Lodi winegrape growers celebrate growth of sustainability program

Winegrape growers, winemakers and community members from Lodi and the surrounding area gathered at the Elks Lodge in Woodbridge on Wednesday, mingling over water, lemonade and wine as they waited for the Lodi Rules Year-End Recap.

Wendy Brannen, executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission, began the event by thanking the audience for their support before asking for a moment of silence in honor of grape growers who had recently passed away, including Bruce Mettler.

Established as a pest management program in 1992, Lodi Rules for Sustainable Winegrowing became the first program in California to certify sustainable vineyards, according to Stephanie Bolton, the Lodi Winegrape Commission’s grower communications and sustainable winegrowing director. She asked the audience to define “sustainability,” and received various responses touching on minimizing damage to the environment and conserving natural resources for future generations.

“One of the cool things about sustainability is that you can define it for yourself. The more practice you get explaining sustainability to others, the better your own understanding of it will be,” she said.

Bolton mentioned various achievements such as certifying 30 new growers in 2017 and increasing from 36,424 certified acres in 2016 to 45,832 acres in 2017, including 425 acres in Israel. Lodi Rules has certified more than 1,100 vineyard blocks within 11 crush districts, including Lodi, she added.

Besides celebrating the program’s accomplishments, Bolton also updated the audience on the six standards that govern a vineyard’s eligibility for certification. She stressed the importance of maintaining accurate annual operating budgets for business management, biodiversity in vineyards and habitat restoration for ecosystem management and keeping employees happy for human resources management.

“To a lot of us, our best resources are our people. Keeping employees happy is going to be one of the main things we do in the face of a labor shortage,” Bolton said.

Bolton introduced Bill Ferrero, a sales representative for Cal-Waste Recovery Systems based in Stockton, to discuss composting for the section on soil management. Ferrero mentioned waste reduction laws that require organic waste materials be diverted from landfills, saying that no landfill in California will accept organic waste after 2020.

The organic waste will instead be used for “vessel composting,” Ferrero said, which utilizes tanks of various sizes to convert organic waste into both organic fertilizer as well as natural gas that can be used as fuel. He added that he CalWaste plans to send staff to schools throughout Lodi Unified School District to educate students about vessel composting in the near future.

Bolton mentioned water quality and irrigation efficiency as two factors to consider for water management in the coming year before addressing updates in pest management, which she called the biggest chapter in the Lodi Rules binder given to growers. Installing boxes to house barn owls have been found to be a more cost-effective method of keeping gophers out of vineyards than trapping, Bolton said, with owl boxes costing approximately 34 cents per gopher and trapping costing approximately $8.11.

Bolton also mentioned the Pesticide Environmental Assessment System, which measures risks posed by pesticides such as health effects on farm workers, dietary risks for consumers and risks to animals including birds, bees and natural pest enemies.