Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
repeated encouragement to monitor their vineyards and make pesticide
decisions based on site-specific data and economic thresholds.
The commission is widely credited within the California winegrape
industry as creating the most comprehensive working model of a
regional, grower-supported initiative to promote sustainable practices.
Ohmart facilitated a change in how growers approach their farming sys-
tems by taking a region of predominantly conventional growers and
helping them transition to using “sustainability” as the primary criteria
for evaluating their practices. Growers do not understand themselves
primarily as stewards, but have incorporated stewardship into their
collective identity. His leadership is broadly perceived to be integral to
the commission's overall success. While the commission advertises the
quality of Lodi winegrapes, Ohmart travels as an ambassador of sustain-
ability, describing how the commission has worked with growers to
improve viticultural quality and environmental quality. The entire
district has profited from this initiative, and the same growers are now
considering how to launch an eco-label to further add value and engage
the wine-consuming public in their project.
The California winegrape industry has invested more in partnerships
than any other commodity. Four regional winegrape partnerships have
worked particularly close to help local growers recognize agroecological
alternatives to pesticides. The Lodi partnership has been the longest
running and most visible of these. This partnership inspired a statewide
winegrape growers' organization and a winery trade organization to
develop the Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices. This is a com-
prehensive, objective, and transparent guide to growing winegrapes and
producing wine in a way that is “environmentally sound, economically
feasible, and socially equitable.” Its sponsors have conducted 75 work-
shops around California, and reached more than 900 winegrape growers
managing 120,000 vineyard acres (more than 20 percent of the state
total). The code represents the most sophisticated program to date by
any commodity-specific group of growers to educate themselves, and to
present themselves to the public as environmentally responsible. Yet the
Lodi Woodbridge Winegrape Commission still has an advantage lacking
among most other groups: it has invested years of effort to develop a
social network that provides peer and technical support for managing
vineyards in the most environmentally friendly way possible.
