Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/789891
34 WINES&VINES March 2017 GRAPEGROWING http://www.angelfire.com/ca5/RandDGlass Your success is our prioritY risk pre-emergent herbicides such as Simazine, Diuron, Solicam and Surflan in favor of contact herbicides, particularly formulations of glyh- phosate (e.g., RoundUp), which were much lower risk. One of the main reasons that the use of Prop. 65 materials declined so dramati- cally was due to great reduction in the use of the miticide Omite. Effective miticides were developed that were not on the Prop. 65 list, such as Apollo, Fugimite and Onanger. Even the use of sulfur, which is applied to both conventional and organically managed vineyards, has changed dramatically: The aver- age amount of sulfur applied annually to a vineyard acre in Lodi declined 23% between 1999 and 2014. I would like to highlight the value of DPR's PUR database. My analysis would not have been possible without the full pesticide use reporting requirement that California imple- mented in 1989 and DPR's summary of this data each year. For those of you not familiar with this requirement, the data reported here are not samples of pesticide use acquired via grower surveys but the actual amount of pes- ticides applied to California vineyards. Discussion of pesticide use in agriculture makes many growers uncomfortable. That is due in part to the average consumer's lack of knowl- edge about pesticides and their use. This lack of knowledge is made worse by the uninformed notion that organic wine grape growers do not use any pesticides. The reality is that pesticides— both organically approved and conventional— will always play an important role in agriculture. That is because we will always have pests, no matter how natural we try to make our farming. The goal we should all strive for is reducing pes- ticide risk, and the data reported here shows that the Lodi wine grape growers have made signifi- cant progress in achieving that goal. Cliff Ohmart, Ph.D., is senior scientist for SureHarvest and author of View from the Vineyard: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Wine Grape Growing. Previously he served as research/IPM director at the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission. He has been writing about sustainable wine- growing issues for Wines & Vines since 1998. 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 POUNDS OF PESTICIDE APPLIED FOR WHICH THE ACTIVE INGREDIENT IS A REPRODUCTIVE TOXIN 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Data for Sacramento County and San Joaquin County vineyards, according to Pesticide Use Reporting from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. Pounds of Active Ingredient Year