timing, because you need to wait until the plants are mature, and, you know, go through the entire season, we can now rely on those genetic, you know, information to identify the next around of a candidate, if the content of those gene regions is very likely, they're gonna have some, you know, resistance to certain disease. And that's another whole pathway, in my opinion, to facilitate the cultivar development in the future.
Craig Macmillan 18:58
And what is the role of AI in that?
Yu Jiang 19:00
So AI, please several rules there. So first, is to help the phenotyping itself, right. So basically, in the past, we sent a large group of it, you know, people go to the field and check the planet, hide diseases, infection, fruit size, you name it. And now we can just use, you know, robots to take images or even our cell phone to take an image. And then the AI will just mimic a human behavior to identify Oh, where the plant is, how tall the plant is, what's the number of leaves within that image or a number of a fruit fruit the size, a little versus, you know, trees and AI definitely now, at least, that being comparable with human performance for many of these tasks. And the other way is actually, to use AI as another tool to make a better prediction of relationship between the phenotypic trees and their genetic variants, right as we discuss for the second impassively is basically made to find that the association between genetic and phenotypic variants, and the AI also now plays a vital role to help us to find those relationships. It goes beyond traditional statistics human developed, and the find many interesting and hidden relationships that are currently statistic based approach cannot find.
Craig Macmillan 20:24
Wow, that's amazing. There's a couple of other things that that I that I was researching you that I noticed that were very, very, like practical right now, today, please, can I have some kind of technologies. One is improving the efficiency of pruning grapevines? And then I think I read this right, using facial recognition, AI technology to recognize powdery mildew infections. I would love to know about those two things, because those are two things that I would if I had it, I would use it today.
Yu Jiang 20:51
For sure. Let's start with the disease part. Yeah, cuz that's just allow what we just discussed why we developed that tool is basically a request actually, from my colleagues from the breeding and genetics slide. Okay. So in the past, my colleague, Dr. Lance Candle-Davison, at the USDA ARS develop a protocol that can use a one centimeter leaf disk as an assay to evaluate the disease progression, on the group leaf tissues, and then later on that can help him as a pathogen geneticists, to find the genes related to the disease resistance to powdery and downy mildews. But the challenge is, in the past, we have to train a bunch of, you know, technicians and the postdocs, even some of the other grad and graduate students at Cornell, to sit in front of a optical microscope and put the sample on our eight turn to like a tax 100x. And then manually identify how the pathogen really grew in the past a couple of days during the experiment, right, and then counted the number of a hyphal, which is a particular organ of the pathogen being grown, right. And then at the end of the day, they turn all these numbers back, and they will be able to run some quantitative genetic analysis, try to find the relationship. And I tried to once to be honest.
Craig Macmillan 22:27
Okay, yeah, I spent a lot of I spent a lot hours with a dissecting scope. So I hear you Isn't that fun?
Yu Jiang 22:34
Well, I want to see, for the first a couple of new samples. Yeah, it's it's a new experience for anyone, right? And if it's like, oh, yeah, I get that. After trial, you know, 10 samples. I'm done today. I don't want to see the front end of the microscope that day. And don't ask me to do this again. Right. It's quite tedious. And as a person, you'll feel fatigued very quickly. Yep. Very quickly, because you need to, to be super concentrated on what are you observing right now? And then also make the columns in your brain? I don't know how I did that. But I did. But after 10 samples, no, no more?
Craig Macmillan 23:16
Yeah. Yeah.
Yu Jiang 23:17
So that's the motivation for us to consider how the AI system can really help us, right? Because basically, what do we want the AI to do is giving you know, an image? Can you tell me? Which part content of the hypho And then tell me how I mean, how many of these hyphos are within that image? That's all right. So it's very much like the facial recognition technology we're using every single day. So our smartphone or maybe other security checking, you know, systems, right? And that just to give us motivation, hey, why not? Let me just build the robot and some of the AI tools that we can automate this whole process. So later on, instead of asking our students to do that very tedious work of observing the dissecting microscope, we will be able to allow them to do more intelligent work, how to find or improve the approval from the genetics, the perspective or the breeding perspective, rather than letting them doing this repeated and boring work. And that's the whole motivation here. And that's a reason why we can't have a proposed out method and that really got some success and to speed up that process. And now, just want to share with you in the past the year 2023 Last group, by using this technology was able to find a 60 more quantitative trait, a low sigh, which you can see there are data that gene regions related to certain, you know, phenotypic traits. And here in this study, that's more for the powdery mildew resistance. just named as single year, his team found 60 More as compare with, we fund probably 40 In the past four decades.
Craig Macmillan 25:08
Wow, wow, that's fantastic. There's so much here. There's so much stuff going on in it, as I have guests on that are working in these areas. It's just is it every day, I'm just learning so much new stuff, but I can't let you go without talking about pruning. I just, I just have to know about that I've I pruned a lot of grape vines personally, and I've trained people and you know, and there's, there's this, well, I'll just break it down for you. Pruning grape vines is an art form. And I don't care what kind of Trellis I don't care what kind of grape, whatever it is. And even if you're mechanized, that you gotta tune this thing up, and you got to collect data, and you got to figure out how this is gonna work. And when you have vines that are being pruned, you're trained, every single time somebody that I've been working with, usually above me was like, do these people really know what they're doing? Because they can't screw it up. Right? So now, is this going to help me? I mean, this is do you have technology? That's gonna help me you? I mean, I need this help.
Yu Jiang 26:02
Yes. Also, simple answer is A Yes, yes. And yes. So we are developing actually, the technology for the broader pruning a system for both apples and grapes as perennial crops, because they do need this type of technology to help based on my personal experience in the past three years, with both the pruning for apples and pruning for grapes, I share your burden Craig, it's not only you, but as an observer, and both the person who did the pruning, okay, using the knives, I have a strong feeling, I don't know what I'm doing.
Craig Macmillan 26:44
Right?
Yu Jiang 26:44
Right, I have a lot of criteria being you know, taught, say you need to find a branch that thick or that long, then you need to cut to certain lengths or just a cut them entirely, so that you can have new shoots coming with more healthy groups and the more productive grooves in the year. But to be honest, and once you get into the field, maybe perhaps the first several you keep that in mind. And then otherwise, oh, yeah, I just feel like these two needs to be cut. Don't ask me why I just feel that way. Right. And this is a kind of shows the non uniformity among the workforce. If I'm a beginner, I have less experience, I gotta be low in my working efficiency, I am going to create more problems, and rather than more success pruning, for the management, and obviously, the more counter for trend and people needs to be you know, pay them more because they have those experiences. So that all comes through the labor shortage issue, then it's just really hard to find those skilled people. So in my group, we kind of develop we are developing new 3d imaging technologies. Oh, wow. Yeah, that can get the very high fidelity of the 3d models of your grape vines and the apple trees in the field. And then once we get to some models, we can extract the skeleton is much more like how human described that, oh, yeah, that's my skin, and then I have to shoes and how they grow. And then we just be able to do that in a granular detail with all the needed information, like what's the diameter, or what's the length for each of these branch. And then due to all we can, based on our predefined the pruning criteria, to decide where are the cutting points, so that either a person or maybe a machine, or maybe a robot in the future, can go to the field directly cut based on the information we already get. Yeah, and the good thing is now with this whole kind of a new approach, instead of based on our existing you know, criteria, we can also form all different sets of criteria to really prune it in whatever way we want because that's a digital system. It won't hurt anything rather than using some of the power from you right? And then we can count off a get a difference you though proven the vineyard to take a look which we better serve our purpose. And we are also working with some offer collaborators try to incorporate to the growth models for grape vine. Try to see with different pruning strategy how the group vine or apple trees gonna grow during the growing season. And how I mean for me differently you know, branch structures and maybe different fruits load and the distribution with a hope you know, if we know this information beforehand, we can let the universe to determine what might be the best strategy we want to do as the you Though time progress to the green season, so do you have much more information in advance? Rather than Oh, yeah, I got it just to do the pruning. But that's the best I can do.
Craig Macmillan 27:15
Right? Right, right. So it sounds like that could be kind of an iterative process, you have a robot go through, and you get your 3d model, and you bring it back. And then you develop an algorithm essentially, that says, Keep this, don't keep this keep this, don't keep this, cut it here, cut it there, then you could execute that. Exactly, basically, to the vine.
Yu Jiang 30:29
Yes. Correct.
Craig Macmillan 30:30
And then you could have it grow. And then you can come back the following year, and say, Okay, well, what happened? And you could refine that model over time.
Yu Jiang 30:39
Yes, correct. That that's exactly the concept called a digital twin. Wow. Yeah, we see is a product actually from NASA, used to use that for you know, making the Mars rovers or the moon rovers, because they need to simulate so many different things before they put the actual manufacturing, right. But now we want to adopt these concepts for agriculture, before we do any of the decision making on pruning or harvesting. We want to see how they progress in the digital world, because it just takes us so minimal cost, and then we can have better understanding which way might be the best, we want to move forward.
Craig Macmillan 31:20
Wow, that's really exciting stuff. This technology is probably still in its infancy, I would guess.
Yu Jiang 31:27
Yes. Correct. I mean, although now we have more and more 3d imaging technologies and even more like a loose AI driven approaches. But it still is early stage, we are having some challenges from the field. So that's a reason we are, working hard to make progress. And I hope to share more things, you know, in the coming years with the audience here and hopefully demonstrated to the grape industry someday.
Craig Macmillan 31:53
Yeah, absolutely. Keep going. We're out of time. But I want to what is it one thing you would recommend to grape growers around this kind of topic, these topics, I guess I should say,
Yu Jiang 32:05
Can I share two actually?
Craig Macmillan 32:07
Please yeah, to is great.
Yu Jiang 32:09
Why I really want to share with with all the growers as we are at the point where many of these digital technologies are being more and more available and affordable. So please keep your eyes and the for example, at Cornell, my extension program focuses on the digital agriculture trials for adoption short for data aims to fill in the gap between you know, the growers and the startup companies who deliver those new da tools for production management, and also tried to offer more knowledge base to our growers, they can learn and better use these tools by themselves. So this is very important, as many of these tools go and just a calming and you don't want to miss the opportunity offer using the best of the tool to shop yourself and make better management. The second thing I also really want to share with our audience here is pleased to share all these exciting lands from digital agriculture to our case, to younger generations who are working in your, you know, vineyard or winery. I'm a strong believer the best investment is always you know, for the future generations. If they got excited if the et buy in all these ideas and put more efforts to start, you know, learn and develop new technologies back to agriculture and the food sectors. I believe we're gonna have a sustainable and resilient agriculture in the future for sure.
Craig Macmillan 33:39
That is fantastic. Where can people find out more about you.
Yu Jiang 33:42
you can check on my labs website is a se a i r dot c a l s dot cornell.edu. I will provide you the link so that you can share with the audience.
Craig Macmillan 33:58
Fantastic. So our guest today with Yun Jiang. He's a system professor of systems engineering and data analytics in the School of integrative plant science the whole crypto section of Cornell agritech thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was really fun.
Yu Jiang 34:13
Thanks so much Craig for having me today and as my priority to share our ongoing efforts and research with the broader audience here for grapes. Thanks, everyone.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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“Food disconnect” is a term used to describe the average consumer’s lack of knowledge about where their food comes from and how it’s made. When it comes to wine, most consumers only see the finished product in the grocery store or tasting room!
Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.
While everyday agricultural practices may feel ordinary to you, these topics are fascinating to the average consumer, who likely has little to no insight into the block to bottle process behind their glass of wine.
Describing specific practices and why they are important helps customers understand the time and care that went into producing their wine. Sharing your unique story welcomes them to take part in the good feelings that come from supporting a business that is doing better for the people and the planet.
People care about social and environmental issues, and want to support brands that share their values and do something about it.
This week’s Marketing Tip tells the inspiring Sustainable Story of how Bien Nacido Vineyards’ irrigation team demonstrates diligent Water Management through the use of technology and a growth mindset.
Data-Driven IrrigationWater is a valuable resource for all forms of life. But it is limited and must be used responsibly.
Bien Nacido Vineyards’ team of experienced irrigators, led by Miguel Asuncion, take several steps to ensure efficient water use.
To avoid system malfunction and uneven hydration, vineyard stewards must constantly maintain their systems. Bien Nacido’s team performs multiple line flushes each year to keep them clear of dirt and debris, and routinely tests distribution uniformity to ensure consistent hydration across their diverse terrains and elevations.
Vines aren’t heavy water users, and Mother Nature provides a portion of what they do need. Bien Nacido’s irrigators track rainfall, weather data, and soil moisture levels, and estimate evapotranspiration. With this data, they tailor their irrigation schedule based on the land’s needs.
When their data shows their vines need water, the team of irrigators waits until the sun is down. They irrigate during dark hours because without the sun’s heat, the vines and soil can more efficiently absorb and utilize what is applied.
But they believe opportunities for enhancement never end. Bien Nacido partners with experts to help identify even more areas for improvement.
They have created a plan to advance their soil and sap flow monitoring technologies, and seek further optimization opportunities with regular analyses of their irrigation system’s design, filtration, and pressure regulation.
Tell Your Sustainable StoryWe are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Center of Effort's Sustainable Story feature in Grape and Wine Magazine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member -
Lange Twins has implemented individual regenerative practices but now they are asking, what would happen if they stacked them? Kendra Altnow, Sustainability Manager at Lange Twins Family Winery & Vineyards and a 5th generation Lange shares Project Terra. The goals are to increase biodiversity, build and enrich the soil and improve watershed through shifting farming practices, restoration and conservation. They are accomplishing this through grazing livestock, establishing permeant ground cover, reducing tillage, improving native habitat, and reducing reliance on herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides.
Resources: REGISTER | June 12, 2024 : Regenerative Agriculture in a Production Vineyard 2.0 Tailgate 121: Regenerative Agriculture (Rebroadcast) BIFS Field Day Cover Cropping and Livestock Grazing for Regenerative Agriculture Blue Point Conservation Science California Department of Farming and Agriculture Center for Land Based Learning Community Alliance with Family Farmers Hedgerow Farms Kendra Altnow Kendra Altnow – Instagram Lange Twins Vineyards Hosts Cover Crop and Livestock Grazing Field Day Lange Twins Lange Twins Winery and Vineyard – Instagram Natural Resource Conservation Service Paicines Ranch Xerces Society Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
TranscriptCraig Macmillan 0:00
Our guest today is Kendra Altnow she is sustainability manager at Lange Twins family winery and vineyards and she's a fifth generation. Lange. Welcome to the program.
Kendra Altnow 0:09
Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Craig Macmillan 0:11
We want to have you on because you folks there at length twins have been doing some really innovative things around regenerative agriculture. And through a project you're calling project Tara, what is project Tara? What's that all about?
Kendra Altnow 0:25
Well, we kind of have two different definitions, I would say a project Terra one is the concise purpose of project Terra is to increase biodiversity building, enrich the soil and improve our watershed through shifting our farming principles and practices, restoration and conservation, all while building the next generation of land stewards. That's what I like to say is the on paper definition of project Terra. But project Terra means something a little bit different to me, it's our vision coming to life. Like many of us, the health of the planet is a top of mind. And a few years ago, I really wanted to see what we could do as a family to contribute to being part of the very complex solution equally as important passing our land to the next generation healthier than it was passed to us. So I really just started reading and I learned that there are lots of changes that we can make. But we have a unique access to something that a lot of other people don't have. And that's our land. And really, I see that our land gives us the greatest opportunity for change. So we started just digging into what those practices look like. And regenerative farming really was something interesting and something very obtainable for us to do.
Craig Macmillan 1:41
What are some of those practices? Because from what I understand from doing research with what you're up to you, you did certain things 10 years ago, and then you brought in some other elements, and then you tried some other elements. Now you're kind of trying to bring them all together, if I understand correctly, what are some of those elements?
Kendra Altnow 1:55
Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I like to say when people come out and come to the farm for tour, that we've been practicing everything in different vineyards, but not necessarily taking those practicing and what regenerative agriculture calls stacking them. So the components of those are reduction of off farm inputs, livestock integration, maintaining permanent ground cover, conservation or reduction in tillage, creation of habitat, which is one of my favorites, and reducing our reliance on herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. So those were all practices that we have been doing. But we said, hey, can we take those and put them together in one pilot vineyard. And that's really the core of what Project Terra is. And for us, it's not just about doing it on that pilot vineyard, but is building the framework to be able to scale it to the other vineyards within our families holdings.
Craig Macmillan 2:56
You mentioned you were excited about this particular area. And I think it's an interesting one, too. And that's habitat.
Kendra Altnow 3:00
Yes, that's my wheelhouse. I love it.
Craig Macmillan 3:02
Yeah. So tell me about that. How does that play into this project?
Kendra Altnow 3:05
Gosh, it's a huge portion. Biodiversity is really a big element of what we need to do here as farmers in general. When my grandfather was farming, he did edge to edge farming. And that really is you didn't see anything green in those vineyards whatsoever. When my dad and uncle came back in 1974, the ranch that they grew up on really looked different the wildlife that they had enjoyed seen. It wasn't there anymore. But the reason why it wasn't there was because the habitat was gone. Without that biodiversity, there was a shift in the ecosystem. And so with that, is this new recognition that we're approaching ag at that system's level, where we're seeing the farm, not just between the rows or from edge to edge, but everything inclusive.
Craig Macmillan 3:52
So how do you do that? If you like, did you take landlords in production? And then set it aside for habitat? Or did you identify areas that could be habitat and then restored them in some fashion? How did you how did you approach that?
Kendra Altnow 4:05
Yeah, and that's, you know, something we've been doing for a long time is habitat restoration, primarily riparian restoration, our family is here on the Mokelumne river. So that's our watershed, and we have unfarmable areas. But we also have areas that were planted that we have taken out of production just because the quality coming off the vineyard wasn't meeting the standards of the winery. So we we kind of have a multiple approach. Over the years, it was just what we could get done. Recently, we worked with point blue conservation science and we have a conservation plan. And that conservation plan takes a look at all of our land that we farm as a whole and has helped us identify areas where we can make improvements that's not only within the vineyards itself by creating maybe filter strips or wildlife corridors, but also where We have maybe a vernal pool area, and what we can do there. So really enhance what is already happening. So it's a little bit of everything I guess is we've, we've had help. But we also just noticed, oh, that area over there isn't great. Let's put a pollinator habitat in.
Craig Macmillan 5:16
And you've been doing as long as you believe that there is some improvements and some stability from increasing the biodiversity on the land.
Kendra Altnow 5:24
Let me take a step back. Biodiversity has definitely increased here on our farm, just the other day, we saw two Bob Cats hanging out on the bridge by our house, that is nothing I saw in my childhood. So I can definitely tell you that there has been a shift because there are animals and birds that we haven't seen that are coming back to our area, those animals and birds are what we see. And so can you imagine what we can't see? So what we're making the impact on? Who knows, right? I don't I'm not out there every day with a microscope looking. But by these bigger animals being here, I have to say that the other ones are here, too.
Craig Macmillan 6:04
And do you think that leads to a more stable? agro ecosystem?
Kendra Altnow 6:08
Absolutely. 100%
Craig Macmillan 6:10
100%, you had mentioned also things around fungicide, insecticide herbicide reduction. How does that play into what kind of practices and how does that play into the stability of the project overall?
Kendra Altnow 6:20
we just finished reading a book. And there's a lot to be said about soil health, right. And that's a big topic, especially in ag these days, I think that we're a lot better than we have been. That's what sustainability is all about, right? Is continuous improvement, really digging into the health of the soil makes us recognize that maybe there's more we can do. From my perspective, having biodiversity above ground and below ground is only going to help us not just in our vineyard and the production of the wine grapes, but also as a whole for everything around it. I'm not sure if that answered your question. Sometimes my brain goes off in tangents.
Craig Macmillan 6:57
No, I think I think it's the right idea, I think what you're getting at is by looking at things as being integrated, looking at from a system standpoint, where everything affects everything else changes that make over here, make changes over here. And those can be beneficial changes, they don't have to be negative changes, necessarily.
Kendra Altnow 7:12
And I think also, it's such a long term result, right. So it takes a very long time, for us to see the true benefits of what we're doing today. I always say, Gosh, I wish we would have started this, you know, 10 years ago, because then I would feel better about what we're doing. Now you have to have patience. And I think that's been the biggest learning for us or for myself in particular, is that you're not going to change your soil structure or your soil health or anything that has to do with the environment, it takes time. And it takes that dedication. And it's not always the easiest path forward either. So you really have to sit back and realize following that vineyard, for a certain period of time might seem against what we would typically do. But in the long run, it's going to benefit what we're doing, if you understand what I'm saying,
Craig Macmillan 8:09
Yeah, I do I do I change this to soil health improvements. And so structured water holding capacity and things like that. Those do take a long, long, long, long time. But you have to do it if you're gonna get there, you know, and I think what a lot of folks are finding out from the interviews that I'm doing, you know, you may go like, Oh, my God, you know, it's gonna take 10 years, well, 10 years can fly by in terms of like a region, you know, just do it stick to it part of that cover cropping. So you folks have been doing cover cropping for a long time. And I'm guessing that the decisions that you've made in terms of what to plant, where to plant it, maybe even how to plant it, how to terminate it, and probably evolved over time. Can you tell me a little bit about your cover cropping, philosophy management, how that's changed over time?
Kendra Altnow 8:51
So my very simple philosophy is the soil is better served covered period, I believe that not only in our own homes, at home, in our backyards, and our front yards, but also within the vineyard. So that's an aside from how we make our decisions on what cover crops we plant. When it comes to cover crops. I'm sure you know this, they're super complex, there's so many different species out there. And they all are very specific on what you're trying to do for typically the health of your of your land or your soil. So what we always look at first, is the vigor of the vine because we want to ensure that we're not taking away from the growth of the vine and then regional erosion. So those would be like the two starting points for us. And then from there, we combined with the soil type, if we're going to be grazing or not grazing and then the ecological benefits so it's kind of a stacking just in decision making. And then the way we choose what vineyards it goes into, we we across the board, try to get it out. Timing is a big thing for us in all of our Lange Twins family vineyards, except in the vineyards that the mower can't fit down the rows. So it's a very operational decision on that, that side.
Craig Macmillan 10:10
What are some of the variables that you've been trying to manipulate? And what were some of the plant choices that you made to achieve those goals?
Kendra Altnow 10:19
Erosion control is probably our biggest number one cover crop choice that we do or a multiplex this species type, that's something that I would have to ask Chris and Charlie, or even Maria, on our team, they handled the decisions of that. But I'm involved in more of why. So I'm sitting here looking out my window at one of our vineyards, and we have a runoff issue. And so we made, you know, a very spot decision to plant a an erosion control mix, just because it's not planted right now. And we saw two years ago, or, actually, it wasn't two years ago was last winter, it was just gosh, the amount of soil going into the soil was absurd. So what can we do about it? So a lot of it is knowing your land as well, and making the decisions that way?
Craig Macmillan 11:07
So you're using different things in different places. So for some areas, it's all about erosion. Other places, it's about probably water management,
Kendra Altnow 11:14
Or, you know, your nitrogen fixing is a big decision making as well, depending on the vineyards.
Craig Macmillan 11:22
Oh,that reminds me, so I hadn't thought of before, have you been doing any, like pre post testing or control treatment kind of testing, as you do these things
Kendra Altnow 11:30
For cover crops?
Craig Macmillan 11:32
For cover crops or anything else.
Kendra Altnow 11:34
We do a lot. I mean, we do a lot of soil testing, is what we've started doing. And we do that not only just from a short term reason of seeing what's happening right now. But in these areas where we are doing no sustainable ag versus regenerative AG, we have started long term analysis so we can see what really is going to be happening in the vineyard long term with the decisions that we're making today. And does it make sense. So does it make sense for us to do it? Well, maybe it's not making a huge impact on that level, but it will be financially. So there are a lot of tracking that we are doing, because we need to make sure that it makes sense from a sustainability point of view.
Craig Macmillan 12:21
What do you been finding out?
Kendra Altnow 12:22
That's a great question. I It depends. I mean, it really depends on where, and it also depends on what and that's what's so tricky about farming. There isn't a playbook. Right. So what is working on one vineyard isn't necessarily working on another, for example, we have a vermicompost trial going on right now. And it's interesting, we've set it up. And we've done all of the analysis. And what we found is that different phases of the growth of the vineyard, the vermicompost, made a difference. But at the end of the growing season, everything caught up. So it's going to be interesting to see this year, what happens because is there going to be a true difference year after year. And then we'll add in do we add vermicompost again, so what we're trialing right now, which is really fun, is taking our pumice from the winery and feeding it to red worms to see if we can then reapply it out in the vineyards. What we don't know about that is if what is in the vermicompost by the worms, eating our promise is something that is going to benefit the vineyard. So benefit is in the sense of we're closing the loop on our promise, but it may not actually have any value to the soil in the vines themselves over a traditional form of compost feeding. Worms are really fun.
Craig Macmillan 13:45
I'm just gonna ask about that. So you're making worm compost on site?
Kendra Altnow 13:48
No, we're not. So there's a neighbor of ours, my cousin in law found I went out to visit him and I asked him if he would be interested in trial doing a trial with us. And he said, Sure, so we're taking pumice over to him from the winery during crush, and then he is running the trial for us. If it is something that becomes viable for us to do then we would transition it and start it on our own.
Craig Macmillan 14:15
Which reminds me of something else. You are working with a number of collaborators, you're not doing this in a vacuum and we'll transition into grazing was part of that but like what are some of the collaborators here you have your your neighbor, you're obviously working with probably other agencies or other other companies or their specialists who was part of the team here outside of Lange Twins.
Kendra Altnow 14:36
Oh, so many when I started in this role, going back a little bit is I you know, I didn't go to school for farming or winemaking and or sustainability for that matter. And so I took a lot of learning, calling and asking questions. Honestly, some of the organizations I reached out to first I was Point blue conservation science I hopped on, you know, the internet and I started just Googling people and seeing who would be interested in coming out and giving me a hand, they have been awesome because they really have introduced me not only to a whole host of other individuals within the that side of the world. So I would say the habitat side of the world, they did our holistic conservation plan for us. That really is what I would say is my strategic plan on that side of my role. From there, I work with the Center for land based learning their SLEWS program, in particular, the kids from that program come out, and they actually implement some of our projects for us. And that's great, because that really is helping that next generation of land stewards in my mind, hopefully, some of them will come back and want to do this and do it in a fashion that is smart for both themselves and for the environment. NRCS Of course, Xerces, East Bay Mud, calf Valley grazing, hedgerow farms, Megan Phillips, Kelly Melville, you name it, I have like talked to all of them. And really, they have all been instrumental in us putting this together and moving it forward.
Craig Macmillan 16:22
I think it's an excellent transition into grazing.
Kendra Altnow 16:26
Yes, that's fine. I love graze
Craig Macmillan 16:28
you love it. Okay, cool. Well, here we go. If I understood correctly, from some things that I read, you folks are looking at moving into year round grazing. Can you tell me a little bit about the evolution, how it started, how you kind of got into it and how you got to where you're at now and kind of where you see yourself going in the future? Because it sounds like you actually are moving you're not done yet is what it kind of sounds like to me if I understood.
Kendra Altnow 16:51
We're just getting started. Grazing came to us through Charlie's sStar, there were sheep grazing and alfalfa field next to his home vineyard. And he offered the grazer to come into his vineyard for feed. And he said, guys, they did a great job. What do you think? And so we trialed it on 100 acres, and it was great. They came in, they did their job, it was the winter pass, and good to go. We loved what they did. We learned a little bit. And then the following year, it was ramped up big time. So we had a contract raiser come in. And we had probably 2000 to 3000 sheep everywhere, literally everywhere. And that winter was really raining. So it was difficult to get them into the vineyard. Some of them were flooded out. And it was just a challenge all around. And then when the rubber hit the road in the springtime, they got a better contract and left. So we didn't necessarily truth be told, have the best experience the second year. And it was logistically the main reason why. So the third year, we wanted to approach it a little differently. And I was at a young farmers and ranchers dinner and was approached and said, Hey, I had know someone that would love to do vineyard grazing. So great. So we sat down and talked. And what we realized is that what was going to work best for us is for them to be a true extension of our team. So not someone that's just going to come in and then move on to someone else, but someone that is going to be dedicated to working with us, because that is what we found was most important is that we're working together. So I see Valley grazing and Ross Mulrooney as not a separate from length twins, but he is part of length twins in the sense of being our sheep herder, right. So he's the guy, the boots on the ground, moving the sheep, the health of the sheep. And we're just helping direct them in that. And that honestly, if I could give anyone advice, and I know this can't happen for everyone based on size, or lots of other complexities, that has been a saving grace for us, because it's just, he, he knows what we're working towards. And we know what his needs are as well.
Craig Macmillan 19:14
You're working collaboratively. He has needs the sheep have needs you have needs can we find a way to have those things meet that makes a better outcome leads to a better outcome. Without question, yes, it sounds like you started with kind of the traditional, hey, let's get some animals, let's turn them loose. They're gonna go run around and do their thing. Oh, they're done. Now they leave. My experience with grazing is that it can get much more complex than that, and can lead to some even better outcomes when the management becomes a little bit more intensive, which it sounds like you're kind of moving towards is that right?
Kendra Altnow 19:52
Right. I mean for us, our goal is to have four passes a year with the sheep so it's It's a tool for sure. That's how we see this. It's a practice that we're going to implement within the vineyard. That's no different than mowing or herbicide spray, for example. So for us, the number one reason why we started it, there's lots of factors but was for that biodiversity in the soil and the soil microbiome, we know that animals do make a difference. So that was a really big factor. The second factor is back to the herbicides, if we can cut down on that, that's also going to help that soil microbiome third is the fossil fuels. Right. So by employing the sheep in the vineyards and integrating them in, we are cutting on fossil fuel use by all of the tractor passes that we're not doing anymore, etc. Sure, at first, it was like, Yay, winter weed control. This is awesome. But then you start scratching your head and peeling back the layers, you recognize that there's lots of other benefits of having animal integration. I mean, I sometimes they were just going back before my grandfather, right? They had animal integration, they actually had dual crops within their vineyards. And so it's like, we're going back to what we knew our ancestors. And we're applying it today, but in a modern way, with changes, of course, because we're not homesteaders.
Craig Macmillan 21:27
So we're talking, you said four passes. So what, what's the timing? What's the timing of the other grazing passes.
Kendra Altnow 21:34
So the first grazing pass for us starts post harvest. So three weeks after the vineyard has been harvested, we can move in the sheep. And really, this is to clean up weeds, vegetative debris, and the leaves. The second pass is the cover crop and weed management on our rotation. Typically, what ends up happening is why when they're done with the first pass, they're going to go start kind of all over again, right. And so now they're going to the cover crop and weed management. And that is what really this time of the year is. So they're out there mowing the cover crop, or they're really happy sheep, because they have tons of feed and getting the berms, we always focus on the berms. That's really important for us, especially if we're if we're not using any herbicides, it's really important for us to pay attention to the berms. The third pass is cover crop and weed management again, and this is kind of when we have the blind canopy management happening suckering chute hygiene and leaf removal. So it's in that spring where springtime, where there they can get in, they're not going to do a lot of damage, and they're still going to do good. And then the last pass is summer, so forth passes time or weed control. We are using these only and our trellis systems that are high wire. And so the Sheep can't really do that damage, because they can't reach up into the canopy and make a huge impact.
Craig Macmillan 22:57
And that was something that I mean, you you folks may have some experience with this. Maybe too early still, you know, the trend has been towards shorter and shorter, lower, lower trellising for a long time. And it's always been Oh, wine quality is better when the trellis is lower. And then we have these systems here where you will Yeah, but if I train a little bit higher, a little these other benefits that I can get is your winemaking staff getting feedback at this point. Are you seeing anything in terms of the cultural differences between the more traditional trellis and a higher wire trellis.
Kendra Altnow 23:26
I can give you a very specific example. We have single vineyard wines. And on our single vineyard wines, they keep all the lots separate. And we have an older cab vineyard. And then we have a high wire cab vineyard that is a little bit younger. The older one is California sprawl, it was planted in Gosh 1980s. It's our winemakers favorite vineyard. And along comes our River Ranch vineyard. And it's high wire and it is mechanically pruned and it is grazed and very different than what they 38 is. And I'll tell you what, they love that River Ranch cap and made it as a single vineyard wine. And so that to me goes to show that it can work both ways.
Craig Macmillan 24:09
It can work both ways. This is so fascinating. We could just go on forever. But is there one thing regarding kind of your experiences with all of this, all of this integrative stuff, is there one thing that you tell our listeners that you would recommend to them? As far as this goes this area?
Kendra Altnow 24:25
Oh man, I have so many recommendations. That could be like a whole thing on its own.
Craig Macmillan 24:32
You're gonna write a book?
Kendra Altnow 24:34
Probably. So my one recommendation is every little bit helps. And I truly believe that and that is something that you can do not only within your vineyard or your business, but you can do that at home. So my passion came from my family, because we have been farming sustainably in a really big way. However, my practices at home for example, I really got ignited because I saw a picture of all the plastic in the ocean and I had a heart attack. And I knew at that point, I couldn't use plastic bags anymore, for example. And that's a true story. I think that even though everyone around me might not have changed that practice, I know that that little bit does help. Right. So I think that is really important. I think the other important thing, when you're talking about farming, is the mindset shift. Farmers have been farming and doing things the same way for years and years and years. And it really takes forward thinking or openness to be able to change the way you're doing something. Because it's harder, it's harder, not only to train your team, that it's going to be done differently. But now you're using another tool, or introducing something different that hasn't been done before. So there's a learning curve. And when you have 100 million things going on, that one new thing feels like 100 billion pounds. And I think that it's really important that you have a cheerleader, which that's what I am, is the cheerleader to say, Hey, I think that this is really interesting. Do you think that we can implement not all of it at once, but do you think we can handle parts of it. And even that one small step is going to get us to where we want to go. And I would come in very different from, say, Erin and Phillip, my brother and cousin, they've been entrenched in farming for years, I kind of have this outsider's perspective where I don't necessarily know all of the logistical nightmare that might happen. Or I don't know all of the little idiosyncrasies that happen. All I see is this awesome opportunity. And then they bring me back to reality. And then we meet in the middle, and then we implement something. But I think if it was someone that didn't have that, like, I think we could do this, it wouldn't come to the forefront, because we're just so tasked on what we're already doing, and making sure that we're getting it done, that doesn't really give us time to do anything different. And I think that to me, has been the biggest learning. And maybe that the tidbit that I could give others is that be be that cheerleader or somehow find yourself to be that cheerleader for yourself, because it really will make a difference.
Craig Macmillan 27:41
I think that's great. I mean, every every little bit counts and being a cheerleader. Yeah. Sharing your excitement and your successes. I think it's huge.
Kendra Altnow 27:50
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's funny, Craig, between you and I, or if you want to put this out there I you know, I don't have a science background. I don't have a farming background. I don't have anything like that type of background. My background is sociology. And for for me, I just know that we can do better. And we have an opportunity to make positive change. And so I come in with they always call me rainbows and sunshine. Because that's that's like, really, for me, that's what it's about right is, is how can we make a difference, and I dried down I5. And I'm like holy smokes, we are the size of a gnat when it comes to farming in this world. And how to like I sit there and think, wow, I am I'm working hard to make change on my tiny little farm. Just think if we could get this farmer who has 30,000 acres to also make that change. And I think that's where it's at is it's got to start. I see. I mean, we're not small in the sense of tiny, tiny. We're midsize but gosh, there's some big farmers out there. And so sometimes it's like, Am I really making a difference? Like this is on 450 acres right now we could expand it. We're planning on scaling it up. Yeah. Okay, let's forget about those 30,000 acre farmers and that we're only a tiny bit to this very complex issue or complexity that's happening out there. Sure. Yes, let's do this. Because ultimately, it's going to be better for the next generation because they're going to be out there hopefully farming too.
Craig Macmillan 29:25
Yeah. And technology and innovation has its ways of being transmitted. Yes. And being adopted. More broadly. It takes time. And it also takes different systems. It takes different systems and that's one of the things that's intriguing is we've seen things that like you said that we tried things in the past and then we moved away for various reasons. And then you say hey, wait, there's benefits. Let's go back and try this again. Or people say Well, that isn't gonna work on my system because my system is so different. Within time goes by and there's proof of concept and then it well maybe this would work and we see changes all the time being out there as a leader Kendra, I think is part of the part of the solution and you're doing that.
Kendra Altnow 29:59
And I think honestly like what we can do for our farm, and this is what makes regenerative and we could go into that as a whole nother one podcast. But I look at sustainability and regenerative, which is so great about sustainability in my mind is it's not one size fits all, you're making the decisions for your farm based on what you can do in the best possible way. So someone might still fully believe in full tilling and that's all good and great. I'm not judging you, but they might be excellent in water conservation. And we have a lot of room to grow in that right so I like that's what I think is so awesome about farming is that there is no one single way of doing things and there is no right or wrong, but I always believe that there is room for improvement.
Craig Macmillan 30:52
Exactly. Where can people find out more about you?
Kendra Altnow 30:56
Well, Langetwins.com will have information about the family winery and the vineyards and laying twins on Instagram has tidbits about sustainability and if you really want to see all of my lovely day to day posts you can follow me at Kendra underscore Jean nine you get a little bit of sustainability and a lot of benefit family animals.
Craig Macmillan 31:22
That's fantastic. So our guest today has been Kendra Altnow she is sustainability manager at length twins family winery and vineyards and she's a fifth generation Lang. Thanks for being on the podcast has been a really fun conversation. Thanks Kendra.
Kendra Altnow 31:35
Gosh, I hope so you're welcome.
Nearly perfect transcription by https://otter.ai
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Have you ever been asked “What’s the difference between organic and sustainable?”
Have you seen farming operations that have both certifications?
Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.
In this Marketing Tip, you’ll learn how Certified Organic and sustainable compare, and get some ideas for engaging in a conversation about what your certification means.
Sustainable and Organic OverlapThere is a lot of overlap between the programs.
Both programs are committed to environmental preservation and regeneration through practices that address:
Biodiversity and Habitat Soil Health and Conservation Integrated Pest Management Water Quality Why Get Both?A lot of SIP Certified farmers are also Certified Organic. Even if they’re not certified by both, many of their farming practices overlap the programs.
Since many organic practices are sustainable and vice-versa, an operation can attain both certifications without many complications.
When a winegrower gets both Certified Organic and SIP Certified sustainable they demonstrate their commitment to environmental preservation and beyond. It also appeals to eco-conscious consumers who consider both certifications when making purchasing decisions.
How to Explain Sustainability The 3 P’s of SustainabilityWhat makes sustainability unique is that in addition to addressing farming practices, it also looks at the social and economic aspects of the operation.
A good way to remember this is the 3 P’s of Sustainability: People, Planet, and Prosperity.
You can tie several practices that your business engages in every day back to the 3 P’s:
People: Community and neighbor communication plans; Health and retirement benefits for employees; Competitive wages; Engaging in charitable gift giving and services. Planet: *Integrated Pest Management strategies like cultural, biological, and mechanical control; *Planting cover crops to protect water quality, control erosion, and provide habitat for beneficial insects; Using alternative sources of energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Prosperity: Creating and sticking to a budget; Analyzing trends in sales, purchasing, and resource usage; Staying up to date with the latest information and technology; Being aware of upcoming regulations.* Overlap with Organic.
Tell a StoryStories make facts more memorable. You can tell your customers that your brand practices social responsibility, but without sharing a specific example of what that looks like, you haven’t really told them much!
Next time someone asks you, “What’s the difference between organic and sustainable?” try to share a specific sustainable example from the People or Prosperity categories:
The Journey to Net-Zero3 P's Category: Prosperity
When the team at Center of Effort looked at their energy use, they discovered many areas where they could adjust to be more efficient.
Over time, these changes have compounded to have tremendous energy savings:
· Run their cooling system during off-peak hours.
· Replace a 15-year-old chiller with a newer, more efficient one that allows for selective tank cooling.
· Install a remote-operated quick-draw door in the production room to address insulation losses.
Since making all of these changes, their winery and hospitality areas are now 100% powered by the sun. In fact, they now run net-negative and send generated power back to the grid!
Did you see Center of Effort's Sustainable Story feature in Grape and Wine Magazine?
Tell Your Sustainable StoryWe are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Center of Effort's Sustainable Story feature in Grape and Wine Magazine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs:Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet
Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace
Vineyard Team – Become a Member
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Trying to manage the weeds in your vineyard? John Roncoroni, Weed Science Farm Advisor Emeritus with the University of California Cooperative Extension, Agriculture and Natural Resources covers control practices including biological, mechanical, cultural, chemical, and perhaps in the future, electrocution. Although weeds rarely compete with vines, they can host insect and vertebrate pests and get in the way of pruning crews, increasing labor costs. Listen in for John’s number one tip to better manage weeds in your vineyard.
Resources: 128: A New Focus on Weed Management (Rebroadcast) 26th IPM Seminar #1: Sustainable Weed Management for Vineyards and Vineyard Ponds Herbicide-resistant weeds challenge some signature cropping systems (Journal article) John Roncoroni MAINTAINING LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT: Herbicide-resistant weeds challenge some signature cropping systems Post-harvest Weed Control with Napa RCD and John Roncoroni (video) Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand – Western SARE (online courses) University of California Integrated Pest Management Integrated Weed Management Vineyard Floor Management: Steel in the Field (video) Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get MoreSubscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.
Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
TranscriptCraig Macmillan 0:00
Our guest today is John Roncoroni. He is Weed Science Farm advisor emeritus with UC Cooperative Extension, UC Agriculture Natural Resources, and we're going to talk about cultural control of weeds in vineyards today. Thanks for being on the podcast, John.
John Roncoroni 0:13
Now you bet, Creg, thank you for having me.
Craig Macmillan 0:16
We met with we'll start with kind of a basic foundation, what would you say is the definition of cultural weed control? Maybe How does it differ from other forms of weed management?
John Roncoroni 0:25
cultural weed control as part of an integrated pest management program, you know, we have basically cultural mechanical, sometimes they're put together sometimes they're split, we have biological, which is much more important, I think, in insects than it is in weeds. Now, we talk about biological control of weeds just a little bit to show how it fits in with all this too, is that you know, when you see that rust growing on a malba, or cheese weed plant in California, people say, Well, maybe that can control and you can see sometimes it really weakens the weeds. But the one reason that doesn't work here very well as it does in other places is the same reason why we can grow such great grapes and make great wines in California is because it doesn't rain in the summertime, if it rained in the summertime, like it does. In many other areas, that moisture level would stay up and we probably have a better chance of controlling Malba. We do use biological control of weeds in more landscape like range land type at large areas, but really on any kind of agricultural situation where we're looking at control in one spot, it really doesn't work that well. Even with star thistle we be talking about people wanting to put our application of of weevils for start thistle. Well, they're out there, and they're on a larger scale. So that's biological, much more important in entomology than in Weed Science, a chemical control, obviously, the use of chemicals, either conventional or organic chemicals or control. And then we have mechemical or cultural you know, cultural weed control to me is using the utilizing the plants that are there or sheep in areas of the San Joaquin Valley that used to use ducks or geese to pull out Johnson grass rhizomes, yeah, we're utilizing sheep quite a bit more. Now. Of course, mechanical we're looking at when you look at something like a mower, right, a mower is mechanical and cultural because when you mow, you're leaving some plants. So you're mechanically mowing them down. But culturally, you're leaving plant where something like French flower, maybe a blade or or you know, one of the the weed knives are all the different moving wheels, maybe more considered mechanical.
Craig Macmillan 2:30
Let's talk about mechanical a little bit. There was a book I don't know if it's still in print. And it was a SARE book. And it was called steel in the field. And the author's thesis or premise or idea was if you drive around farm country, no matter what the crop is, there's always a graveyard of old implements, just parked just parked there, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
John Roncoroni 2:51
Oh, god. Yeah.
Craig Macmillan 2:54
And his his point was, all of those things were technologies that someone had come up with. And then the individual farmer, probably then made modifications to those for their site for their crop for their soil, then the herbicide era came on. And that wisdom was lost, basically. And the argument was, hey, maybe we can bring that that idea back. And I mean, this goes back to like the 80s, early 90s. It's happening, it's happened. What are some of your favorite technologies in terms of cultivation, mechanical weed control, and some of the limitations, some of the plants that works well with other situations where it doesn't? What's your experience been?
John Roncoroni 3:39
I love talking about that, Creg, is it you know, talking about using mechanical control, and then and then going into chemicals, and now going back, it's almost like I talked to people about chemical control itself. When I started, Roundup wasn't glyphosate was a new thing. And we used it very judiciously. And I tell people, it's almost like, I learned to drive with a stick shift. I had to learn all these other things. Well, after that people learned to drive automatics. Right, because they knew one way to do it. Well, now that we're back to using stick shift, it's a whole lot easier for me, because I remember now people have to read or write. It's, it's the same thing with the mechanical. And when I started a Davis, you know, in the early 80s, we probably first came to work in vineyards in Napa, close to Davis, about 85, 86. And at that point, there was a lot less drip irrigation, a lot more dry farming, and a lot more French plowed. One of the reasons was we didn't have drip irrigation. I mean, we all want deep roots, but you're going to have more shallow roots with drip irrigation. And that was one of the reasons we moved to chemicals away from this big pasture. We always had a blade, right something like to drop a name a Clemens blade, which we all know what that is. It just cuts. You know, one of the problems with that is if the soil is too moist, then it's going to cut and go right back. And there's been a lot of innovation. My colleague Marcela Moretti, a But Oregon State's done a lot of testing with different kinds of machines. You know, one of the things about mechanical or even like mowers is that so few growers have mowers?
Craig Macmillan 5:11
When you say mower? You mean an in row mower?
John Roncoroni 5:13
Yeah, I mean inrow mower. All right. And I'm sorry, I when I talk about weeds in vineyards, because I tell people I've made my whole career out of about three
Craig Macmillan 5:21
Three to six inches.
John Roncoroni 5:24
I have about a foot and a half. Right? Sometimes I'm up to four feet, right. So that's where my whole career is right there. And that we talk about when we talked about what we're doing in the middle is with cover cropping. That's a whole other podcast and probably, I mean, I've done cover crop work over the years with some large IPM grants. I did quite Elmore and some other things. Zalem and Jim McDonald Yeah, no, I'm talking about just under vine we're thinking. Yeah.
Craig Macmillan 5:53
All right we're under vine.
John Roncoroni 5:54
Talk about being a very specific expert - four feet. At the most.
Craig Macmillan 6:01
I got it. I get it.
John Roncoroni 6:02
You know, very few growers are using mowers we have the big bladed mowers and also we'll have a straight trimmer. I was trying to do some string trimmer work, but just using a little weed eater. My old friend, Mike Anderson, who was the superintendent or basically ran the oppo research station said that I could use a string trimmer in one of their vineyards over his dead body. And I was like, you don't want any girdling in those vines. So I know, there's been a lot of apprehension. There are some other kinds of mowers very, very, very few growers have mowers, from what I've just done some surveys, I've done one because you have to go back over and over and over, right? And then everything has been weighed against, well, we can just spray mowers or one, you know, there's several different and I can't remember all the trade names. But you know, there's some of the basic technology. Yes, there's some that do some stirring of the soils, you know, with blades that are perpendicular to the soil, right. So they're, they're stirring it, there's what we used to call and when I worked in bean weed control, Lilla stuns, which are wheels that turn sort of at a 45 degree angle to stir the soil. There's, you know, power driven machines, there's just ones that ride along and there's blades, there's, you know, there are so many, and it really depends on the kind of soil you have, you know, our rocky is sometimes the place where we put grapes are not a place where you could put tomatoes, right in times, shallow soil, hillsides, kind of cultivation, can you can you do cultivation? Can you do light cultivation without getting you know, soil movement? Can you even do it? Is it allowed by, you know, some rules about land use in those areas. So, there's a lot of things that go into mechanical and again, from my perspective, the weeds you have.
Craig Macmillan 7:54
I like this point here, because I think put to put things into kind of a general sense to guide things. We have blades that basically cut just below the surface. So that's cutting off the top of the plant from the bottom of it for certain kinds of plants that will kill it or control it. Then we have things like a French plow, which is a burying it's a true plow. Yeah, it's flipping soil, picking it up and flip flopping it over. Then we have the sturer. So you mentioned that little stun the central lines and other example, sun flowers. That's what they do. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. My missing one.
John Roncoroni 8:26
mowers.
Craig Macmillan 8:27
mowers, okay. Yeah.
John Roncoroni 8:29
So that, you know, then there are a lot of variations on those combinations. It just amazing for me, and I follow a few of the manufacturers and get to see like on Twitter X, whatever, to see the videos that they're posting on LinkedIn. You know, it's just amazing to me what they're doing and the innovation that's going into those. One of the things that my again my colleague Marcel HomeReady, up at Dr. Moretti up at Oregon State talks about making sure your tractor is big enough for some of these, you know, hydraulic using, right, but one of the things we always used to talk about was, you know, the use of gas well, I know there's a lot more use and we're moving more into electric tractors, and those sorts of things. But when it comes to mechanical, really doing a good job of mechanical weed control with those some of those, you're going to have to have electric or gas you're going to have to have a big tractor. They're not going to be like a you know, a little ATV with a nifty 50 sprayer spraying herbicides right you're gonna need some hefty equipment in a lot of them not always.
Craig Macmillan 9:33
Let's start with weed knife. That's a very popular technology you see it oh yeah all over the place. What are the kinds of weeds that that's good for controlling and under what conditions it doesn't work well and under what kind of conditions does it not work well?
John Roncoroni 9:47
And I don't know the areas and passive as well as I know Napa I was brought a while but I would tell the growers you know, using a weed knife in Carneros you have about four days from when the soil goes from being too wet to being too dry. I have heavy clay soils, it holds moisture and it just. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure there are areas like that, you know, and it can't, you can successfully cultivate down there, but it's tough, you need the timing, it's so important. If you're going to wet that soil just goes right back with that blade, right you cut through and the roots are able to tell back in, you know, if it's too dry, it's really going to be a rough ride. Because you're not going to go too deep, it's going to work well on some smaller annual weeds, which, you know, a lot of our weeds are, you know, some of the grasses with their net have a root ball sometimes are harder than just a small annual broadleaf plant, you know, you're going to have some problems, especially with something like malware, cheese weed that that grow very large. And depending on when you doing it something like cheese weed is and rye grass and Fillory, while I mentioned them are the first weeds to germinate in the fall. So by the time you get in a little bit later, they may be too big to really do a very good job on.
Craig Macmillan 10:59
Are their soils where we die for it's particularly well?
John Roncoroni 11:03
I would say you know, in less than heavy clay soil and not complete sand, a sandy loam soil, I think that holds some moisture, you know, it was able to get in anything, I think it's not a complete stand or a real heavy clay, they do a nice job, but the weeds can't be too big. And again, it's that timing and you know, with vineyards, it seems to think everything happens at once right time when you may be in having to do some sort of insect spray or mold spray, the same time you should be out there cultivating so just and it takes a while to do a good cultivation job.
Craig Macmillan 11:35
The speed that you're rolling is really important. You want to be slower ride faster.
John Roncoroni 11:40
Well, and Dr. Moretti has done this work there is an optimum speed. If you go too slow, then you really don't do a good job of cutting. If you go too fast, you miss some. And maybe this is where some of the electric AI technology can help. You don't want to cut the vines. Right, so you have this pull away, that keeps the weeds, the weeds will go right next to the vines, which you know can be a problem. We'll be talking about other situations with little vertebrate pets.
Craig Macmillan 12:06
I'm kind of getting astray here a little bit, but I No, no, but I think this is an important question. So choosing what I do and how I do it, we go back to the other technologies, Why care about weeds? Right? Why care about you know, I had I had a vineyard once that had been an oak field. And it was direct planted own rooted sprinkler system that was planted in 1976 I got the vineyard 1993 out of heavy clay soil, and I would irrigate with sprinklers twice a summer, and that oak grass would grow up into the fruit zone up into the canopy. But it would dry out. And it completely choked out everything else I had, I had no other real issues. And we would mow the middles. And I remember people going oh my god, you got all this issue, you need decent herbicide, you think grass out of the middle because the grass is gonna. And like these vines were super vigorous. They were tons of crop. I mean, I had to crop thinner. And so I started asking myself, well, how much competition? Is this really doing? Are there particular weeds that we should see? And you're like, wow, that's gonna be a competitor for water, nutrients and others where we go, No, I don't really want it there. But I'm probably not going to dig my vines.
John Roncoroni 13:13
So Craig, this is the eternal question when it comes to this. And it really depends on where you grow your grapes, right? If your goal is to get 25 tons of grapes, if you're somewhere near Bakersfield won't offend anybody, but they're looking more for tonnage. Right. And I've gotten a lot of flack for using our premium grape situations, we're not always looking for maximum tonnage. Right. And I don't know that the problem with weeds and if you hear me speak about weeds, I rarely have ever talked about direct competition between weeds and grape vines. Now, there are some exceptions, you know, when we were looking at that balance between irrigation and getting the deficit, irrigation, right, getting those maximum flavors into those grapes. So we may be right and a little low with our water in August or September, near the end. And we see that especially, I don't know so much about about I know, part of the areas where we are with the vineyard team there that they gave, we can get these howling north winds, right? Right. And you can in a very short time, you can turn some very great, expensive grapes into really great expensive raisins, right, getting that water in at that time of year. So having any kind of like flu Velen, which is really just covers the whole area of Napa and Sonoma. I know it's moving around some other areas. But you know, people say well, how much water does it use? And my old friend Rhonda Smith used always asked me well, how much water is it used? I go, we don't have crop coefficients for all the crops. It's hard to know which you know which weeds grow, how much water they use. And then the other thing too, is that if we're looking for consistency in a vineyard, and only half the vineyard is covered with that weeds where we're gonna put two too much water in one area and not enough in the other. Isn't that different? So it's competition for that sort of thing. And of course, young vines, right when we have young vines with big weeds and that that oak grass that you had, if you had young vines, you probably wouldn't have to be worried about being a grape grower very long, right?
Craig Macmillan 15:17
You have seen that young, really healthy barley cover crop?
John Roncoroni 15:21
Oh, yeah, it's it's tough for first three years. But like talking about establishments, it's really important, no matter what you do to keep the grapes sort of weed, not weed free, but really keeping the competition down. And then late in the summertime, but the rest of the time. It's other things that I've talked about these, it's one of those things where you ask people, you know, raise their hand if they have this problem. It's 50%. Yes. 50%. No. And that's voles. And I tell people, I thought that when I was in Napa, I think 30% of the growers do weed control strictly for vole protection. Because those nasty little marmots can they can girdle a grape. And I know one vineyard and Carneros they couldn't get in and do some work. Someone told me that one year they lost one in five vines. Wow. And they're not coming back. Right? That's, that's bad. Yeah. So you know, it can be a problem. We found this when we were working with mow and blow technology years ago, looking at cutting cover crop and throwing it on the vine. The Weed control was fantastic. But in my whole time, working in vines from 1985. And, you know, until today, I've never been in a vineyard, except in this trial, where I saw voles running between the rose in the middle of the day. Right, they were just happy there was so many they kind of had to get out just to get a breath of fresh air, they use those tunnels, you know, just runway so that they were protected from that, you know, the birds of prey, which you know, can help. And I people always ask about that. But again, we have that pest and prey cycle that the voles may come in and do a lot of damage, before they get a chance to be taken. And then it depends on what your neighbors doing and how effected the birds are. This is a question that I our new vertebrate pest person, Brianna Martineco in Napa who she took my office, not my place, right. So we we about a weed scientist. And one of the questions I've asked is, you know, how much of an area around the vines? Do we have to keep clean, so that the birds have a chance and the voles stay scared? You know, that's kind of question, you know, especially as an emeritus, you can ask these questions. And, you know, let the new people answer them. You know, the other thing and I've talked about this is in a rare occasion, you know, one of the things that we do you see people, anytime I'm out in the field later in the season, I talked to a grape grower, while we're out there, they're pulling those leaves off so they can get more air movement. Well, if you get some tall weeds like that, you know, the oak grass that was growing, you know, are you going to have restricted air movement? Are you going to have higher moisture content? Is that going to increase your pathogen pressure it can, doesn't always happen. The other thing too is having, you know, high grass can cause in frost prone areas, you know, if you're not getting that radiation from clean soil, and that's in the middle, not so much under the vines, you know, we can have that and sometimes on young vines near the vine itself, getting that reradiation, but again, you know, as I like to tell people, you're not going to have all these situations, and it's not going to be every year, you know, some years you're doing things you may not need to have weed control that year, but you don't know until after that year, you know, and now and I'm not I'm not a pathologist, I'm not an enthramologist, I'm not a viticulturalist I'm a weed scientist. But you know, there's been some indications that some weeds that are growing and some of the we plant and some of that we don't are having a, you know, an increase in pathogen plant pathogens that are moved by certain insects. tikka pirate likes legumes Well, you know, especially in some of our low nitrogen situations, plants that produce their own nitrogen, like Bird Clover really tend to like that situation because they have a, they have a built in advantage by making their own nitrogen. So we can in some vineyards, we can see a high population of bird clover, which may or may not cause an increase in tikka, which could cause an increase in red blotch. So, you know, when you think of weeds just specifically for competition, like when I talked to master gardeners, I say, you know, if you're growing carrot, you know why you do weed control because you want a carrot. But when it comes to a mature, you know, a 10 year old vineyard, really hard to see that weeds are going to compete on an everyday basis like they would with an annual crop, but there are other reasons why we do it. Ease of harvest, and I talked about, you know, in talking with some pruning crews, right, you know, if you have weeds growing in when you're pruning, and I tell people, if you have an area that takes an hour for let's clean, takes a pruning crew an hour to prune, if there's a bunch of weeds that they have to move around and get around, and it takes them an hour and a half. So your labor costs have gone up 50% Yeah, these are the kinds of things that as a weed scientist, I think about I tell people I really want to know two things. And when we're when we're taping this, it's the right time of year. I only know weeds in college. Basketball. So these are the only things I really know. So, you know, and I've had other I've had, you know, some people sit down and say I should have known that you have to worry about, you know, disease pressure, and getting labor contractors. And I just think about weeds.
Craig Macmillan 20:16
And let's go back to another technology that we touched on snow plows, French plow, that's a very old technology. And, you know, we just mentioned that what a plow does is it turns the soil over, so it buries the weed plants, especially when you get into the right time, what conditions are appropriate for using a French plow? What conditions maybe it's not gonna work so great.
John Roncoroni 20:41
French plow, I mean, you know, the USDA says that, you know, doing something like that the soil is never good, and you're going to mess up the microbes, especially if you're working on that lower area. But as far as just from a weed perspective, if you're dry farming, a French blot works fantastic, right? You're not looking for, in fact, you're trying to discourage as many roots at the top as you can. So doing using a French plow when you're dry farming, it's fantastic. We don't have you know, a lot of dry farms where we are looking at trying to have more consistent harvest and looking at consistent income, where you know, dry farming were at, at the will of the of the weather, that's another talk for another day with people who are doing marketing and know viticulture are better than I do. But see, I've seen more French plows as people have gone back to mechanical in the last few years, and I have in the past think there's a lot more viable options, when you're actually looking at doing some drip irrigation, then they're just by number a lot more viable options. Just by new having new machines coming out then the French plow but I was a dry farmer, my weed control would be French plow under the vines and disk in the middle because everything's you know, maybe having a little cover crop to get more penetration. But, you know, the farther north I lived, the more water penetration I would have. So I'd get more rain.
Craig Macmillan 22:00
So let's talk about drip irrigated vineyards. And you mentioned there's a suite of technologies, some are new, some are old, what are some of those technologies that have worked well in a drip irrigated vineyard?
John Roncoroni 22:12
When I got to Napa in 2007, sustainable at that point meant post emergent only and for those kind of funny now is roundup on the right no preemergent no cultivation and we were drip irrigating, we were keeping those roots at the top so we can drip irrigate. So that's where a lot of that came from. Now, you know, using something like a blade using a little Dustin with those moving things, anything that's sort of like you don't want routine, right? Again, I don't I'm not a vitaculturalist. But roots at the very top are not great, right, you're not probably irrigating correctly, if you're getting a lot of roots at the top, but you don't want to get too deep, where you're getting some of those main roots with cultivation. You know, that's one of the reasons that we do have drip irrigation. At that level. You know, I've talked to people who weren't using cultivation and ask them why their drip irrigation lines weren't closer to the soil so they're gonna have less evaporation. One of the things that we get into with grape growing or anything is that you do things because you've always done them that way, we are cultivating that we do need to keep that drip irrigation at at a higher at a high level. But I think any of those anything that's not just completely disrupting the soil. One of the things that I would like to see with with mechanical like a blade is using some electric eye, AI technologies to get closer to the vines. But right now we have to really, you know, it's all mechanical, right? If we can have these machines down in Salinas, that are taking weeds out from in between lettuce, we don't have to be nearly that technological, to get weeds right around the vine without hurting them. And we have a little bit more leeway with the vine than we do with lettuce. Even though you lose a lettuce plant here or there. You're okay. You don't want to lose too many vines. You know, I think that that's where one of the reasons that we could use more technology. One of the things again, my doctor Moretti up at Oregon State and also lenses masky. Back in Cornell, who they were both at Davis at the same time, Lynn as a postdoc, and, and Marcelo as a as a graduate student, they're working with electrocution of weeds, I think it's what they call it. And it's not just burning them off, like you would use electric light with a flamer. It actually sends electricity down into the roots. So it's, he's working on it mostly in blueberries. But the technology I just I saw his presentation at the Western society Weed Science meeting just a couple of weeks ago in Denver. It's an interesting technology. If you're like having a transformer on the back of your tractor. It's pretty cool.
Craig Macmillan 24:35
There's a there's a lot of potential here in the future for improving what we're doing now.
John Roncoroni 24:40
Oh, yeah. And I don't know how like electric is going to fit into this. But and this is the problem. We ran into herbicides. Anytime you use one technology over and over and over and over and over, you're going to choose for weeds. If you constantly mow under the vines or anywhere, right without some soil disturbance or application of herbicide, something Like Melva, low growing weeds, they'll adapt, right nature will find a way. So the biggest thing we have to do is whatever we do just don't do it all the time. That it's the right message. One of the things that I think we want to talk about was under vine cover crop. It is something for me, I've been trying to push under vine cover cropping for so long. And the problem is, is that because the seeds are expensive, I tell people that one of the one of the plants that I pushed, just because I liked the way it worked, and what I've seen is Zorro fescue. That's a brand name, it's it's rat tail fescue, you see it growing as a weed a lot of places, one of the things I like about it is that about the time we start irrigating, it's dead, it's the nest, and you can discover you can turn it over, because once it's gone to seed, you can mow it all those things. It's a it's a self receding cover crop problem is that because the seeds are fairly expensive, we planted at about eight to 10 pounds per acre and sometimes mixed with Blendo broam, which grows a little higher and stays a little greener longer than I like, because it can be some competition for water. But that's oftentimes keeps it down. But the problem is, is that first of all, how do we get it on the vines, I find people putting it out by hand, because we haven't adapted for the cedar under the vine. Second of all, it starts to reseed itself at a fairly high rate, sometimes 50 or 100 pounds the next year and the third year. So I tell people, if you can't give me three years to make it look good, then let's not start because oftentimes, you know, we started and it looks like it's not doing a very good job the first year, and it doesn't look very good. And some people who don't ask people who make decisions about vineyards who maybe work other places, then the vineyard don't like the way it looks. Right? Right, and we move to something else and they end up spraying it out or cultivating it out.
Craig Macmillan 26:55
Then this is an example of modifying the environment to address this problem and modifications to the environment take time.
Speaker 1 27:03
And this is what intrigues me about regenerative agriculture. I know this is a whole nother subject for someone who probably but as a we, as a plant biologist, and ecologist, you know, actually choosing plants that we want to be there without causing problems. Again, the voles, the legumes with maybe some other virus problems can be, but I think choosing these plants is going to be so important. But you know, it's interesting, I had someone call me and they wanted to start using regenerative agriculture. And I told them, you know, your first three years are going to be really hard I go, you have to choose the right plants, you're going to probably maybe even have some reduced yields. And they said, Well, why John, because my friend has been doing it 25 years, and he's doing great, because his soil knows what to do. So anytime we make that transition and transitioning to this under vine cover cropping. And there has been places in the past where we've tried to use a listen. But listen, because of insects and some other things. The problem with alyssum is after about three or four years, it gets to be about four feet thick. It's one of these things, it's good for a while, but after it kind of takes over, it can cause some holding in moisture and doing some other things. I mean, some people again, depending on how fertile your soil is, you know, some places it may not be a problem, but we have to look at it on a vineyard by vineyard scale. And that's been the thing about herbicides is you don't have to think about the basically the vineyard by vineyard,
Craig Macmillan 28:24
We're basically at a time but don't ask your boys. Is there one particular thing that you would say to grape growers on this topic of let's just say mechanical?
John Roncoroni 28:34
On the whole subject of weeds, Craig, I just want to say that they need to know their weeds better. Right? I know it sounds like I always have a chip on my shoulder. And now that we have to right thing about glyphosate is they really didn't have to think about didn't have to think about their weeds. So there's there's two things I want to know we're almost out of time, but we are out of time. But there's two things I want to say about this real quickly. And I know it's mechanical, but those people who are still using chemicals, they could do a better job. Right new nozzle shielding timing, think more about put as much time and effort into thinking about the weeds as you do about insects and pathogens. Know your plants. Don't just say I'm going to do this. It doesn't matter what the weeds are, know your weeds, know their biology. Know the timing, no matter what kind of control you're doing. And then once you do, get the best tool, like if you are still spraying in certain situations in certain vineyards, use new drip reducing nozzles, use shielded sprayers when you do mechanical, you know, don't just get that old thing that like you said, that's been sitting out in the back, right? Look at the kind of machine that you want to use what we do have, I think when it comes to weed control, the whole industry could do a much better job. Okay, one of the things that I put a slide up one time and I said look, I understand pathogens first and then insects, and then weeds and someone got up and corrected me and they said John, that's wrong. I said Oh really? They go? Yeah, it's pathogens, insects, fertilizers and weeds. Right so weeds and when it comes to weeds being third weeds are not just third weeds or a distant third. They only think for me about all the cons Diversity that's happened is that people have to think about weeds again, they have to go back to knowing what we knew before that before they all started using chemicals.
Craig Macmillan 30:07
So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Our guest today has been John Ron crony. He is Weed Science firm advisor emeritus with UC Cooperative Extension, UC Agriculture Natural Resources. I followed you from afar for a long time. And I'm very excited to get you on the podcast. This has been a great conversation. Yeah, there's so much more to talk about, and I'm sure that we will, we will reconvene at some point.
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In the 1880s, Pierce’s disease caused a devastating, total collapse of the Southern California grapevine industry. Today, growers have hope for the future thanks to new varieties. Adam Tolmach, owner of Ojai Vineyard, planted four of these new varieties as a field trial on a plot of land where Pierce's disease wiped out his grapes in 1995.
Pierce’s disease is a bacterium spread by insects, typically a sharpshooter. One bite and the vine dies within two to three years. To develop resistant varieties, Andy Walker of the University of California at Davis crossed the European grape Vitis vinifera with Vitis arizonica. 20 years later, commercial growers have access to three red and two white varieties.
Listen in to learn how Tolmach’s experiment is a success both in the vineyard and with customers. Plus get tasting notes for the new varieties.
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TranscriptCraig Macmillan 0:00
Our guest today is Adam Tolmach owner and winemaker of Ojai vineyard. Thanks for being on the podcast, Adam.
Adam Tolmach 0:06
It's my pleasure, Creg. Great to be here.
Craig Macmillan 0:09
I want to give a little background. Before we get into our main topic. We're gonna be talking about Pierce disease resistant grape vines today, but I think your location has a lot to do with how this came about. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that you are a pioneer and innovator and quite frankly, legend in the history of the Central Coast. And one of the pioneering things that you did was you planted a vineyard in Ojai, California, why Ojai? And what is the what's the environment, like, you know, hi.
Adam Tolmach 0:33
Ojai because in 1933, my grandfather bought a piece of property in Ojai while I grew up in Oxnard, we, you know, on weekends, we'd come up here and chase lizards and snakes and stuff like that. And so I'm pretty familiar with the area and then I lived in Ohio for a few years after I finished studying at UC Davis getting a basically a viticulture degree. I came down here and and ran a truck farming operation, we grew vegetables and sold sold them in a roadside stand. And after doing that for two years, I made $4,500 After two years of worth worth of work. So I had said well maybe I should try to get a job in my my field. So my second job in the field was was working at at Zaca Mesa, 79 and 80. And then so as far as the place to plant grapes, you know, that's the reason we're in Ojai because we the family owns property.
Craig Macmillan 1:30
What is the environment like in Ojai? Because I think it's a little bit different than many grape growing regions.
Adam Tolmach 1:34
Yeah, you know, it's actually not that different than I would say the east side of the Santa Ynez Valley like the happy Canyon area or you know, or Paso Robles. Really as far as climatic goes. thing that's a little bit different about Ojai is the wintertime lows aren't as low as they are up in the Santa Ynez Valley or up in Paso. And that's that's a big deal, especially when it comes to Pierce's disease.
Craig Macmillan 2:01
That's where we're gonna go next. When you planted, were there things that you were expecting? And then were there things that came out that were unexpected? And then thinking maybe Pierce's disease is one of those?
Adam Tolmach 2:11
Well, yeah, certainly was, you know, as I've started, you know, pretty ignorant. As young people tend to be, I knew that there was a history of winemaking and grape growing in Ojai, which pretty much died off with prohibition. Actually, after Prohibition, there was a good sized Zinfandel vineyard that ended up being buried in the bottom of Lake Casitas. That sort of what I knew a little bit about grapes. And I didn't really realize it. Pierce's disease also worked into all that that, you know, you plant a vineyard around here, and it's pretty difficult to keep them alive for the long term.
Craig Macmillan 2:48
Just cover the bases. What is Pearson's disease?
Adam Tolmach 2:51
It was originally discovered in Anaheim, California, you know, back in the I believe it's 1880s or so there were 10s of 1000s of acres of grapes in that area 10 or 20 or 30 years out. In fact, it was a much bigger growing area than, than say Napa, up north was for for grapes. And those vines all died. And at the time, it was called Anaheim's disease. Yeah. And so later on, Mr. Pierce, I think, discovered a little bit about the disease. And what we know today is that it's a bacterium that is spread by an insect, typically from a sharpshooter. But there are other insects that also spread this disease. In our case, we're not too far from a river habitat, a riparian habitat, these bugs like lush, green growing areas, and they live in the river bottom, all they have to do is get blown by the wind up to our place. If the insect is carrying this bacterium, it just takes one bite. And then within two or three years, the vine dies because basically the bacteria clog up the water conductive tissues.
Craig Macmillan 3:59
Exactly. When you were first addressing this problem. What kinds of management things did you do to try to manage this?
Adam Tolmach 4:06
Well, we didn't back then. And as we are now we're reasonably committed organic growers. So you know, we don't use herbicides, we don't use insecticides. And you know, I learned as the vineyard died, basically what was going on? So we didn't really do anything, preventative wise. And so the vineyard just slowly declined, right, which is pretty sad thing to see that really considering that I planted you know, every one of the vines in the beginning back in 1981.
Craig Macmillan 4:37
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Adam Tolmach 4:39
And then so we went on, after that, and for years, you know, so the vineyard grew from planted in 81. And then in 1995, after the harvest, we pulled the vineyard because it's so much of it was gone from the disease and then and then there are many years where we you know, didn't grow any grapes on our property. We purchase grapes from mostly, you know, I'm from the Ohio area a little bit, but also mostly from the Northern Santa Barbara County. That area from Santa Maria to Lompoc is really where ideal grapes grow. But I'd always have a hankering to have, you know, to continue to have a vineyard here because we do have the winery right on site here. Close friends and family knew Andy Walker, who was the one who was developing these grapes that were at UC Davis that were resistant to Pierce's disease. You know, I kept kind of pushing the friends to see you if I could get some of these cuttings or plants. And then finally, really just a year or two before they were actually officially released to the public for sale. I was able to get enough to plant a very small vineyard here which is just 1.2 acres, and it's planted to four different varietals. All four of them were developed by by Dr. Walker that He basically took Vitus vinifera the European grape variety and crossed it with Vitis Arizonica in Arizona is a native of the southwest and there are some plant breeding advantages to using Arizonica, it carries the resistance, they can somehow see that really well in my days of knowing how all this stuff works is a little bit past but but there were there are certain advantages that Arizonica provided a one of which was it's a pretty neutral tasting grape. And then also the the second thing was, they were able to pick out right away if they did a cross whether they can tell whether it had the resistance or not. So they did worked on that he's worked on it for about 25 years. And in the end, he had these varietals that were that are 97% vinifera. And only 3% of the American stock, which is pretty important for the flavor profile. They taste very much like the different wines, not like you know, the native wines.
Craig Macmillan 6:53
And then you've expanded that vineyard, I'm assuming you had your trial vineyard and expanded it.
Adam Tolmach 6:57
No, no, no, it's all it's all we have is this 1.2 acres. Yeah. And so you know, we mostly make conventional grapes. So you know, we make Pinot Noir Syrah Chardonnay Sauvignon Blanc and a few other things. And we get some of those grapes from the Ojai area and in spots where they're when they're where there's less Pierce's Disease pressures. And then also up in Northern Santa Barbara County, as I said before, and so yeah, we're just we're still working with, with what we have, we found that the vines are very productive. And we are currently making really just the right amount that we need to provide our direct customers with the wines. It's been a fabulous experiment and great fun, because basically knew, but nobody knew how to grow these grapes. And each grape variety grows a little differently. And so then that was that was a real challenge there. Because I had grown grapes in the same spot before I knew some of the problems and challenges and they had a real strong sense of how I wanted to grow them a second time around. And so that was super helpful. But it's still they still were unknowns for for us, you know, the bigger the crop level, all that stuff, the taste. And then so that was great fun. And then in winemaking wise, Andy Walker had done a number of public tastings of these experimental varieties, I think I went to four of them, where they're mostly were three gallon lots that were fermented by the university. And so it's a little hard to tell from that, but they just seem like there was some potential there. Interestingly, Camus vineyard early on, got some of the vines have this one variety paseante noir. And so they made a really almost commercial size lot of that one, and I was able to taste that before I planted it. And while their winemaking style is a little different than mine, there was it was clear that there was like lovely potential in those grapes. So that was encouraging. But still, we knew nothing, we had no idea. It's still a work in progress it. You know, after five years of producing wine, there's a lot more to learn about how to best make these works. But so anyway, we planted four varietals one is passeante noir, which I think is sort of the best of the ones that I've I've tried. We also had a red, that is really it was never released to the public. So it's a you know, it's our own little thing. We have a small amount of that we call it Walker red. And then we have two whites caminante blanc and ambulo blanc and they're both to go back. Well to go on, I guess is the ambulo blanc and the caminante blanc are distinctively different. They're a bit on the Sofia and blanc side of life, I suppose. But not exactly. And then going back to the passeante noir that's I feel like it sort of tastes like a cross between between syray and maybe cab franc And then possibly some mouved you know, it's a little hard to, to read exactly what's there, but they're unique and different. And you know, in a world from 30 years ago, people wouldn't have known what to do with them. But these days, there's a lot of interest in unique grape varieties, you know, all over Europe, people are, are reviving ancient varietals that nobody's ever heard of, and they all have unique flavors and unique characters. Here are some newly bred ones that that are available now.
Craig Macmillan 10:27
What is the response from consumers have been like?
Adam Tolmach 10:29
Well, that's, that's been super encouraging. Because so you know, we're selling almost exclusively directly to our, our consumers, we have a tasting room, and we have, we do mailorder as well. And but I mean, it's been very positive, we've been able to sell out the wines, people seem to really enjoy them. So it that's been a thrill to, you know, have that consumer acceptance, I think it would be much more difficult if it was, you know, in a grocery store, for instance, but because nobody would know what the name meant. When we're able to hand sell it, it has not been difficult to sell. So that's, that's been super fun. Now, Dr. Walker, also, he had the idea that these varieties, you could grow them and use them as blending material, you know, like if you're making Cabernet Sauvignon in the Napa Valley. It's well known that in the Napa Valley near the Napa River, there's huge Pierce's disease problems. And so is one of his ideas is well you could you know, plant strips of of these varietals be able to have at use the ground productively and then blend them with Cabernet Sauvignon as long as you're over 75% You could call it Cabernet. But what's amazing to me is that the this Passeante Noir is really it's it's it works pretty well as a standalone varietal.
Craig Macmillan 11:41
Were you tempted to to blend we attempted to use these as blenders? Or were you committed to single varietal all along?
Adam Tolmach 11:48
I was much more interested in what they had to say. Yeah, so there wasn't very much interest in my part of of using them to stretch of wine or whatever to you know, to add to something else. It was an option I you know, if they weren't as good as they are, I would definitely could put them into you know, inexpensive bland we make it Ojai read or Ojai white. And so that was definitely an option. But I'm kind of thrilled that they you know, they're interesting enough, they can stand alone.
Craig Macmillan 12:13
Do you think that you'll expand your planting?
Adam Tolmach 12:15
Possibly right now, No, I've got too many things going on. And in this little vineyard year, being small as I do, I do all the pruning, and do some of the work out there. And so it's kind of a family affair. I'm not sure if I want to overwhelm my family with more. For our needs, we don't need too much more. As as things stand. We're we're pretty small size operation. And this is pretty much, well takes care of it. Interestingly, in the same vein, I own a small vineyard, up in the Lompoc area in Santa Rita Hills called Vaciega that's planted to Pinot Noir. And there's one area of the vineyard is kind of up on a little bit of up on a, a mesa or something in between, you know, above quite a bit above the river. The Santa Ynez river. But there's one small section of the property. That's right, basically, in the river bottom, it had been planted to Chardonnay and died of pierces within eight years of its planting. So it was pretty, pretty devastated. And so we actually planted the passeante noir down there and got our first crop this year into that world last year in 2013. And we're pretty excited by that. So really different climate to grow in. So you know, cool climate versus pretty warm climate. It seems pretty, pretty fascinating right now, I'm pretty excited by that. So we do you know, we do have more just not here in Ojai.
Craig Macmillan 13:43
Would you commit like, what are you going to cultural notes on each variety? And then also what are your like winemaking notes on each variety because this podcast is growers and winemakers and we can get a little bit more technical if you like.
Adam Tolmach 13:54
Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Andy Walker released five different varietals, three red, and two whites. I have the two whites and I have only one of the Reds that are commercially released. And that one is paseante noir and paseante Noir is a very vigorous grower. We're on pretty rich soil, I mean, richer than you need for grapes, mostly eluvial stuff. You go down three and a half, four feet, and it's, you know, it's river rocks, and then there are shaley areas, but it's rather richer than you need. We haven't planted on one 114 rootstock which is quite deinvigorating. But in our site, it's still exhibits lots of vigor. And so the paseoante noir grows like crazy. We have planted pretty close together. So our rows are five and a half feet apart, rather than, you know, six or eight or 10. And I did that specifically, for climatic reasons, you know, you get these rows a little bit closer together. You get a fairly tall vertical trellis. And what you end up with is, is a little more shading. And we have this really narrow canopy, the grapes all get some direct sun, but just not for very long, a little bit in the morning a little bit in the afternoon, the rest of the time, they're shaded, also the ground is shaded a lot, because they are so close together. And I think that keeps the temperature down. And I think that's really better for quality. And that's, you know, my personal view on it. And, and that's worked really well we've never, we've never had a situation yet where, you know, it's gotten so hot that the grapes have rasined up, you know, just like overnight, it's not just not happened. So yeah, so here we have the paseante noir it's you know, it's a real vigorous grower, I have a quote on pruned it's incredibly productive. We've been dropping, you know, 50% or more of the grapes as a as a green drop every year and I think I need to double down and drop even more as it turns out, they really want to produce in part of its, you know, part of it is our rich soil, but I think they're also bred to be quite productive. So that's, that's really nice. You know, better than too little, which is, you know, kind of Pinot Noir is problem, generally speaking, the walker red is this one that nobody really knows about, but it's, it's a little more like if the paseante is is a cross between, in my mind a cross between Syrah and cab franc and the walker read is a little more Zin and Grenache kind of character grows a little more upright and with less vigor, a lot more like how Grenache grows. And then the two whites the caminante blanc produces these little tiny clusters that somehow end up always produced, you know, the yields are still high, even with the small berries, small clusters, they give a little bit of a blush to them almost, they're not completely green when they're fully ripe. And they have a really distinctive spicy character, they're quite interesting. And that one is the weakest growing, there's no bigger problem there, it grows along fine with it, it fills up the canopy, but just barely every year, because of the size of the clusters, you just don't expect there to be much crop, but it always turns out to be very generous. And then the other varietals is called ambulo blanc. And it's a little, maybe has a bit of Sauvignon Blanc, spiciness to it. But it also is it's got a much more sort of Chardonnay ish, like, produces large clusters. And it also grows vigorously. So it requires a lot of the trellising is really, really important. And so we spend a lot of time in the ambulo blanc and paseante noir, you know, weaving weaving the canes up, right.
Craig Macmillan 14:06
Based on your experience, would you say, Hey, this is a great idea. If you live in a Pierce's disease area, you should definitely try this out.
Adam Tolmach 17:55
Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Because I mean, if the if Pierce's Disease is pretty strong, you're you know, you're left with, you know, having to use a lot of insecticides, and they're very bee unfriendly insecticides. And so, you know, we're able to grow here completely organically. That's worked out really well. So that's, that's, there's a great advantage there. I noticed in your questions at the you had to get sent me a list of questions. And one of them is like, what else should they be working on at the university? And definitely, my opinion is, you know, the biggest disease problem of grapevines in California is called powdery mildew. Everybody knows about it, why there aren't more powdery mildew resistant vines out out here yet is, is is interesting, you and every other trade, people that are kind of, you know, they, they praise, the new things that are coming along, the progress has been made in the wine business, everybody wants to just the old thing, just the way it's always been, that's a little bit of a stumbling block in a world where the climate is changing. So that's what that's why I really recommend that's what should be worked on is is resistance to powdery mildew, because it's not going to get better with climate warming. And also, it's it's the reason that we drive through our vineyards, you know, five or 10 times in a season just for powdery mildew control, it would be an incredibly great environmental thing if we could grow great tasting grapes and make great wine out of powdery mildew resistant varietals.
Craig Macmillan 19:27
And I think people are starting to move that direction.
Adam Tolmach 19:30
Oh, yeah.
Craig Macmillan 19:31
But you're right, bring it on. You know, let's, let's try where can people find out more about you?
Adam Tolmach 19:36
You can go to our website, you know, Ohiovineyard.com. And there's, there's lots there's tons of information about about us and me and what we're doing and we have, there's a whole article on on the site about the Pierce's resistant vines that we're growing.
Craig Macmillan 19:52
Very cool. Well, um, so our guest today has been Adam Tolmach owner, winemaker. Oh, hi, vineyard. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. This is great. Right
Adam Tolmach 20:00
Yeah my pleasure I've been listening to your show now for quite some time I really enjoy it
Craig Macmillan 20:04
oh good fantastic thank you and for all of our listeners out there thank you for listening to sustainable winegrowing with vineyard team
Nearly perfect transcription by https://otter.ai
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Employees who are regularly trained and educated report higher levels of motivation, performance, company loyalty, and more.
Yet, almost 52% of employees in the food and beverage industry only receive training when they join their organization. Of those that do receive regular training, only 4.5% receive training about their company’s mission and values (TalentLMS, 2019).
Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.
In this Throwback Thursday Marketing Tip, we’re revisiting the most downloaded Marketing Tip Monday episode of 2023: #178: The Training Your Tasting Room Staff Needs.
Why Education MattersIf you aren't regularly providing training and education for your staff, especially on your company's mission and values, you're missing out on opportunities to create a stronger, more dedicated team!
One way tasting room managers can educate their staff on the company's mission and values is to have continual conversations about what your brand is up to behind the scenes, i.e., your sustainability efforts.
Tips from an InsiderThe hospitality team at Center of Effort can tell you all about the brand’s commitment to sustainability. In recurring staff meetings, the team talk about what’s going on in the winery and in the vineyard, plus what the brand is doing to improve their sustainability.
John Gayley, Hospitality Team Member at Center of Effort says there are three big benefits to these conversations about sustainability:
Staff know their input matters. The business improves its sustainability. Guests get a richer, more meaningful tasting experience.“Education really enforces the importance of each of our roles in helping Center of Effort stay up on its sustainability efforts,” John shares. “Hospitality staff reinforce the brand. We can highlight our commitment to sustainability more if we understand what we are doing both fundamentally, and the new and exciting things we’re doing to improve. These conversations keep everyone engaged and ready to come up with new ideas.”
John often takes guests on vineyard tours. He says that people are “fascinated by what goes on in the vineyard, and by the thought that goes into the sustainable approach.”
Visitors love learning about cover crops, irrigation, owl boxes, and more. “When guests talk with a well-informed team member, this helps all of us in our mission of sustainability.”
We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.
This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!
Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
Resources: *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course *** Apply for SIP Certified Wine Marketing Tips eNewsletter Sustainable Story | Print Sustainable Story | Electronic What's your Sustainable Story? Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member - Mostrar más
