The eloquent Opatz is certainly qualified to speak- for vineyardists, but not for California. He could declare the sharpshooter to be the alcohol-beverage industry's number one enemy, but this differs from being California's number one enemy. California is more than a wine industry.
My own short list of greater threats to the public include poverty, global warming, AIDs, teen suicide, neglect of seniors, cancer, heart attacks, alcoholism, housing shortages, road rage, and discrimination against minorities and women. The long list of more serious enemies than this tiny insect is quite extensive.
The alcohol-beverage industry that Opatz represents is insulated. It focuses on threats to its high-risk/high-profit industry as more important than anything else, including their threats to our health and safety by spraying highly toxic pesticides and planting a monocrop.
The editorial by Opatz seems even-handed and rational. But it is calculated parts of a carefully orchestrated propaganda campaign-driven by the irrational fear of a bug-to demonize the hungry sharpshooter. But is this innocent guest really an "enemy?" Or is it nature's remedy for an unbalanced monoculture? Is nature merely taking its course, as humans seek to over-control and dominate it?
Beneath all the sharpshooter hype, what is the actual damage that this "vicious insect" has done? Only a few hundred acres among California's thousands of acres have been hurt. Two local scientists, geologists Jane and Howard Nielsen, went to Temecula to survey the damage. They reported that it did not merit the hysteria and panic being generated by the wine industry.
After many inflated figures, even the pro-wine lobby Press Democrat admitted, "only 25% of the region's 3,000 acres of vines show symptoms of the disease." Is this enough to warrant Opatz' elevation of this insect to "California's number one public enemy?"
The wine industry has extorted nearly $40 million of our tax dollars from the federal and state governments to fight their pending war. In contrast, the oak fungus beginning to destroy our state's oaks barely gets a few hundred thousand dollars to defeat it.
The oak fungus is a worse threat than the sharpshooter, but oaks are not moneymakers. This ancient, natural part of native California that supports considerable wildlife is more essential than the non-native grapevines. The wine industry over-values its vines and under-values the natural oaks and redwoods, which it has been busy cutting for years to replace with imported vines.
Our tax dollars would be better spent protecting oaks, whose loss would devastate California's landscape. But then, government officials and the power elite cannot drink them. What does $40 million to protect wine vines versus a few thousand for Oaks say about us as a people, our priorities, and what we value in nature? Wild turkeys recently became the wine industry's latest threat. A few were seen in a Graton vineyard adding a couple of grapes to their mainly insect diet, perhaps as desert or for variety. The Graton grapegrower called out Fish and Game to catch a few turkeys to kill. The turkeys, not known for their intelligence, had the wisdom to stay away from that particular vineyard. Go turkeys, go! In the Wine Guys vs. Wild Turkeys battle, I am for the Turkeys.
Turkeys have grazed my organic fan-n for years and eaten a few berries. Big deal! I just chase them off--simple enough--no killing necessary. Wildlife comes with the territory. Most of us in Sonoma County appreciate wildlife, even turkeys.
The next time turkeys come to my farm, I may try to enlist them in a campaign to expose the arrogance, elitism and pride of the wine industry. Perhaps they will pose for a poster with a sharpshooter.
We are experiencing a classic making-of-the-enemy campaign by the wine industry, which is readying a $40 million arsenal to fire on their perceived enemy.
People's fears are being manipulated for the economic benefit of the wine industry. The sharpshooter is described as "the plague" and voracious insect." The media is engaging in what MIT linguist Noam Chomsky calls "manufactured consent" to gain public support. First they create an enemy, then they fire upon it.
The sharpshooter is described as "the biggest threat ever to California agriculture." Are we facing famine? Such hyperbole sets the stage for the fight of the noble wine industry against the bad sharpshooter.
Nature teaches us to share, rather than to hoard. Farmers who plant monocrops put their crops at risk, as well as the rest of us when the local economy becomes wine-dependent. The alcohol-beverage industry boasts "zero tolerance" for the sharpshooter. If farming has taught me anything, it's toleranceŅof changing weather, even for unwanted "weeds" and so-called "pests". Sharpshooters are a leafhopper, which also come to my farm and eat berries. They reduce my production, but that comes with farming, and needs to be tolerated. We are not the only creatures in nature that need to eat.
After sharpshooters eat their share of vines, we will have a pruned, more moderate wine industry. Good farmers will rebuild a vital wine industry. We need to support the sustainable practices of the many good grape growers who have fought Pierce's Disease for over a century by practices such as vigorous pruning, cover cropping, predatory insects, and setbacks from riparian and forested areas.
What innocent animal will next become "California's public enemy number one" because they eat grapes? Sharpshooters and turkeys will not be the last "pests" to feed on the grape monoculture's bountiful meal. Who knows what uninvited dinner guests will come next?
Perhaps birds will fall within the gun sights of the noble wine industry and its governmental allies. When authorities fine on the sharpshooter with the deadly pesticides Lorsban or Sevin--as they are in Southern California and Sacramento-they kill members of hundreds of insect species. We lose pollinating bees, butterflies, ladybugs, composting creatures, and other beneficial insects.
Spraying would kill the Mexican non-stinging wasp that is being considered as a biological control for the sharpshooter. It would reduce the bird population, which feeds on the sharpshooter, by eliminating their primary food source, insects.
I am a California-born native son farmer and want to declare that the sharpshooter is not my public enemy number one. It may be a gift horse in disguise waking us up to our degraded view of nature, as if nature exists mainly to serve the wine industry and business, at the expense of all the other creatures.
During more than 50 years of life I have had many perceived enemies, some of who eventually became friends. But since Vietnam I cannot remember anything like the campaign of hatred being waged against this tiny insect. Some North Coast residents appreciate the tiny insect that could help limit the inflated wine industry.
The luxury wine industry is moving up on the list of threats to California. Unless wine leaders wake up it may soon make it onto the top ten list for many North Coast residents. The extreme wealth and power of the wine industry already dominates Napa and is becoming a major threat to Sonoma and Mendocino Counties' environment and local food agriculture.
If forced backyard or aerial spraying of highly toxic pesticides occurs in the North Coast against the wishes of homeowners and residents, the alcohol-beverage industry's already low public image will crash.
The wine industry is on a collision course-with nature itself and increasingly with nature-loving people in Sonoma County. Its mounting abuses of the land, plants, creatures, and of legal processes of planning and development are worsening its public image.
The sharpshooter is a symptom of the real problem--the over planting of vineyards too close to forests and riparian areas with host Plants to the sharpshooter. Rather than treat the symptom, since pests adapt so quickly, we need to deal with the cause. Further development of the vineyard monoculture near riparian and forested areas is an invitation to the sharpshooter to come to dinner.
The tiny glassy-winged sharpshooter is not my enemy.
(Shepherd Bliss owns the organic Kokopelli Farm and works with the new No Spray Action Network, he can be reached at shepherdb@mail.com)
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2000
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited