We are watching with some concern the explosion of vineyard plantings across the county as farmers seek to establish a second legal agricultural industry in the county alongside - perhaps eventually supplanting - the county's declining timber industry. Planters and real estate dealers see the booming demand for California varietal wines as a prospective bonanza, so open land is bringing good prices and the dozers are hard at work shaping the hillsides in what is called "clean farming."
But that farming isn't "clean" for everybody. Public radio station KZYX-KZYZ found that out when Obester wineries scraped all the soil off of a hillside adjoining the station site; the air was so thick with dust it was hard to breathe; dust was thicker than a valley fog and it left everything - buildings, cars, people, radio equipment, etc. - with a thick coating of displaced soil.
That soil loss has serious consequences. Without soil we can't grow food. And, like Obester's dust which , once the rain comes, will make its way into the nearby Navarro River and other water courses, the displacement will degrade spawning grounds used by salmon and steelhead, species already in serious decline because, in part, of the increased sediment in their natural habitat
Water
Another serious consequence of the grape explosion is the effect on the water supply of the region. It may not seem like it in December or January, but in fact this is a water-scarce area, and the water used for massive grape plantings further diminishes what's available for other uses including, again, fish habitat.
Pesticide use is another issue. They say that grapes don't need a lot of pesticides, but we note that folks applied 49,000 pound of methyl bromide in the county in 1995 (last year's figures are not yet available). That counts, though not all of that goes on grapes. Of 22 applications last year, 10 were for grapes (out of 270 grape growers in the county), but the amount used on grapes made up just under 98% of the usage. Methyl Bromide, along with the soil, gets into the water courses but perhaps more important, it continues the destruction of the earth's protective ozone layer.
Grape growers use Roundup as well, a long-lasting herbicide that is known to have serious health consequences for people and other living things. More grapes means more Roundup in our environment. And beyond that, we have to deal with such delicious substances as acutely toxic chloropicrin, an element in tear gas, the neural toxin dimethoate, connected with cancer and reproductive alterations, fenarimol, an eye, skin and lung irritant and possible fetal toxin,the enzyme inhibitor glyphosate, which causes eye and skin irritation, the endocrine disrupter mancozeb, connected with cancer and thyroid abnormalities, oxyfluorfen, possibly connected to cancer and birth defects, and many, many more in greater or lesser amounts.
As well, viniculture requires a lot of sulfur. Environmentalists don't have too much of a problem with sulfur on crops as it is not, by itself, the kind of threat represented by, say, Roundup or 2-4-D, but we confess to a certain nervousness about the additional tons and tons of this elemental substance that the new plantings will bring.
What about habitat? What will be the consequences of scraping off topsoil and shaping hillsides so that all the critters that live there either perish or have to move to other quarters. Perhaps we don't feel any personal affinity for the rabbits and moles, the mice and moles that live in the grass or the birds that nest there, but that doesn't mean they aren't important to us. They are, after all, part of the food chain, as are we all.
Food Crops?
And while we're on food, what are all these vineyards replacing? There's a lot less acreage in hay now; that no doubt impacts the stock industry, providers of beef and lamb for our tables. And how do we evaluate replacement of a corn field with a vineyard? It may improve the farmer's bottom line but it doesn't do anything for food production in the area.
Does that mean we must oppose all viniculture? No. It's the massive increase in plantings, the industrial aspect of it, that is a problem. Family farmers producing wine grapes from plantings limited to what a family farm can grow are no threat. But when the orientation becomes industrial, the scale gets out of hand and we start to experience the negative fallout alluded to above.
Growers can produce grapes in sustainable fashion and they don't have to destroy the landscape to do so. Cover crops between the rows can hold the soil and provide some nutrition for the vines as well. And, grown on something lees than a massive, industrial scale, grapes aren't that disruptive. We can grow them without pesticides and without drying up the county's water as long as the scale remains reasonable. But we're getting beyond reasonable.
Some folks in Sonoma County are talking about taking steps to limit establishment of new vineyards. Napa already has a law to that effect. Maybe that's something we should start thinking about here in Mendocino County, before the continuing "grape rape" does us all in.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited