Treating Insect Threats to Vineyards

[Timothy Gega]

Now this bit of bad news:

Officials Find Insect Posing Serious Threat To Winegrowers

An Official with the Marin County Department of Agriculture has found a Glassy-winged sharpshooter while inspecting a shipment from Ventura County.

[Sara S]

45 years ago or so, in San Diego, a Japanese beetle was supposedly found in Balboa Park; it seemed that this was an excuse for the county to spray a lot of insecticide........can't remember whether the public outcry stopped that or not.

Now this bit of bad news:

Officials Find Insect Posing Serious Threat To Winegrowers

An Official with the Marin County Department of Agriculture has found a Glassy-winged sharpshooter while inspecting a shipment from Ventura County.

[Timothy Gega]

45 years ago or so, in San Diego, a Japanese beetle was supposedly found in Balboa Park; it seemed that this was an excuse for the county to spray a lot of insecticide........can't remember whether the public outcry stopped that or not.

Yes, it did Sara, but here we are all over again.
The farther ahead we go in time, the further behind we become in progress...

[Sara S]

The other thing that the county planned back then was to spray herbicide on a lot of land. I guess it was like the military recently giving local cops all their left-over machinery and weapons; back then, it was left-over napalm from Viet Nam. I went on a press tour of part of the back-country where they were going to spray, and there was no real reason for it to be defoliated; maybe so the cattle that grazed there would have more room.....

Yes, it did Sara, but here we are all over again.
The farther ahead we go in time, the further behind we become in progress...

[Timothy Gega]

The other thing that the county planned back then was to spray herbicide on a lot of land. I guess it was like the military recently giving local cops all their left-over machinery and weapons; back then, it was left-over napalm from Viet Nam. I went on a press tour of part of the back-country where they were going to spray, and there was no real reason for it to be defoliated; maybe so the cattle that grazed there would have more room.....

Yes, Sara, If I wasn’t laughing so hard at the ignorance of it I would be crying by the insanity.
I had 2 best friends that died from the Agent Orange in Vietnam. A skin cancer that ate them from the outside in. (May they RIP).
I recall the times in the early 70s when the USA banned DDT as well as lead coated children’s toys from China. What happened to our awareness? We then turned right around and began importing our fruits and vegetables from Mexico which uses DDT very heavily. And, we are still getting lead-lined toys from China.

These insecticides, pesticides and fertilizers, (particulates,) all get airborne and windblown, (a pollen seed can travel up to 3 miles). They (these chemicals) get saturated by rain and then move/migrate/erode into streambeds and the streams can carry them everywhere along the line.

I am reminded of the Mono Lake Story (below) from Wikipedia:

Air quality grew poor as the exposed lake bed became the source of air-borne particulate matter, violating the Clean Air Act. If something was not done, Mono Lake was certain to become a lifeless chemical sump.
Conservation efforts [edit]

Mono Lake article: California Water Wars

In order to provide water needs for the growing city of Los Angeles, water was diverted from the Owens River into the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power extended the Los Angeles Aqueduct system farther up river into the Mono Basin. So much water was diverted that evaporation soon exceeded inflow and the surface level of Mono Lake fell rapidly. By 1982 the lake was reduced to 37,688 acres (15,252 ha) 69 percent of its 1941surface area. "[By 1990, the lake had dropped 45 vertical feet and had lost half its volume]" relative to the 1941 pre-diversion water level. [20] As a result alkaline sands and formerly submerged tufa towers became exposed, the water salinity doubled, and Negit Island became a peninsula, exposing the nests of sea gulls to predators (such as coyotes), and forcing the sea gull colony to abandon this site.

In 1974, Stanford University graduate student David Gaines studied the Mono Lake ecosystem, and he became instrumental in alerting the public of the effects of the lower water level.[21] The National Science Foundation funded the first comprehensive ecological study of Mono Lake, conducted by Gaines and undergraduate students from the University of California at Davis, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Earlham College. In June 1977, the Davis Institute of Ecology of the University of California published a report,"An Ecological Study of Mono Lake, California," which alerted California to the ecological dangers posed by the redirection of water away from the lake for municipal uses.[21]

[Shepherd]

In 2001 the Ag. Commissioner threatened to spray SoCo homes and farms with pesticides to kill the feared glassy-winged sharpshooter. We formed a group back then called the No Spray Action Network. "Over our dead bodies" we said. We built a mass movement, which forced the wine industry to sit down at the table with us. We came up with a compromise, that included their not spraying us. Following is a link to an article about that struggle. With chaotic climate change happening, it is likely that this pest, as well as others, will move north and threaten monocrops, like vineyards.

This is why it is essential, at this early time, that we work to halt the huge Dairyman Winery and Distillery from going into the Laguna de Santa Rosa. Over the weekend some of us from SoCo were up in Lake County and met with activists from there and Napa. We are in the early stages of forming a North Bay Coalition. Napa and Lake County activists already have lawyers and are pursuing court cases. CBS-TV carried the Napa struggle, unfolding today at the Brd. of Sups, on their evening news last night.

If you want to be updated on the current struggle, please send your email to me at [email protected].

The No Spray Action Network - Freestone,

www.freestone.com/nospray/‎
The Growers, No Spray Action Network and the other Environmental Groups have reached an agreement on a change in protocol of the existing County GWSS ...