Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/210765
CLIFF OHMART Vineyard View Sustainable Viticulture and Technology I have been fascinated with using technology in agriculture since 1990, after buying a programmable Intermec barcode reader, a Toshiba laptop equipped with Rbase database software and a Canon bubble jet printer that I could run through my Toyota pickup's cigarette lighter. I mention all those brands to make the point that with technology comes many companies trying to sell farmers their wares, whether they are needed or not. I call this a solution looking for a problem. Since making those purchases 23 years ago I have noticed that certain technologies seemed to emerge years ahead of their widespread adoption by mainstream agriculture. I can get pretty annoyed at some of the media hype about how technology is going to revolutionize agriculture. The latest concerns the use of drones—particularly in vine- Highlights • echnology is usually way ahead of its T adoption by mainstream wine grape growers. • he media is quick to predict that a T new technology is going to revolutionize viticulture. • echnology that gets adopted quickly T tends to be labor-saving equipment that does not require much time and data to demonstrate a return on investment. 36 W in e s & V i ne s D EC E M be r 20 13 think grapegrowers are an easy mark for the latest gadget and have money burning a hole in their pockets, or if they actually think there is some utility in flying drones over vineyards. To convince readers, many of the articles cite the same statistic that for the past 20 years rice farmers in Japan have been using drones for spraying. This leads me to believe that one article was published on this topic, and the media are all citing the same one. Technologies way ahead of viticulture yards. Here is just a sampling of the headlines I have seen this year. • The Huffington Post" declared in March, " "Drones and agriculture: Unmanned aircraft may revolutionize farming." • he National Journal in April discussed T "What drones can do for you." • he "Western Farm Press" blog cleverly T caught readers' attention with, "Drones begin descent on U.S. agriculture." • ot to be outdone, BBC News toasted N them with the title, "Cheers! How drones are helping the wine industry." • redicting a landslide of business, CNBC P in May announced, "Dealing in drones— the big business in unmanned flights," predicting that 80% of the growth in the drone industry will come from "something called precision farming." The press seems to think that wine grape growers in particular are going to be using drones. I am not sure if this is because they The media's hyperbole in relation to drones revolutionizing farming encouraged me to think more about my observation that technologies often emerge way ahead of their regular use in agriculture—and viticulture in particular. After a decade of being a research scientist, where it was easy to get hooked on using the latest gadgets for research projects, I took a job in California with an independent pest control advisor (PCA) firm that worked with growers of orchard crops using integrated pest management (IPM) methods to manage pests. The company owners and I had gone through entomology graduate school together at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1970s, so we were big believers in using data to make pest-management decisions. When I joined the company in 1990, the owners had a policy of giving every grower a weekly data sheet from each orchard that displayed pest-monitoring counts, damage assessments and other important information. As all PCAs did, we periodically recommended pesticide treatments and had to write spray recommendations for growers following the legal protocols of the state. We did this using pen and paper. Having used laptops (which were relatively new at the time) a bit as a researcher, and having played some with barcode, I realized that my job would be a lot easier and quicker if I created a database system to capture data,