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32 WINES&VINES August 2018 M y inaugural column devoted to sustainable farming of wine grapes was published in the November 1998 issue of Wines & Vines. It was appropriately titled "What is Sus- tainable Viticulture." Twenty years and more than 100 columns later, it seems like a good time to sit back and see what has changed, what has not, and what growers can do to continue to advance sustainable farming of vineyards in the United States. My observations are based not only on my experience in working with wine grape grow- ers, they have also been reinforced by working with growers in other cropping systems over the last 30 years. Many of the topics I mention have been the focus of my Wines & Vines columns over the years. What has changed Some of the most obvious changes that have oc- curred during the last 20 years, particularly in regions with large vineyard acreage, are in farming equipment. Much of it has been driven by the in- creasing shortage and cost of labor. Labor-intensive practices like harvesting, pruning, shoot-thinning and leafing have all been mechanized. Sprayers and sprayer technology have also ad- vanced, from air-blast sprayers pulled by open- canopied tractors to self-propelled over-the-vine sprayers with enclosed, air-conditioned, carbon- filtered cabs that can treat multiple rows in one pass. Growers in some regions use tunnel sprayers that recapture pesticide runoff from the canopy. Reduced-drift sprayer nozzles have been developed along with electrostatic systems that are designed to improve spray coverage. Image analysis is advancing that allows sprayers to detect the canopy or lack thereof to turn nozzles on and off, and weed sprayers are being equipped with sensors to detect weeds and spray only when they are present. Another dramatic change I have witnessed over the last 20 years in sustainable wine grape growing is the significant increase in our ability to measure things in the vineyard, capture this data and use it in vineyard management decision making. A great example is in irrigation management. Our ability to estimate vine water demand has changed dramatically, from basing it on vine appearance to directly measuring vine water stress using a pres- sure bomb or sap flow sensors, to now being able to measure water use over an area of vines using surface renewal technology. At the same time, our ability to measure soil moisture has also greatly improved. University scientists and private com- panies have developed software to capture this data, process it, and use it to operate the irrigation system remotely using personal computers, tablets and smart phones. I have long maintained that attention to detail in the vineyard is the foundation of sustainable wine grape growing. I am a big believer in the measure-to-manage approach to farming: If you can't measure something, you can't manage it. In some instances, I feel our ability to measure things and collect data has gotten ahead of our ability to interpret the data and use it to improve vineyard management. Drone technology is an example that comes to mind. I constantly see ads in trade magazines about how drones are going to revolutionize agriculture with estimates of billions of dollars in savings. We are very good at program- ming drones on how to fly where we want them to, not to crash and to take pictures and NDVI images. We are less advanced in interpreting this data to advance vineyard management other than to identify stressed areas. It is one thing to identify a stressed area; it is another to figure out how to improve vineyard performance in those areas, given the physical limitations a vineyard trellis and irrigation system put on our ability to apply preci- sion viticulture. Vineyard View n CLIFF OHMART 20 Years of Sustainable Grape Growing What has changed, what has not and how can we improve?