Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Scientists
UCCE Farm Advisors
Growers'
organization
Commodity
Organization
Wineries
PCAs
Growers
County
Agricultural
Commissioner
Public
Farm workers
Soil Conservation
District
Figure 6.9
The Napa Sustainable Winegrowing Group network.
describe conducting personal conversations outside these workshops
with other growers, and inviting them to visit their vineyards to see what
practices they have found to be successful. This group is not well known
outside Napa County, but it appears to have considerable credibility and
some influence there. Its members are acutely attuned to the need to
reach out to the public, in part because of the many controversies sur-
rounding Napa winegrape production.
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This is the only partnership in
which a county agricultural commissioner plays an active leadership
role. He has a very visible, public office, and it is to his advantage to par-
ticipate in a group that is working to reduce tensions with the public.
This group understands its audience in the broadest terms of any part-
nership. They explicitly try to reach absentee owners, owner-operators,
vineyard managers, pest-control advisors, farmworkers, vintners, regula-
tors, and consumers with their message, connecting sustainability with
wine quality.
The social equity dimension of sustainability is addressed more consis-
tently and completely by the Napa partnership than by other groups.
The Napa partnership conducts more outreach about and to farm
workers than any other partnership.
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Its leaders have the broadest oper-
ational definition of sustainability, yet they have not institutionalized this
in a formal structure. They have chosen for their organizational strategy
a loose-knit network and may be programmatically weak compared to
