Sustainable Winegrowing

Sustainable Winegrowing

Vineyard Team

3 minutes 2 seconds

244: Highlight Your Habitat | Ancient Peaks' Sustainable Story | Marketing Tip Monday
[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: While most consumers say that environmental friendliness plays a significant role in how they make purchasing decisions. Brands, messaging about sustainability only reaches about half of global consumers. Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry.

[00:00:24] These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:30] Your sustainable story can be shared across any of your communication channels, including social media, wine club, newsletters, tasting room signage, and so much more.

[00:00:39] Are you wondering what to tell your audience about in your next story? From cover crops to owl boxes and water collection, ponds to native landscaping. There are many sustainability topics. right outside of your window.

[00:00:51] At ancient peaks winery in Santa margarita, California. There is no shortage of natural. conversation fodder. Their sustainable story highlighting the value of habitat shows creative ways to support the native wildlife that lives around their vineyard.

[00:01:07] The Santa margarita ranch. Ava represents just one vineyard. Ancient peaks wineries estate, margarita vineyard. Which is home to an abundance of beloved wildlife.

[00:01:17] The team takes great care to respect and facilitate the presence of their winged and furry friends through the preservation of their habitat.

[00:01:25] Wildlife corridors are present through and around the vineyard to ensure animals have free and safe passage. Black bears, Bobcats, mountain lions, wild pigs turkeys, deer, and bald Eagles are among the many creatures. That you'll find.

[00:01:39] There's also aquatic life at the ranch. The team protects Creek setbacks and implements filter strips between the vineyard and waterways to keep the water healthy. With all of this life on the property, not all of it is beneficial to the health of the vineyard crop. To help keep pests at bay, the ranch attracts natural predators with bat boxes, Al boxes, and wrapped her purchase. They even invite a herd of goats to feast on their vegetation, acting as low impact herbicide alternative.

[00:02:05] They're affiliated margarita adventures is dedicated to nature and wildlife appreciation and education.

[00:02:11] The ranches natural list. Jackleen.

[00:02:14] offers a variety of guided wildlife tours. For guests, including nature, adventure tours, Eagle tours, forging tours, and photograph tours.

[00:02:24] Think about the habitat around your vineyard.

[00:02:27] How will you highlight preserving nature at your property?

[00:02:30] If you want more inspiration to help share your sustainable story, make sure you check out our newly updated online course. We've spent over 40 hours writing new sustainable stories for finding our training module and recording and editing video content.

[00:02:45] This simple yet powerful free tool will help you tell your own personal sustainable message. To get started. Just go to the show notes. Click on the title. Tell your sustainable story to sign up and start writing yours today. Until next time, this is sustainable winegrowing with the vineyard team.
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9 September 2024, 4:00 am
34 minutes 46 seconds

243: Microbial Communities in the Grapevine
Microbial communities vary widely from plant to plant, even from rootstock to rootstock! Philippe Rolshausen, Professor of Cooperative Extension for Subtropical Horticulture in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California Riverside studies the phytobiome. This includes all organisms associated with the vine including bacteria, fungi, insects, and animals. Learn the impact these communities have on your vineyard from young vine decline under extreme stress to the wine’s terrior.
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Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript
[00:02:07] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Philippe Roshausen. He is Professor of Cooperative Extension at University of California, Riverside. And today we're going to be talking about the soil microbiome. Thanks for being on the podcast, Philippe.

[00:02:19] Philippe Rolshausen: Thank you for having me.

[00:02:20] Craig Macmillan: Well, when we do these topics, like to start from the very basics. And then we can go very deep from there. What is your definition of the soil microbiome?

[00:02:31] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, a microbiome is the collection of microbes. The soil microbiome is the collection of microbes associated with the soil. I have to say we work on the soil microbiome, but we also work on the phytobiome, which is the collection of organisms. associated with the, the, vine, and that can be fungi, bacteria, viruses, even insects. So we are more interested in fungi and bacteria in my lab. And especially those that live inside the vine and how it's connected to the roots and the soil.

[00:03:12] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, I'm very interested in that. Just for our listeners, other aspects of the soil microbiome could include things like microarthropods,

uh, nematodes, etc. It's a very complex Complicated

ecosystem.

[00:03:26] Philippe Rolshausen: I and I only focus on one part of it.

[00:03:29] Craig Macmillan: The work that I've done with soil microbiome in a very primitive way. We just focused on total bacteria, total biomass, things like that.

You just mentioned this and this is a good jumping off point actually. Because plants are an active part of this ecosystem, you will find different soil microbiomes around different crops. What is the soil microbial community like around grapevines in particular?

[00:03:50] Philippe Rolshausen: Well compared to, to what is the question. Let's give you an example. I work on citrus and grapes in the same soil environment, you would see differences between a grapevine and the citrus plant just because of the property of the host. Within grapevine, you know. Depending on the variety or the rootstocks, I should say then you would also have different microbial communities associated with the rootstock.

And this is like a plant effect because plant recruits their microbes. So, so you have sort of a template of microbial or a core microbiome, which is you would find across a different rootstock or varieties of grapes or even plants. But then. Some are very variety specific or host specific, and so you would tend to see some varietal specificity and specific microbe associated with some of those rootstock operants.

[00:04:47] Craig Macmillan: That's news to me. That's fascinating.

there is some commonality, but you will find some differences just based on things like rootstock?

[00:04:56] Philippe Rolshausen: Yes.

[00:04:57] Craig Macmillan: Oh, that is interesting. We may come back to that. one of the things about your work that I was really intrigued by, which I was unaware of, is the different microorganisms that one might find inside the grapevine, and what roles they play in the functioning of the plant. I mean, I think most of familiar with Our gut microflora. Right, where we know that we have organisms inside us. We have organisms on our skin and all that. I didn't realize that was true for plants as well. Tell me more about that.

[00:05:26] Philippe Rolshausen: You can make the parallel between the roots and the gut, actually.

Because they have similar functions. Especially with respect to nutrient assimilation Defense against disease, for instance. Now, the gut is inside, the root is outside. Someone made the comment that the plant where there are guts on the outside, just because of that parallel that between the rhizosphere and the gut.

there is a connection between what's going on inside the plant and what's going on outside the plant. We are interested to understand what the organisms that live inside the plant. Where they're coming from. in terms of diversity the endosphere, which is the the region of the, the organism living inside the plant, the endosphere is not very diverse.

There's only a few of thousand fold less microbe capable of living inside the plant just because it's a more. Stringent environment I work on the xylem a lot and, you know, there's a negative pressure for instance, there are, there's not a lot of food available, for instance.

And so microbes have to adapt to those environments, right? And it's not every microbe is capable of doing that. there's only A certain type of microbe that can live inside them. we're interested in those because we work specifically on vascular disease of grapevines, so fungi, bacteria especially.

And we try to understand how those pathogens interact with the plant, but also really understand those pathogen within the, context of the microbial community and how those pathogen interact with the microbes living inside the plants. to go back to your question, it's like, where are those pathogen coming from?

How did they get there? How do they interact with the plant and how do they interact with the microbes? within those interaction, what would be the, the disease outcome in certain type of interaction.

[00:07:35] Craig Macmillan: So what we're talking about is we have these pathogenic organisms Which could be in the form of like grapevine trunk disease Things like that or Peirce's disease. In the case of bacteria and what you're getting at is it that there's other types and populations of microbes that may be antagonistic to the pathogen?

[00:07:56] Philippe Rolshausen: Yes. So that was our hypothesis. Traditionally, you know, microbiologists were looking for biological control agent against diseases and they were culturing those.

That was the traditional approach. So you take a plant tissue, You put it in the culture media and you see what's growing and then you test if those organism are able to inhibit the growth of your pathogen. That would be the traditional way of doing it. Now, with the metagenomics , the development of those technology, we're able to kind of look, at the entire community of those organisms living inside the plant and using those tools, we could actually select those that have some.

That might be antagonistic to certain pathogens. the beauty of this is that you can actually look at the entire community. When you look at a traditional microbial approach, you kind of zoom in on, to those that can grow in culture and those that can grow fast in culture and sort of overpower the other ones.

when you use those molecular approaches, you look at the entire community and you can And sort of a broader view of really what's going on and who does what. and so that's the approach that we've been doing to try to identify biological control agents or beneficial organism to plants and to grapes in particular.

what we do is we select plants with different phenotypes. So we will select. Plants that, you know, that range from very healthy to poor health. And we're able to build those sort of correlations with organisms that associate specifically with healthy plants and those that associate with sick plants.

and from that, once we have identified the organism, we can go back and try to culture it and to reintroduce him in the system to prove that Actually, they are beneficial in some capacity.

[00:09:52] Craig Macmillan: does this mean that I could have plant material, and one of those vines would be healthy and one would be weak and showing disease, but they both would have the pathogen, it's just that the other one has the microbial community to help fight it.

[00:10:07] Philippe Rolshausen: That's right.

[00:10:08] Craig Macmillan: Wow.

[00:10:09] Philippe Rolshausen: there's a environmental factor that comes into play as well. because abiotic stresses also so like, you know, drought or heat play a factor into the plant, weaken the plant in some capacity and will change the disease outcome and the interaction between the pathogen and the microbe.

There are more layers than, you know, the simple pathogen, microbe. plant interaction There's also the environment in which those components are part of that really plays a big factor.

[00:10:43] Craig Macmillan: So, are you finding or pursuing how those abiotic factors can be manipulated?

[00:10:50] Philippe Rolshausen: A little bit. I'm really interested in those aspects of, especially in the eras of climate change.

plants are going to be subjected to a lot more stress than they used to be. I think we need to understand how this is going to affect the, the microbiome at large and because I'm a pathologist, how this is going to affect disease outcome. we are starting to only scratch the surface of that.

I think a lot of people are as well. It's a lot more complicated when you work with. Woody perennial than when you work with an annual plant, because you have the approaches and the logistics are more challenging, I would say. drought is the number one just because it's been on the radar of every grower in California, but so we, you know, we are interested to see how those factors really affect the Have an effect on disease.

Yes.

[00:11:44] Craig Macmillan: Are you doing that in the laboratory?

[00:11:46] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, yes. You have to sort of work in more controlled conditions and sort of dissect it one stress at a time. so it is in more greenhouse conditions or gross chamber conditions where you can, semi controlled environment where you can really control heat or, you know, water or, and see how that affects the microbiome.

[00:12:07] Craig Macmillan: I think this is fascinating. can you tell me more about what that actually looks like, like how do you set it up? How are you controlling it? What kind of ranges are you using? I love the details.

[00:12:17] Philippe Rolshausen: So we've done experiments mostly with irrigation so far. And we are only starting to tie irrigation to microbiome, but we have done the.

How irrigation affects severity of disease and impact on the plant. this is pretty straightforward, you have plants that are fully irrigated that are not on the deficit irrigation, and then you calculate what a deficit irrigation like a 25 percent deficit irrigation look like, a 50 percent deficit irrigation look like, measuring, you know, how much water.

How much irrigation you put in on your plants, you inoculate your tree or vine with a pathogen, and you let it incubate for, you know, weeks, because you know, those are slow pathosystems, they take time, and you see how that affects for trunk disease in particular lesion of the wood necrotic lesion, for instance.

And then we look at factors on the plant. We measure biomass, for instance, of the roots, the shoots. We look at gas exchange, photosynthesis, and so on and so forth. going down to the microbiome, you know, we would be sampling the tissue, extracting the DNA, and then sequencing, you know, all the microbial community, bacterial and fungal, to see how those communities have changed over time in a well watered versus a deficit irrigated plants.

[00:13:49] Craig Macmillan: And is that quantitative analysis, or is it simply the complexity of the diversity of the microbiome

[00:13:56] Philippe Rolshausen: it's semi quantitative so let's say, you know, like you're looking at a presence of a specific taxa.

It's a relative abundance of the taxa in comparison to the others. So when you see an increase of the taxa. in your community, it's either because it does increase or because the other taxa within that community decreased. So it increases in, in relation to that. So it's not really an absolute measure of abundance.

It is a relative measure of abundance, but you could still use it and make some correlation with that.

[00:14:34] Craig Macmillan: Can you explain, metagenomics?

[00:14:37] Philippe Rolshausen: That's not my field. To be honest with you, but the principle is that you're using primers that are universal primers and that allow you to, so there are.

Meaning that you can sequence conserved region. So those primers are aligned with conserved region across several taxonomic groups. Okay, so fungi or bacteria. And then you sequence a length of nucleotide. In our case, it's about 200, 250 nucleotides in length. In between, and this is valuable between those two.

Primers, that region is valuable. And so you could start making you can do a micro real fingerprinting and identify which types are, are present, you know, but it's the community of organism. So it's like all the fungal communities or all the bacterial communities. So some primers are better than others for special taxonomy group.

So for instance. I work with Dario Cantu at UC Davis, CBT Controlled Neurology. Davis uses field of knowledge, and so he developed primers for group causing grapevine trunk diseases. And so it's mostly what's called the Ascomycota phyla. his primers are mostly focusing on this group of, fungi, but it doesn't give any information on The basidiomycota, which is another group, or the glomerulomycota, which is the mycorrhizae fungi.

if you wanted to get information about this group, you would need to get a different set of primers, right? so it's really up to primer that you're using that gets you the right information. and also the database that you're using that gives you the right information because sometimes the database are not curated or they're not accurate, and those are getting better as we're getting more and more knowledge about the taxonomy and, and the biology of those organisms.

we're able to make more accurate prediction because we're gaining more knowledge about those organisms. So for instance, there's a lot more information about bacteria than, They are about fungi just because there are not a lot of reference genome for fungi compared to bacteria. so it's a lot more difficult to predict. Sometimes for fungi than it is for bacteria.

[00:17:01] Craig Macmillan: But it sounds like that would be coming down the road.

[00:17:04] Philippe Rolshausen: Oh yeah, yeah, it's a matter of time. I mean, really, you know, this technology is going so fast, so quickly that, in five years from now, I can't even predict what it's going to look like,

[00:17:15] Craig Macmillan: This thought just occurred. your work is obviously, I don't want to say infancy, but it's, it's pretty early work. You know, we're, we're working with tools that are still in development, basically. at this point, would you say that there are certain conditions or practices or manipulations that a grower could use to promote the most beneficial endo, um, microbiome in their plants?

[00:17:40] Philippe Rolshausen: In principle, yes, and I believe that this is true. We just don't have the knowledge yet to make recommendations that are solid. There we go. So, when you apply something to your soil, you know, if you're a grower and you apply fertilizers, or this is going to, or even if you if you till your soil or it will have some impact on the soil microbiology.

That we know. How that reflects to what's going on inside the plant, we are, we are not there yet. We, we don't have that knowledge yet just because like I've said before, only a few of those organisms move inside the plant. There's always a a gap between you know, what's going on outside the plant and what's going on inside the plant.

The inside the plant it's a buffered environment that changes very slowly compared to the root of, a grapevine. what we've done is we've looked at the microbiome of vines that we planted in the field and look at the rhizosphere microbiome, or the, the The macro bill community associated with the root and the macro bill, community associated with the trunk, the graft union, and so forth.

And we see right after planting that the microbial communities associated with the root changes really quickly, whereas the the microbiome in the trunk are the graph union. changes very slowly. whatever growers do and cultural practices that they implement in the vineyard will have a limited effect inside the vine or it will take years for this to see the effect.

the rhizosphere microbiome drive a lot of, of biological function, you know, they, they, they fix nitrogen metabolize phosphorus detoxify compounds and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of, benefits of, using some cultural practices, beneficial practices and how they affect microbial communities associated with the roots.

[00:19:48] Craig Macmillan: We know that for like the pathogenic organisms, like the fungal ones, you know, they come in through wounds, whether that's a grafting or whether that's a pruning, we know that bacteria are introduced through things like piercing sucking insects. Like Leaf Hoppers and Peirce's disease. what is the, pathway for the bacteria and fungi that you find inside of a vine that are not the pathogens?

[00:20:10] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, you said it. the pathway is like from inside the vine, it's first of all inherited from the nursery. That's, that's the main pathway.

And then. Some of those organisms come from the soil, there's a fraction that comes from the soil and move throughout the plant systemically through the sap, the plant sap. So that's another pathway one of the major pathway. But again, that takes time. Right. And then, you have fewer introduction that comes through, you know, the plant natural openings, stomatas on the leaves, for instance.

Right. Or pruning wounds. Some organism when vines are pruned some organism common pruning wounds and are able to colonize down into the vascular system. That's another path. Or introduction through insects. And, you know, OSA is, you know, one of the best example of that being introduced with shop shooters. during feeding So, but I would say those, are minor introduction compared to what's already there when the vine is being planted and secondary to movement you know, sap movement throughout the plant, from the root to the upper part of the plant.

[00:21:29] Craig Macmillan: One thing that I saw mentioned is that these variations in The microbiome inside the plant may also have kind of a role in our concept of terroir in terms of how different areas have different characteristics. Is there, something to that idea?

[00:21:46] Philippe Rolshausen: the characteristic of wine region or the terroir is not only linked to the soil, the variety or the weather condition.

. It's also linked to the microbial communities associated with those vines. There has been a study that's very famous that was done 10 years ago at UC Davis that showed that. But it's mostly true for organisms that live on the plant surfaces the surface of the berries or the surface of the leaves.

It is not so true for organisms that live Inside the vasculature of the vine, just because of what we've talked about, just because it takes time for those communities to change over time. really those the microbial composition of the trunk is, from what we understand today, mostly inherited from what's coming from the nurseries.

you know, nurseries have a huge impact in shaping. the microbial communities of the trunk and the vines and you know, can you talk about terroir when it comes to the endosphere of the vine? I don't think so. I think it's, it's a debatable question. I think it's mostly true on epiphytic organism, organism that live on the vine surface just because they are more subject to the environment. Whereas it's not so true for trunk organisms,

[00:23:11] Craig Macmillan: , Even though we've been talking about the endophytic side, what's some of the things that the other parts do you were just talking about, we have a different community in the environment that's on the surface of the plant and that, that has a role in, you know, differences between regions in terroir. What impact are those kinds of organisms having on the physiology of the vine that contributes to those differences?

[00:23:35] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, that I don't know because, you know, that's not the field I've studied. But they, could influence the fermentation process, but I'm more interested in the one that live inside.

Do they have an impact on the wine quality itself, perhaps, you know, that's a question we're interested in. they have an impact on disease. We know that much because they, they affect disease outcome and we've shown that.

The question also, I think, from the standpoint of A grape grower or a winemaker is like, well, do they also affect winemaking?

we found some bacterium in the sap of grape vines that are present during the fermentation process. So lactobacillus, for instance we found those in the sap of grapes and some bacteria that also that spoil the wine fermentation process will also. Found them in the sap. So the question is like, are those, are those coming from the soil?

You know, where are they coming from? We find them in the sap and then can they go inside? Can they be moved to the berry of the grapes and then participate in the fermentation process later on? We don't know the answer to that question. The only thing we know so far is that we can detect them inside the plant stem.

And so. What is the impact? That's the question mark, but those are really relevant questions questions we're interested in because, if you can connect the root system to the cluster, and then if you can influence the root system or the microbial community of the root system, then perhaps you can influence the communities living in the cluster and then, you know, Later on, influence your fermentation process.

So that's the idea behind it. It will take time to decipher those questions.

[00:25:27] Craig Macmillan: Coming back to the pathology side. we have testing programs for virus in the nursery system. And we have the ability to test for fungal diseases, of course.

Do you see a role for testing for bacteria and fungi other than the pathogens at the nursery stage?

[00:25:48] Philippe Rolshausen: I don't think it makes sense. So we've been working with nurseries for several years now. And we are looking for where diseases are coming from prior to vineyard establishment. there's no certified program for fungal diseases and some bacterial disease like Crown gall.

there is a fraction of those pathogen that is coming from the nurseries. That's a fact and this is true for California, but this is true for everywhere else in the world. So if you get any. any vines from a nursery, you are going to find fungi causing grapevine trunk disease. And the reason is that there are over a hundred taxa of fungi causing grapevine trunk disease you will likely find one of them and not only that, but they are able to live on a different environment. And so they can live in soil, they can live in water, they can live in plant debris for some of them. And so you cannot get rid of them. I think that growers have to have the mindset that you are not going to be able to have plants free of pathogens causing fungal, grapevine, and trunk disease.

That's just not possible. Viruses, you can get rid of them and there is a certified program that works for that. This program would not work for fungi. It's just not realistic. Right. It would be too costly to do it. Right. Right. Right. Right. The question is like, can you live with it, right? Do pathogen causing grapevine trunk disease will cause the vine to die?

If that were the case, you would have no grape production in California because virtually all the vines are infected with one fungus causing grapevine trunk disease. that's not the case. It happens, it's called young vine decline, you know, when sometimes growers plant their vine. And the vine dies within five years.

But this is because what we understand now is that it's related to the stress factor that I was talking about earlier. there is something going on with the environmental stress that caused the vine to decline after five years. what we've done is to monitor the microbiome and the vine, like I've told before, following planting.

And we do capture those pathogen from the nursery to the vineyard. And they are evolving in the vineyard just and we can detect them. But under no stress conditions the vines are doing just fine. So every year a vine will lay out new wood, right? It will grow out some wood. The trunk gets bigger and bigger.

the fight between the trunk disease pathogen and the vine is if the vine can grow wood faster than it loses some to trunk disease, then it's fine, you know, it will be able to survive. Plants and grapes are able to compartmentalize the infection. They lay out walls to compartmentalize infection, and if they do that successfully, you know, Then they will survive now when you have a stress factor that comes into play and here you have to Go back and define well define stress this is where we go back and go back to your question about what stress are we talking about?

Heat a drought I think overcropping can be one of them also, when growers take tend to push the vine early on after the establishment to get into production quickly after two years. I view this as a stress factor, so this will influence the microbiome of the vine, living of the microbiome living inside the vine, and as a result, it will influence disease outcome.

[00:29:34] Craig Macmillan: I will not look at grapevines the same way. , is there one thing, one takeaway from this conversation that you'd like growers to hear

[00:29:44] Philippe Rolshausen: what we're trying to do is to identify cultural practices that are beneficial to production.

I think you, you have to look at it from a probiotic or prebiotic. Standpoint, just like we do for humans, you know. when you look at the prebiotics, those are similar to the cultural practices that you implement in vineyards to support the presence of beneficial organisms. that can be, you know, adding compost to your soil or cover cropping because they provide some benefits to the microbes living in the soil, and as a result, the microbe associated with the vine.

that's one of them. The probiotic is the addition of single microbes to the system identify which one of those probiotics using the metagenomics approach. And we've made some some stride in, in, in that research, we've identified several organisms that are beneficial to the plant and that are antagonistic to some of the disease.

So for instance Pierce's disease we've identified several organism living inside the vines that are antagonistic to PD. And today we are testing those organism in field trials at UC Davis. Because we've demonstrated that they, they work on the greenhouse condition. And now we moved on to field trials.

And when we inoculate those beneficial organisms to, or those probiotics to vine, they are able to stimulate the vine health in some capacity, or are being antagonistic to the pathogen in some capacity. And the vines are able to sustain the disease. So, the takeaway message from that is that we are making progress, you know, understanding what those probiotics and prebiotics are for viticulture.

[00:31:39] Craig Macmillan: That is great. and I'm really happy, That you're doing this work. It takes time Oh yeah, It takes time. Absolutely, that's, and that's, part of what we do here is we, bring people kind of what the future is looking like and what's possible because if you understand it, then when it does come along, The learning curve is already hopefully down the road a little ways. doing your homework, basically. thank you in your lab. This is really exciting. interesting stuff. Where can people find out more about you?

[00:32:09] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, they can go to the University of California, Riverside Botanical and Plant Sciences website. I'm a faculty member, so they will find me there.

I have also my personal website. Rolshausen. Slash lab. com. The problem is like the spelling of my name, right? It's not easy to do.

[00:32:27] Craig Macmillan: We'll have a link to that show page plus A a number of your recent publications.

[00:32:33] Philippe Rolshausen: Yeah, we have several publications about what we've talked about today.

We have just had one released about how pruning practices affect also the microbiome and, and disease. So. You know, this is an active area of research. I'm not the only one doing this. Like I've said, I've collaborated with Dario Cantu at UC Davis. And I think he should be mentioned because he's doing some excellent work.

And we are a great team working together. As a cooperative extension specialist, I collaborate with others. I collaborate with other faculty. And this is a collaborative work that I'm talking about. I'm not the only one,

[00:33:11] Craig Macmillan: there's a network. want to thank our guest, Philippe rolshausen. He is professor of cooperative extension with the university of California riverside and doing some very exciting work. And thanks for being on the podcast, Philippe.

[00:33:24] Philippe Rolshausen: Well, that was great. Thank you for having me.

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
5 September 2024, 4:00 am
2 minutes 15 seconds

242: How to Talk SIP With Your Wine Club | Marketing Tip Monday
[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: For your wine club members. Is there anything more exciting than delivery day? Unboxing the latest assortment, stir sweet memories of their last visit to the winery and welcomes them to once again, connect with your community.

[00:00:13] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While, our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable. Winegrowing.

[00:00:32] Your wine club newsletter prepares your customer for the delights ahead, but does it invite them to relish in the social and environmental virtues of their loyalty?

[00:00:42] Next time you send out a newsletter, include a sustainability tidbit. So your brands enthusiasts know that they're sipping sustainably.

[00:00:50] You can start by including a brief description of the sustainable practices at your property. For SIP certified brands, we talk about the seven values. Which includes social responsibility, wiper management, safe, pest management. Energy efficiency, habitat business, and always evolving.

[00:01:08] A great way to help your customers really see what you're doing to be sustainable is to share your sustainable story.

[00:01:15] You can talk about attracting barn owls and releasing beneficial insects to help manage pests naturally.

[00:01:22] You can share pictures of the native plants in your cover crop and explain how they benefit pollinators and help improve soil health.

[00:01:28] Or you could talk about how you treat winery, process water. So that it can be reused to irrigate the landscape or the vineyard.

[00:01:36] Your customers will love learning how your brand conserves and protects natural resources.
Tell Your Sustainable Story
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26 August 2024, 4:00 am
29 minutes 40 seconds

241: The Biochar Handbook – How to Make it and Use it in Your Vineyard
For thousands of years, wildfires have produced a byproduct known to improve soil and plant health - biochar. Today, researchers like Kelpie Wilson of Wilson Biochar Associates, Consulting and Manufacturing are learning how to use this form of charcoal for carbon sequestration. Kelpie explains the different stages of combustion, what types of material to include in your burn pile, incorporating biochar into compost, how to use biochar to amend alkaline or acetic soils, and an easy way to remove vineyard wires from your pile.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: For thousands of years, wildfires have produced a by-product known to improve soil and plant health. This is known as bio char. Welcome to sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth organic executive director. And since 1994 vineyard team has brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both in-field and online education, so that you can grow your business.

Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years. In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery. He speaks with Kelpie Wilson of Wilson, biochar associates consulting in manufacturing.

Kelpie explains the different stages of combustion.

What types of material to include in your burn pile? Incorporating bio char into compost. How to use bio char to amend alkaline or acidic soils and an easy way to remove vineyard wires from your pile.

If you love this topic, then you won't want to miss Josiah Hunt's presentation. Practical applications of pyrogenic, organic material, AKA biochar in vineyards. He shares his expertise at the sustainable ag expo taking place November 12th or 13th, 2024 in San Luis Obispo, California. joy, the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts.

Earn over 20 hours of continuing education and explore sustainable ag vendors. As a listener to this show, you can take $50 off of your ticket when you use code podcast 24 at checkout. Get yours [email protected]. Now let's listen in.

[00:02:00] Craig Macmillan: Our guest, today is Kelpie Wilson. She's the owner of Wilson Biochar Associates, consulting and manufacturing. And as you may have guessed today, we're going to talk about biochar. Welcome to the podcast, Kelpie.

[00:02:08] Kelpie Wilson: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

[00:02:11] Craig Macmillan: What exactly is biochar?

[00:02:13] Kelpie Wilson: Biochar is just charcoal, but it's special charcoal that, uh, you can use in soil or for purposes of carbon sequestration. That's the official definition from the International Biochar Initiative.

[00:02:27] Craig Macmillan: And what does biochar do for us in the vineyard?

[00:02:30] Kelpie Wilson: Well, it sequesters carbon, so it's a very stable form of carbon. Uh, Carbon comes in a lot of different forms. I mean, we're all made of carbon, and, you know, carbon can be a diamond, which is really stable, or it can be in a sugar, which, uh, you um, oxidized into CO2 pretty quickly. So uh, in is very, in a very stable form um, it's called aromatic carbon, so it's fused carbon rings.

which are the basis of all organic chemistry. biochar is. It's carbon. The thing about biochar and charcoal is that charcoal can have, you know, widely ranging different properties depending on how you make it and what it's made from. And I should add also that uh, in the definition of biochar, For use in soil or for use in carbon sequestration, it needs to be made from organic you know, that is clean.

So there are some environmental kind of limits around it that ensure that it's, it's really contributing to the carbon cycle in a positive way and that we're not making Materials that have, you know, toxics in them that could hurt soil.

[00:03:41] Craig Macmillan: So we're introducing carbon in a fairly stable people have told me that the carbon that you put into the soil in the form of biochar could be there for thousands of years, but it's obviously available somehow, or it's involved in the soil microbiome somehow, or it's involved in nutrient cycling somehow.

What are some of the properties that contribute to that soil health component,

[00:04:00] Kelpie Wilson: Well, There's there's quite a few. The interesting thing about biochar is that it's naturally present in soils in many, many parts of the world because of fire, from vegetation fires, forest fires, it's it's supposed to be there in many cases. Uh, Especially here in the, in the in the west coast where we uh, natural fire regime in the forest.

And if you look at the most productive soils in the world, for instance, the mollisols in Iowa or the um, in the Eurasian steppe, they have large amounts of biochar Um, In the case of the steppes and the plains, that's because of prairie fires. So you have these tall, tall grasses that would periodically burn off very regularly, like every 10 years or so, and the top would burn off in a flame, and that heat would radiate you know, kind of just above the root zone, the grasses are bunched up really thick, and some air is excluded, so they wouldn't burn all the way to ash, but the heat would turn it to char, the flame would move on, and you'd be left with char, and so this char builds up over years and centuries, and, you know, hundreds of centuries to make this a very black soil and then there are other places around the world historically going back thousands of years where it was deliberately to add to soil.

So those are the terra preta soils in the Amazon naturally normally didn't have a lot of fires. And look, also can look at charcoal middens around ancient villages and even city states where people would dump their manure and their, you know, their hue manure, their night soil, and they would always deodorize it with charcoal and ash, and you find very fertile black soils in those places.

So, it's not a new thing um, but we just kind of recently rediscovered So, as far as what it does in soil, you know, it doesn't break down. Like, you know, you asked, well, then how does it feed the It it sets the table. So It's the stable carbon with these fused carbon rings. It doesn't break down easily.

And we'll also have the mineral ash. from the vegetation that burned. And so that's food. And then it also needs the carbs and the protein. So, and that comes from all the fertilizer that you add to it. So it basically sets the table for soil life because microbes like to sit down when they

eat. And so you have all these little surfaces.

In the charcoal, it's very, very porous. You know, think of activated carbon. People know that activated carbon is used for filtration. It's got all these pores. And so, in that way, it's kind of like a sponge. It can hold air and soil, which is beneficial. But also, there's the surface area. So, each of those tiny pores has a surface around it.

And when you add up all the surface area, and this is kind of mind boggling, It's But you take a teaspoon of, of or, you know, that's got a lot of surface area or an activated carbon and it can have a football field's worth of surface area all inside It's, you know, it's, it's, it's amazing to think about, but all those surfaces are where the microbes can sit down and attach themselves.

And if we, if we have added fertilizer as well, there are nutrients and water. Attached to those surfaces by electrostatic attraction. So the microbes just can hang out there and, and it's all there for them. So that's how biochar promotes um, the soil food web by, uh, promoting the microbes. And then the their mycelia in there to, you know, get it's a foundation of good soil.

[00:07:42] Craig Macmillan: And you were talking about the fertilizer part. Is that one of the reasons why it's a good idea or a common practice to mix biochar with compost and spread it in that form?

[00:07:50] Kelpie Wilson: Yes, but I would not just mix it with compost if I have any choice at all. I would put it in the beginning of the composting That's where you're going to get the most benefit know, it just takes time for all these things to come And so If you start it from the beginning, not only do you get the nutrients and the biology in there right you're um, having um, beneficial impact on your composting So, You'll have fewer greenhouse gas uh, the compost will get hotter quicker uh, and you know, the char will absorb any kind of nasty stuff that's in there, reduce odors, etc. it's really, The thing about biochar and to make it really work for you in a, in a farm um, is to get every, Benefit you can out of it.

And there's a whole cascade of benefits that come with biochar.

[00:08:40] Craig Macmillan: we can talk about that some more, but let's get to some practical things. Let's say I'm interested in this. I've been hearing about it. I'm excited about it. I want to try this out. How can I make some high quality biochar with the least amount of emissions and the highest biochar production on my farm?

[00:08:57] Kelpie Wilson: Great So I've been working on this for quite a while. When I first heard about biochar, it was, I think, 2007, and it was the terra preta soils that we were all hearing about. I immediately got involved in it. I went to work for the International Biochar you know, was in close touch with people all around the world.

that we're trying to find ways to start making and using biochar, and a lot of the first people to actually do it were people who uh, you know, making little cook stoves or just making biochar in burn piles, and I saw that myself because I live in the woods here in Oregon, and I'd go out to where they did burn piles to, you know, We had a lot of extra vegetation that had to be thinned to protect from wildfire.

And I'd go to these burn piles and I'd find little chunks of charcoal left in them. And so we started making, doing experiments to see if we could optimize that. And we figured out make, take a burn pile and light it from the top. So it burned from the top down, and that would burn up a lot of the smoke so it was cleaner, and also leave us with a little pile of glowing coals at the end.

And anybody who's made a campfire has seen this. You have that pile of glowing coals, and if you just walk away and leave it, it'll all go to ash. But if you just simply put it out with water, hey, you've got biochar. So that's the way to start, and you can can do it in your a, with a kettle grill.

You know, just a little container that will improve the biochar recovery because if you cut off the air that comes in from and the sides of your you, you will just burn less of it to And again, you just put it out with water. So then I started making containers to improve the efficiency.

compared to making biochar in an open burn pile, if you put it in a container, You can make three or four times as much so, I've been working with little containers ever those, We call those flame cap kilns. Because the idea of how they work is you put your, make your burn pile in a container.

It's cutting off air from the bottom and the sides. So all the air comes from the And as it burns down, you keep adding more. And every time you add more material, it flames up. And the char that you've already formed on the bottom is protected from air by the container. And it's protected from air from the top because all the air that comes in is used in the flame of the currently burning material.

And so what you've already made is, is protected from oxygen. So you can build up a huge pile of char in a container, and you're only limited by the size of your container, really.

[00:11:34] Craig Macmillan: So the practice is put your feedstock in a container something that cuts off the bottom the sides from the air Light it from the top with kindling or something I would assume something lighter weight and then as that process goes and you can see the material come back Well, is it truly combustion if there's not a lot of oxygen?

[00:11:51] Kelpie Wilson: Well, uh, I call it combustus interruptus. So basically it is combustion, but combustion happens in stages. Okay. myths combustion. One is um, wood wood burns, wood does not burn. Wood gas burns in a And you can see this if you look at your charcoal grill, you see, there's not a flame.

Because the gas has already been mostly, you know, burned out of it. And so it just glows. So there's different stages of combustion. The first one is dehydration. When you heat a stick of um, water's going to come off of it, because water doesn't burn. And then the gases come out, and those are, methane, carbon burnable, burnable gases, and those make the flame.

And then when the flame goes out, you know, you just, that glowing coal stage. So it's, it's really staged combustion, and you're just interrupting and saving the char.

[00:12:49] Craig Macmillan: If I understand you correctly by putting more material on the top I'm continuing that process. The stuff on this top is heating up. You're getting that, flame cap. So you described it. And I can just keep layering on until my container's full. Basically.

[00:13:04] Kelpie Wilson: Yep, that's how we do

[00:13:06] Craig Macmillan: I want to come back to the kiln idea, but first, what are the, what are good feedstocks to make biochar from? What are feedstocks that are not good for making biochar? Right. Right.

Uh

[00:13:19] Kelpie Wilson: Good feedstocks are dry.

You don't want a lot of wet stuff, because you use a lot of energy burning the wet. , Good feedstocks are also appropriately sized. So grapevines, for instance, are good because they're not really big. Even the trunk of a vine is not really big. And so if you try to put a big log in your container on your fire, you use so much energy to get the heat into the center of the log.

So it's a progressive thing, right? You're charring the outside, and the heat's moving in, it's charring and charring and charring. But meanwhile, the outside of your char is starting to burn to ash. So it's not very efficient to try and char a big log. The kind of limit depends a lot on the fuel moisture.

In Utah, we're We have really dry wood. People are putting six and eight inch diameter logs in a kiln and doing fine. In Oregon, I kind of keep it to four inches, usually. But you know, we could do bigger stuff. It's just not quite as efficient. So dry less than 25 percent moisture is ideal. We can do wetter stuff, and we often do because we're here in the middle of winter trying to get burn piles taken care of. So we go ahead and do it, and there's some techniques for optimizing how you do that, how you load it. But dry, less than 25%. and not too big, but also not too small. I've really tried hard to biochar hemp stalks, for instance, which are abundant around here, and they're just a little too small.

if they're dry, they do pretty well, but you have to really make sure you don't pack them in too tightly because, small, small things like straw, and crop waste like that, they will pack and cut off the airflow and you'll get smoke.

[00:15:07] Craig Macmillan: Oh,

okay.

[00:15:08] Kelpie Wilson: That's the main issue is you get smoke.

And then as far as what species, the main difference between different species of wood, for instance, is density.

And because we're making biochar in a flame, we're making it at a very high temperature. So it's, as long as we're not smoldering it, As long as we have the flame present, we know we're making it at a high enough temperature to burn out most of the volatiles. Know, some species like eucalyptus or walnut might have chemicals in them that are allelopathic, I think is the term.

And if you add a lot of that to soil, you could have problems. But as long as we're making it at high temperature, we burn most of that out.

[00:15:50] Craig Macmillan: Got it. So we want things that are dry. We want things that are woody, that are relatively high in concentration. Things like grasses are probably not going to work as well or work terribly well. It sounds like you want chunks basically, you know, something about the size of your forearm or a little bit bigger chunk would be a really

great, size.

[00:16:09] Kelpie Wilson: that's a great way to look at it. I like the physical measurements. You know, I was telling woofers here the other day about how to, make biochar compost. And so we're doing it in layers. And I just said, think about Parmesan cheese. When you add the biochar, if you really like Parmesan on your pizza, just add the biochar like that.

So those kinds of physical measurements are really helpful for people when they're learning how to use biochar.

[00:16:33] Craig Macmillan: and returning to that topic you recommend putting biochar in your composting windrows at the beginning as part of the whole process.

[00:16:41] Kelpie Wilson: Yes.

The very beginning when I think about a vineyard, especially one where you're actually making the wine know, you're pressing the grapes and you have the is it called

pomace? I think the grape skins that's easily degradable stuff. It's hard to, compost just on its own because it doesn't have much carbon, but if you add biochar to that, you can make a beautiful compost.

And then great for reducing on farm inputs. contributing to the circular economy. And that's always how I recommend people use biochar if possible, is find whatever other organic waste streams are there, whether it's grass clippings, grape pomace, leaves, anything else, manure that you might have, mix it right in there.

[00:17:27] Craig Macmillan: Makes tons of sense. Okay. Let's get down to the nitty gritty here. We've touched on kilns as a way of getting the highest production. Tell me about the Ring of Fire Kiln system the concept in general. And then what might, what might be a biochar production day like?

[00:17:42] Kelpie Wilson: The Ring of Fire kiln is my latest, greatest design. Just bin kilns, but they were heavy. So They were, weighing a lot, and you had to, move them around, and very hard for one person. So I came up with this modular design of panels. And so you can hook them together.

They're four feet long and 40 inches tall, and they have a bracket that hooks them all together, and you can make a kiln any size you want. with that. I mean, not too big, but usually we make kilns that are between six feet and 12 feet in diameter. And so that can accommodate the piles you already have, for instance.

And then the other innovation with that kiln is it has a heat shield. And that's really important for two reasons. One is it holds more heat in the kiln so you get more production. It's more efficient. But the other one is that it protects the worker. Because when you are around a giant , flaming pile, you know, you can really get fried just from the radiant heat.

You know, you're not burning up, but you, the radiant heat, I would come away from some of my sessions with very red skin and very dehydrated. And so we really think a lot about the workers who are doing this. Because it's mostly hand labor, although we can also load the bigger kilns with, machinery. that's the Ring of Fire Kiln. It's also very, very clean, and there's a gap between the heat shield and the inner ring that allows, um, air to come through, and then so you have preheated air that's going in from the top into the kiln. And that also helps a lot with, uh, Reducing the smoke. And I have lots of pictures and videos showing the smoke being sucked into the kiln from the top.

It's really cool to see these loops of smoke kind of coming up and then being sucked back down into the kiln. Those are the advantages of the ring of fire kiln in addition to the fact that it's modular. One person can take it apart and move it one panel at a time. The panels only weigh less than 40 pounds and set it up somewhere else.

That's, that's the other advantage of the ring of fire kiln. So a typical workday, and I'm going to quote some numbers from my colleague Eric Meyer, who has Napa char, and he's done some incredible work in vineyards in the last couple years. Here's what he says He can make up to 12 cubic yards of biochar per kiln per day, which is two bone dry tons.

And that is equivalent to two to three acres of pulled mines. he'll do this usually with one helper. Sometimes he'll have a, a mini excavator that he uses to load it, but a lot of times he's just doing it, you know, as hand labor. And so that's a ;lot of biochar, two tons of biochar in one day. He'll start by arriving at the site, setting up his kiln, and then just hand loading the biochar initially, fill it full, light it on top.

There's a little break where you let it burn down till you start seeing glowing coals at the bottom and, some ash on the top. And then you just load it one layer at a time. And the loading rate is really critical. If you overload, you get smoke and you'll end up maybe even with unburned pieces in the bottom because the flame moves up in the kiln as you add more material and the bottom starts cooling off.

You don't want to leave any big pieces at the bottom. We load small pieces initially. And if you have bigger pieces, you would load them kind of toward the end or in the middle. And then when it's all full of biochar, or you're just done for the day because you're tired, you get some water out and you spray the kiln down with water just to cool it.

Then you open up the panels, and rake it out, and you spray it with water and rake it at the same time. So you end up with a big, big patch of biochar on the ground.

[00:21:29] Craig Macmillan: Perfect. Then you take that to your composting spot and away you go. .

[00:21:32] Kelpie Wilson: another piece about making biochar from vineyards, especially vineyard removals, is that a lot of times there's wire, trellis wire, in it. And you could have a big pile and you could build a kiln around the pile because you're not untangling that pile, right, with all the wire in it.

And then at the end, uh, you know, you pick the wire out of the char. You can use a magnet.

[00:21:52] Craig Macmillan: That's cool. What are some things that we should be concerned about not doing? If we are newbies to biochar production.

[00:22:00] Kelpie Wilson: Yeah, that's a really good question too. So, you need to know a little bit about your biochar. If you have a lot of ash in it, it can be alkaline. So if you have an alkaline soil, and you have alkaline biochar, you need to think about how you're going to apply it and maybe, usually composting will take care of any pH issue.

If you have an acidic soil, you might want to just add it directly. You know, take the most advantage you can get of that liming ability. You also don't want to add too much at one time, especially without composting it first, because it can, , lock up nutrients for a short time. Most likely you're not gonna have too much biochar for a, for a big field. Um, It's great to be able to do it a little bit every year. That's the best way to incorporate it.

[00:22:47] Craig Macmillan: Oh, and that's another question. I've seen different strategies here. Some folks believe that it has to be incorporated into the soil. Other folks say, no, that's good, but you can go ahead and spread it at the surface and you'll still get some benefits. Is that true?

[00:22:58] Kelpie Wilson: Well, it's going to depend a lot on what you're trying to grow. So the vineyard trials that I've seen using biochar, a lot of times they're putting it in at planting and they're putting it in deep in the root zone. That seems like a good idea to me. One thing I'll say is when I look at the literature, I read a lot of the biochar research literature.

There's some really interesting new material out about replant disease. So if you're replanting in a vineyard, you know, in an old vineyard, new vines. The soil can harbor pathogens that the older vines were able to resist, but the new vines have a hard time with. And biochar has a lot of benefits for disease resistance, just because it promotes a lot of microbial diversity, so you don't get the dominance with some of the pathogenic fungi and other organisms.

So, you know, adding it, deep You know, when you're doing the replanting, replacing a vineyard is probably the most beneficial way, to add biochar. But if you already have a vineyard and you're using cover cropping, for instance, it'll go really well with a legume cover crop like clover and you don't even need to compost it because clover and legumes fix their own nitrogen and And biochar is especially wonderful with legume crops because it promotes the nitrogen fixing bacteria. If I just had a couple bags of biochar and I wanted to use it right away, and I was, planting a cover crop, I'd just use it in the cover crop. I think vines are like any other plant, where they have roots that come up close to the surface, they can get benefit from surface applied biochar as well.

[00:24:39] Craig Macmillan: So if I'm following this idea, so from a cover cropping standpoint, what am I going to do is broadcast it and then plant my cover crop. That'd be one way of building the health of the whole floor, which is a really good idea. What about banding? It's very popular to band compost right into the vine row.

If I have compost that's got biochar in it, will I get those benefits as well?

[00:24:59] Kelpie Wilson: I would totally think so. The other thing about biochar is that it holds water. So, you know, in, droughty areas that would be helpful to,

[00:25:08] Craig Macmillan: If there was one thing, just one piece of advice that you had for folks, Who are interested in starting to produce biochar and use biochar. Let's talk about it one for production and one thing for use. What would that be? What would that two part advice be?

[00:25:25] Kelpie Wilson: first of all, uh, get one of my ring of fire biochar kilns. It's a, you know, it's really economic. And second of all, buy my book, the biochar handbook, because I have all kinds of information in there about composting, you know, different ways to culture biochar, build soil. Well, you know, so sorry to be so nakedly promotional there, but

[00:25:50] Craig Macmillan: Well, you know, you're directing, you're directing people towards resources,

[00:25:53] Kelpie Wilson: right.

[00:25:53] Craig Macmillan: Anything else?

[00:25:54] Kelpie Wilson: Oh, well, I'll send you some other resources, too, that you don't have to buy the book. Check out the U. S. Biotar Initiative website. There's a Biotar Learning Center there and USBI has collected a lot of resources there. fact sheets, their seminars, webinars. There is a lot of biochar information out there.

And I will say I've watched a few YouTube videos that are just. Make me cringe it is so easy to experiment with it yourself, which is great. It's really great that people experiment with it. And I think, feel free, you know, do your own experiments. , there's some not so great information out there that, you might want to just do your own work and look at the more authoritative sources like that the USBI before you take what a YouTuber says as, as gospel about biochar.

So I guess my one advice really on both, topics of production and application is just jump in and try it. It's so easy. You know, make it, make a bonfire in your backyard or, any kind of little container. You could dig a little shallow pit in the ground and, just make some biochar, then you've got some.

Now do some, greenhouse trials. You know, see how it interacts with your soil because every soil is different. And so, check the pH, add it to, you know, your soil, and, grow a seedling. it's very easy to do some experiments. I actually have, in my book, a whole procedure for how to do a, scientifically valid experiment. Uh, Pot trial in the greenhouse, so you can really, step by step, you can really look and see how it compares with other amendments, try it in your compost pile, use a compost thermometer, it's not straightforward how to use it in compost, because again, compost like soil, it's going to have a lot of different kinds of ingredients, biochar does really interesting things, in compost, so.

Just try it.

[00:27:46] Craig Macmillan: Just try it. Like that's great advice. Our guest today has been Kelpie Wilson. She's the owner of Wilson Biochar Associates Consulting and Manufacturing. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. This has been some really great practical, actionable information, which is what we like to bring our listeners.

As Kelpie mentioned, we're going to have a lot of links to things and resources and whatnot on the show notes. So be sure to travel to that page. I'm finding that this is a growing topic of interest, but I'm finding that there's more and more folks that are trying it, and we're all very excited for what the potential might be.

[00:28:17] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by San agro. WestBridge is now San aggro. When the opportunity came to expand their reach and improve their customer's bottom line, they took it. San Agros commitment to deliver science-based solutions for sustainable crop health and nutrition remains the same.

They offer a full line of plant nutrients, bio pesticides, and specialty inputs. Visit San agro.com to learn more.

Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Kelpie her new book, the bio char handbook, a practical guide to making and using bioactivated charcoal loads, more links to bio char plus sustainable Winegrowing podcast episodes. 56 conservation burning and bio char. 1 0 6, what? Barry charcoal and the vineyard. 1 67. Used bio char to combat climate change and two 15 bio char production on a commercial scale. If you'd liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend. Subscribing and leaving us a review.

You can find all of the podcasts on vineyard team.org/podcast. And you can reach [email protected]. Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.

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15 August 2024, 4:00 am
3 minutes 40 seconds

240: Stacking Energy Savings at Niner Wine Estates | Marketing Tip Monday
[00:00:00] Customer sense of urgency around climate change is rising. In fact, 78% of global consumers feel that environmental sustainability is important.

[00:00:10] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with sip certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable while our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:29] Customers like the idea of being sustainable and want to live more sustainable lives. While, many brands and retailers today are making eco-friendly claims. Some chalk up to little more than greenwashing. A marketing ploy designed to make products seem more sustainable than they are. Because of this consumers can feel that they can't always trust green claims.

[00:00:50] It is more important than ever for sustainable brands like you to share your sustainable story in a meaningful and authentic way.

[00:00:58] In this week's marketing tip. We share a great example. With Niner wine estates, sustainable story on the value of energy efficiency.

[00:01:06] Electricity use in the winery accounts for a large proportion of the end products, energy demand. From keeping buildings and tanks at proper temperatures to powering equipment and lighting energy use in the winery adds up quickly. Anticipating increasing energy demand and cost. Niner wine estates built its winery into a hillside. Because of this, the ground level on one side of the building is a couple of stories higher. Then the ground level on the other side. This wasn't a flaw in the design, rather, a strategy to allow for a gravity flow winemaking system. are brought into the facility at the top level, instead of being transferred by machines, the grapes move with gravity down the tiers of the building through each stage of the winemaking process.

[00:01:51] Another other energy efficient benefit of the hillside is that the earth surrounding the building works as a natural insulator, reducing the need for a cooling system to keep the facility at optimal temperatures. is another element that Niner wine estates utilizes large windows in the production facility and tasting rooms allow sunlight to fill these buildings during the day. When they do need electricity. The grid is not their primary source. Since 2015, the majority of their tasting room restaurant. Wineries and Wells have been powered by the sun. There are two banks of high efficient solar panels on the property. One at the top of their winery building and the other on the ground next to their tasting room.

[00:02:33] Additional solar panels can be found in the parking lot, but they aren't used to power business operations.

[00:02:39] solar banks are on top of EVs charging stations, welcoming staff and guests to plug in while they enjoy their time at nine or wine estates.

[00:02:47] Together. All of these components have a significant impact on Niner wine estates, energy efficiency. them to symbols of sustainability, achievement, sip certified and lead a certified level. Silver. Make sure you check out the show notes. For the link called stacking energy savings, sustainable story at Niner wine estates to see pictures of their energy efficient facility.

[00:03:13] here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the sustainable story program. This simple, yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal and it just got better. With the upgraded online course, go to the show notes, click the link titled tell your sustainable story. To sign up and start writing yours today.

[00:03:35] Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
Tell Your Sustainable Story
We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.

This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!

Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
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12 August 2024, 4:00 am
28 minutes 23 seconds

239: Ford Pro Pilot Project – Trialing Electric Trucks in the Field
We regularly hear about eclectic tractors but have you tried an electric truck? Duff Bevill, Founder and Partner and Brooke Parsons, Viticulture Analyst at Bevill Vineyard Management were part of the Ford Pro Pilot Project. They tested the capacity of an electric van, truck towing capabilities, and battery life of electric vehicles during day to day farming operations. The pair discuss the benefits of tracking GPS and maintenance through Ford’s Telematics and the things you need to consider when looking to add an electric truck to your fleet.
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Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript
[00:00:05] Beth Vukmanic: We regularly hear about electric tractors, but have you tried an electric truck? Welcome to sustainable wine growing with Vineyard Team. Where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, executive director. Since 1994, we have brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools. Through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.

[00:00:37] In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with long time SIP Certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery. Speaks with Duff Bevill. Founder and partner. And Brooke Parsons, viticulture analyst at Bevill vineyard management.

[00:00:55] They were part of the Ford probe pilot project, where they tested the capacity of an electric van. Truck towing capabilities and battery life of electric vehicles during day-to-day farming operations. The pair discussed the benefits of tracking GPS and maintenance through Ford telematics and the things you need to consider when looking to add an electric truck to your fleet.

[00:01:17] . Because you listened to this podcast, you won't want to miss the premier wine growing event of the year, the Sustainable Ag Expo. Enjoy the perfect blend of in-person and online learning. Speak directly with national experts earn over 20 hours of continuing education. And explore sustainable ag. Vendors. It all takes place.

[00:01:38] November 12th through 13th, 2024 at the Madonna Inn expo center in San Luis Obispo, California. As a listener to this podcast, take $50 off of your ticket. When you use code podcast 24 at checkout. Get yours today at sustainableagexpo.org. Now let's listen in.

[00:01:56] Craig Macmillan: Our guests today are Duff Bevill and Brooke Parsons. Duff is owner of Bevill Vineyard Management in Sonoma County. And Brooke Parsons is Viticulture Analyst with Bevill Vineyard Management. And we're going to talk about the Ford Pro Pilot Project that they're involved in. Thanks for being on the podcast.

[00:02:19] Duff Bevill: You bet, man.

[00:02:19] We're happy to be here.

[00:02:20] Craig Macmillan: So Duff, what exactly is this project? How'd you get involved in it? Give us a little history.

[00:02:26] Duff Bevill: Yeah, back in I think it was September, October of 2021. Well, I'm involved with the Sonoma County growers organization and Carissa Cruz, our president and Carissa.

[00:02:37] Got a name of somebody to call. And she made a cold call to a Ford motor company. And then I think one more phone call after that. And she got in touch with Ford pro told him what we were interested in doing. Thought whether it was a perfect fit because our sustainability program that we've you know, managed now for more than a decade, well over a decade.

[00:02:54] And Ford sent someone from Detroit out here to meet with us over dinner and another representative out of Sacramento that was, I think, a lobbyist for Ford, I can't remember exactly. His role, but both of them came out here and she cold called a couple of us to come and have dinner with his middle of harvest and yeah, we hit it off and she went back to I guess, technically Dearborn and told them back there that we were legitimate and she thought that they should pursue something with us.

[00:03:19] So that, that was in September, October, then in November around Thanksgiving. A team from Ford came to meet with us. They want to know size of our fleet of vehicles. They're just trying to get some, to find out how legitimate we might be. And they went back positive. And then the following January, so it'd be January of 2022 Ford came out full blown to Sonoma County, out to the Dutton Ranch.

[00:03:43] And we had a big, giant press release. President Jim Farley came out from Ford, all on film, gave a talk and that sort of thing, and it was a big deal. So that really launched, it's really January of 2022. Roughly probably March, I think it was, of 2022, they didn't have the lightened pickup trucks available yet.

[00:04:01] That was still, suffering from COVID, you know, and, and Production was down. So , they actually had some Ford vans, electric vans, which they just gave us a try and Brooke she was basically assigned that van and tried to figure out what to do with it. And so we, all collectively came up with an idea on how to use the vans, although you know, they're just not a fit for farming, but we made, we made it work out.

[00:04:23] And then I think it was in June, we finally pick up the lightning. So June of 2022, we've got the lightnings. And then what we did was we gave Ford feedback. We met with engineers, either Zoom or in person on a pretty regular basis for the better part of a year. More than a year probably.

[00:04:40] Just getting feedback from a farming point of view, you know, from us using vehicles in the field. And each one of the three companies used them differently and to gather information. I personally wanted to drive it so I could see. How it would work if I want to buy more, would actually work for me .

[00:04:56] I know one of the other companies used to have their shop mechanics use it and another company had one of their field foreman use it. So all of us really tried something different with it and for different reasons. But anyways, that's how it worked out. And we just fed information back and forth, making recommendations, you know, see if there's any flaws that Came up and we'd report back immediately to them.

[00:05:14] We saw something that Could be improved or or ask why it was the way it was that sort of thing

[00:05:20] Craig Macmillan: And we're talking about a completely electric vehicle that's designed for farm use Is that right?

[00:05:25] Duff Bevill: The concept of ford pro so I got my ford hat on right now the concept of ford pro It's a division that was created to really focus on business people with fleets so farming was a connection I don't think they thought of until we reached out to them.

[00:05:42] I think on paper, originally they were looking at the local contractor. You know, the guy was he drove it personally, he was the contractor, or he had a couple carpenters working for him. I think that was probably it initially. Whether they were thinking of farming at all until we reached out to them.

[00:05:58] I don't know. They almost certainly weren't thinking of wine grape growing on the west coast. I think that the whole name Ford Pro, it was really targeted to professional business people who would normally have a pickup truck and how they could adapt using electric vehicle.

[00:06:15] Craig Macmillan: I wasn't familiar with this until this came up for this episode. Is this product line is, is that commercially available at the time that you approached them? Is it available now? Is it still in kind of a testing state?

[00:06:26] Duff Bevill: They weren't available yet, but they were marketing in the summer of for sure the fall, but certainly the summer of 2021.

[00:06:33] I saw ads on TV or Something that would pop up on a website. If you're on Googling something else on a Ford pro for a lightning come up for 10 seconds and disappeared on it. It was a little bit of a tease at that point. But I know the one I got or the one that we have now was number one Oh nine.

[00:06:48] Craig Macmillan: Okay.

[00:06:49] Duff Bevill: I used to kid them asking, tell them I wanted number one, but they wouldn't give it to me. But I got number one oh nine and, they were just beginning to market it you know, shortly after Covid hit. And so they continued to in, in 2021, you know, we were basically all shut down in 2020.

[00:07:05] And 2021 was still pretty disastrous, but they were but all their production facilities were shut down. I mean, they came to a halt just like everybody else. So I think they anticipated getting out there, marketing earlier, making it available earlier. But I think the biggest stumbling block was for, I think a lot of manufacturers, they just didn't have the chips from the big chip manufacturer in Hong Kong.

[00:07:25] And that was what it boiled down to. I think it was true for all the car companies. Yeah.

[00:07:30] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. I remember that.

[00:07:31] Duff Bevill: That was, you had to get that out there. And so they had a marketing plan. They created a division. They had a president of the division identified. The marketing team was in place.

[00:07:38] All the engineers were shifted to the Ford pro team. You know, we got to meet almost all those people, I could, make a phone call to one of the head engineers anytime I wanted to, or send them a text or an email.

[00:07:49] Craig Macmillan: Wow.

[00:07:50] Duff Bevill: It was a real interesting experience.

[00:07:53] Craig Macmillan: And you said you got a van first, is that right?

[00:07:56] Duff Bevill: Yeah, Brooke drove it, yeah.

[00:07:57] Craig Macmillan: That got handed over to you, Brooke. What was that like? Did you have experience with electric vehicles prior to that? Did you have experience with vans prior to that? Were you, Pickup truck person.

[00:08:05] Brooke Parsons: Good questions. Yes. I had never driven a van much prior, especially for viticultural tasks. Before using the e transit, I used a pickup with a trailer that I would load a four wheeler onto the trailer and the e transit took the place of the trailer and the pickup. So I loaded With a ramp. The four wheeler inside.

[00:08:31] Craig Macmillan: Oh, it was a pretty good sized vehicle then.

[00:08:33] Duff Bevill: Yeah. A half ton chassis. It was basically F-150 chassis, but the van, you know?

[00:08:38] Craig Macmillan: Oh like a panel van.

[00:08:40] Duff Bevill: Exactly.

[00:08:41] Craig Macmillan: Oh, okay. I was thinking like in a condo van.

[00:08:44] This is more like a panel van. You got room to put stuff in. That makes sense. More like a, more like a service truck.

[00:08:48] Brooke Parsons: Like a service truck. So I'd open the back of it to load the four wheeler, but I could also open the side to access my tools and whatnot. It was nice.

[00:08:59] Duff Bevill: They actually outfitted it with shelving. Which would have been perfect if you were like a plumber or an electrician. But with the shelving it made the bay too narrow that we couldn't even fit the four wheeler and ATVs, so we had to take the shelving out so we could use it for that purpose.

[00:09:14] You know, we just substitute trailer and a pickup truck for the van. But how long did you drive that van?

[00:09:20] Brooke Parsons: I drove it for one full season, so May or June through the end of harvest.

[00:09:25] Craig Macmillan: How did you find that? Cause you see that all the time. You see the truck with the trailer, with the ATV in the back.

[00:09:30] How did you find that moving up to a van? Did you find it easier to drive? More difficult? Were you not as confident

[00:09:34] Brooke Parsons: I loved it because I didn't have to worry about a trailer and I didn't have to unload it each night to put it in the barn. So I just closed it all up and it was safe inside the van.

[00:09:46] If I went anywhere. I felt safe to leave the four wheeler locked inside and it wouldn't be tampered with. It was simple enough to bring back to the shop and charge every day and be ready to go the next morning.

[00:10:01] Craig Macmillan: That was gonna be my next question, Brooke. So when you first started with this, did you have any concerns about range?

[00:10:05] Duff Bevill: All of us do.

[00:10:07] Brooke Parsons: Yeah, that was the number one concern was range. For our operation, we farm all in Sonoma County and in a given day, I wasn't driving more than say a hundred miles in the van and it did make a difference in the range, whether or not I had weight in the vehicle or not, or if I use the heat or not.

[00:10:32] I didn't have as much range in the van as the Ford Lightning. And I had to be careful there were a couple of scary moments that I thought I'd have to call Somebody to come get me, but I never ultimately ran out of power

[00:10:48] Craig Macmillan: So with a little practice and a little experience, you knew

[00:10:51] Duff Bevill: If you were to buy a a ford lightning, I don't know about the other electric vehicles in the ford product line But for sure the lightning you would have a choice of, I think, two different battery packs.

[00:11:02] One they refer to, I believe it's just standard. And then they had a second option or an option that would be the extended battery. My understanding at the time, the Ford, pro version of the Ford Lightning came with a standard battery. But when they heard I was, you know, initially I was getting over 300 miles in a charge, I asked them about that and they said let us get back to you.

[00:11:22] Well, a week later they got back and said, oh yeah, that's right, we set yours up, or the three, but for sure mine, the one we still have, with the big battery. They sort of custom built that truck. These three are one offs in that first early run of the heavier battery pack, which to me and I suggested this to him, if the marketing is intended to be to the professional business owner driving a pickup truck, I think Ford pro should just be, you have a standard big battery in it for those reasons.

[00:11:50] They may do that. I have no idea. You're got a professional driver. He's in there going from. The lumber yard to the job site down to the Supply depot for something else. I would just think that's just based on our habits in the farming industry.

[00:12:03] You're shuffling around and it seems to me that'd be a good option, but anyways, It worked out great for me.

[00:12:08] Craig Macmillan: So you've been driving the lightning now for a little while, right?

[00:12:11] Duff Bevill: I drove it for the first two I guess nine months just so I could assess How I might want to buy more of them for , our operation here.

[00:12:19] We buy a couple of pickup trucks every year. I gave , the, pickup to Brooke. So she now drives the pickup cause we turned the van back in.

[00:12:25] Craig Macmillan: I figured that might get kicked back to you so Brooke now you've driven the van now you're driving the truck How do you feel about the truck?

[00:12:31] Brooke Parsons: It handles better than any vehicle. I've ever driven. I love to drive it. I'm very proud of it and I Like it a lot zero complaints

[00:12:41] Craig Macmillan: Even though you have to have a trailer again

[00:12:42] Brooke Parsons: Even though I have to have a trailer again, that's okay.

[00:12:45] Duff Bevill: It was remarkable how it seemed like it was luxurious riding because the electric horsepower, . That thing is so powerful. One of the things, again, my understanding of the engineers, they redesigned the chassis on it.

[00:12:57] So Ford that F one 50 has four wheel, all four corners, independent suspension. Soon as we got to, we put it up on the rack to take a look at the, Technology underneath it. Look at the batteries, you know, you're not touching anything, you're just looking at everything.

[00:13:10] And they designed this beautiful cast aluminum suspension for the back end of that truck. That you'd find in a, I don't know, luxurious European automobile, I think. But it's built heavy to handle all that, torque. You know, oh, it's like, I don't know, 800, horsepower when you push the special button on the dashboard, you know, and it's pretty stunning the performance and that's all torque.

[00:13:31] That's twisting power. And so the engineers had to design into that thing, something capable of handling that much torque is beautiful. But the point is a four wheel independent suspension just rides beautifully cars heavier. So about a thousand pounds heavier, I think because of the batteries. So the comments, the extra weight.

[00:13:47] And a very sophisticated suspension. It's just like a luxury sedan. And you're driving pretty nice.

[00:13:52] Craig Macmillan: And so Brooke, you've been driving this truck now, one of the things that has come up around electric vehicles has been the question of horsepower end of torque.

[00:13:59] How do you feel this truck performs compared to like, let's say a diesel dually,

[00:14:03] Brooke Parsons: It accelerates very quickly, so getting onto the freeway is no problem when it's busy. And the other biggest factor that I notice is braking. You hardly have to brake and it takes a little bit of time to get used to because when you take your foot off of the accelerator, it naturally stops because the engine isn't going.

[00:14:29] And you hardly have to use your brakes, which is very nice.

[00:14:33] Duff Bevill: When I first got it, my wife had a Prius many, many years ago, and she pretty much drove it right off the lot. The way it was set up from the dealer. Well, I discovered that you could switch to regeneration on electric. So when you did let off the throttle, it would break by regenerating electric motors, regenerate electricity, put it back in the battery.

[00:14:52] Well, that's the first thing I did on this lightning. Find that setting I think in the nine months that I drove it I told the guys at Ford I said, I'll bet you I didn't touch the brakes ten times in those nine months

[00:15:03] Brooke Parsons: but to answer your question I've only pulled light things behind it and So I haven't really put it to the test in that way.

[00:15:13] Craig Macmillan: I was doing a little research on this and I understand that there's like a data collection and management component to this that's attractive.

[00:15:19] What can you tell me about that? Have you used that feature? It can tell you about your fleet, I guess?

[00:15:24] Duff Bevill: Aside from electric vehicles Ford was really interested in us, Using and learning to use, and hearing back from us, their telematics. That's what they call it, Ford Telematics.

[00:15:37] And I think it was initially launched with the Ford Pro division, where you sign up every vehicle in your fleet. We've got like 20 Ford pickup trucks, something like that. If you go back all the way, I want to say like to 2014.

[00:15:49] Prior to that, I'm not sure, but for sure, like 2014, the electronics in those vehicles have the capability of just hooking up to the telematic system. The Ford is promoting, and if you get it into your fleet and get your, your vehicles in entered in your fleet, you can monitor them. Of course, like GPS, that's what everybody's doing nowadays, but much more than that, your shop manager could know, have a better use of knowing when it's time for an oil change, you know, we just do it.

[00:16:14] We track that kind of stuff, hard copy paper, put a sticker on the dashboard and the drivers relay to us when the mileage number comes up, they notify the shop manager and we schedule for a service. Typically the oil filter change and then in general inspection we inspect the brakes and all that kind of stuff.

[00:16:31] With the telematics they have the potential setting up where you could punch in a timeline that you wanted either by the calendar. Like every 12 months on the vehicles that we don't run very much. We do a major inspection every 12 months. And then the ones that actually have the mileage being for somewhere between five and 7, 000 miles, something like that.

[00:16:50] Depends on the vehicle. Depends on the tractor or it's a pickup truck or a full size class eight diesel truck. And so all that stuff is available. And one of the pluses and this happened to us. It was a perfect, we've used this as an example. Typically in modern vehicles, the components that fail first are the sensors that measure your NOX exhaust pipes.

[00:17:11] Those are the ones that are going bad. Probably because of the heat cycle they go through because of their exhaust pipes, right? So about anywhere between 40, 000 and 60, 000 miles, those are the devices that fail. So one of our foremen called the shop, our shop manager, and said check engine light came on.

[00:17:27] I guess he got the code through telematics, identified it as an oxygen sensor, ordered the part. The truck never came back to the shop. It's still out on the job site. We're supposed to be with the crew. He gets the parts ordered. The delivery guys bring the part to the shop that day. And it's interesting how it works is that is the analysis is it is 90 percent likely it's your oxygen sensor. They come up and then when the guy back that night, they bring it right into the shop and change that sensor. At the end of the day, confirmed that that was the part that needed to be replaced.

[00:18:00] The next day was back on the job site, all repaired. The only other way around that would have been. Bring it back to the shop. Get your, your analysis device on it, you know, on the onboard computer or mechanic drives out to the job site, does the same thing at the job site.

[00:18:16] And then it comes back or it comes out, orders the parts on a telephone or something like that. So it's saves time. There's no doubt about it. And there's a lot more to, manage a lot of the of systems we have already in place Ford doing the same thing with their telematics.

[00:18:28] So some of the things Didn't have any added value because we already have that kind of technology, but they were expanding a lot of that technology for fleet management. So that's a real plus. And they were constantly tweaking that in making improvements on the usability of it and that sort of thing.

[00:18:44] So that was a big deal. That was a big one.

[00:18:47] Craig Macmillan: The fleet management aspect of having an electric vehicle like this with this kind of a technology going into the future could be huge for a farm, could be huge for a management company like yourself that has properties all over the place. That kind of remote diagnostic is really amazing.

[00:18:59] The idea of like, Hey, the light's on. Okay, I'll fix it tonight. No problem.

[00:19:03] Duff Bevill: Well, the other big plus is when we put that lightning up on the rack, just to take a look at it, you know, we're just kind of noodling through the, , there's no oil to change in an engine. We found one plug access to a transmission on it.

[00:19:18] But even the owner's manual says don't touch any of that kind of stuff. You know, they can be serviced, but there's no schedule for servicing. The disc brakes, I don't think you'd ever If you use the vehicle to its maximum value, I don't think you'd ever put brakes in it. There's no transmission transitions made up of hundreds and hundreds of parts. It's not electric motors or a simple, simple mechanical device and the internal combustion engine has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of parts that aren't there. So it has the potential of being over the ownership timeline of it.

[00:19:52] A lot less cost per mile. Even when you, you calculate in your Cost of electricity charge, but we have here and we've got solar panels here too. We already had installed From a number of years ago So we've got sort of that added advantage whether the electric vehicle made a little bit even more sense because we're already kind of using discounted Power

[00:20:11] Craig Macmillan: that was going to be my next question. i'm assuming your solar is connected to the grid So it's an offset so you're not islanded, but you still have the, you're generating power on your own.

[00:20:20] So you've got onsite power generation to power your fleet to a degree. That's brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic. I remember years ago people were complaining about diesel engines and friends of mine were like, well, if you build us a solar truck, I'll freaking drive it. I got no problem with that.

[00:20:33] Well, here we are. What do you know? It's 30 years later, we have solar trucks, in effect. There has to have been some obstacles to adopting this. Were there some roadblocks or some things you had to learn along the way before you really felt like you were totally comfortable?

[00:20:46] Duff Bevill: Well, like I said, I was familiar with a hybrid.

[00:20:49] I still drive a hybrid. I drive a hybrid Ford pickup truck now. We had to get a charging station installed. Here at the office and then, you know, there's a decision. Do I do it at home or do the office? I wanted to hear at the office because that's where the fleet is parked and I had to think through, you know, get the one installed and how many more can I have and how many trucks will it eventually service without a major infrastructure redesign.

[00:21:11] So we've got that one put in and I, in the process, I had the electrician who was recommended to us. I had him install extra conduits underground. That are dummy right now. I assume we'll, we'll, extend for more pickup trucks.

[00:21:25] That was really the big obstacle. And then that's why I drove it because I want to know firsthand exactly what I was up against. I accomplished what I wanted. I want to learn as much as I could about it. Being there, having access to the Ford people, especially the engineers. Was on the fast track of having a better understanding.

[00:21:40] I got to talk to the guys who actually, one guy designed the grill, the other guy designed the dashboard. I mean, I was talking to those,

[00:21:45] Craig Macmillan: you had access. Yeah. That's, that's pretty amazing. Brooke, what was your learning curve? Like you talked about a couple of things, but were there obstacles that you felt you kind of ran across that you had to figure out, or that could be improvements

[00:21:56] Brooke Parsons: just forming the habit of charging.

[00:21:57] One time I forgot and. I was responsible for getting people someplace in the morning and it made me nervous. But you do that once or twice and you don't forget. So that was the real only obstacle. When traveling a longer distance, I did have to learn how to find charging stations that work well, are compatible with the lightning.

[00:22:25] And Ford is making advances in that area, now partnered with Tesla to use their system. And so that will only improve. But really it's around learning how to use the logistics of electric charging.

[00:22:44] Craig Macmillan: Right. And that's true for electric charging. For all of that. And you're right. I think a little bit of practice.

[00:22:49] Most of the folks that I know with electric vehicles, they're scared at first, and then they kind of figure it out. Now that you've had a chance to work with this, I think I already know the answer to this question. I mean, there's a question for both of you. When you were looking to your crystal ball, how do you see this technology being applied in the future?

[00:23:03] Duff Bevill: Think there's a place for it. I'm not so sure that one type of energy source is going to be the, solution for everything. I think practically, I think it's going to be some kind of a combination of energy sources and I don't discount nuclear.

[00:23:14] There's probably a place for everything, certainly in a transition period that that'll work best for all. Electrician put in the the charging station for us. He said, , if everybody's gonna go electric, the package must be solar panels, um, battery storage, either a large battery storage in a community setting, you know, like in a neighborhood or a small city size.

[00:23:37] Or you'll have battery storage areas that is appropriate, like maybe at our farm shop. Because we're commercial, we would be a candidate for battery storage, at least for our operation. So you'd have a solution for, you know, we're back to Sonoma County weather conditions again for the first time in quite a few years.

[00:23:55] I mean, it's overcast and rainy a lot of days out of the year. If you have solar panels, they're just not going to be working as efficiently and you still have to go to work every day and get your people to work. If you are relying. Let's say exclusively on electric, you've got to have something other than solar panel on the roof

[00:24:09] so windmill, solar panels, battery storage, there's some combination of multiple technologies. I just think that's sort of realistic of what it is. Do you want 95 percent of it to be coal? No, none of us do, you know, cause we all know the story there, but is, is there a place for coal for 10 percent of it?

[00:24:25] 15 percent of it. Don't know. I have no idea. It's good. I mean, we liked it. It's you know, just, we're not relying on it entirely right now, but we'll phase into it as time goes on.

[00:24:33] Craig Macmillan: Well, that was going to be, and and maybe Brookie also can kind of speak to this. I mean, is there a time when there isn't going to be a diesel truck on the farm?

[00:24:40] Duff Bevill: We're more concerned about diesel tractors. You know, the evolution went from, steam, you know, the early 1900s. The steam to, and then, you know, both in automobiles and, and on, on the farm, the competition was steam or gasoline because diesel wasn't invented yet.

[00:24:58] diesel engine wasn't invented until the 1920s. So turn of the century, 19th and 20th century, it was a competition between steam and gasoline, gasoline won. So gasoline surge forward all the way into the 1930s and with a few exceptions and in the 1940s, but by the 1950s. There was a clear transition that diesel was much, much more efficient, you know, pound for pound and horsepower for horsepower.

[00:25:24] I can't even think of where you could buy a gasoline tractor once you got in the 1970s. I'm sure you could still, but it represented a really small percentage. And by the 80s and 90s, it's all diesel.down to almost lawnmower size you can get it John Deere ride along more, you probably have a choice between gasoline and and diesel power to mow the golf course,

[00:25:42] that's actually transitioning to electric now too, you know, those, those small ones will plug it in and then mow for two hours, we're not even in the transition part of that story yet.

[00:25:52] There's a couple, manufacturers that have electric tractors the, inconvenience of them is really insurmountable right now, but changing batteries at lunchtime in your barn and that kind of stuff, tough. That's, tough technology.

[00:26:05] Craig Macmillan: It's still new. Yeah, this is still new. We're still finding our way there. I've talked to people about that topic quite a bit. It'll get better. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. Hey, Brooke, what is one thing that you'd recommend to listeners if they're thinking about adopting electric vehicles for the farm?

[00:26:20] Brooke Parsons: Would say be open to trying new things. It expands your mind and. It allows opportunity that would not be there otherwise. And be okay with mistakes. That's how we learn.

[00:26:37] Craig Macmillan: That's great advice. I think that's really, really good. Where can people find out more about you at Beville Vineyard Management?

[00:26:43] Duff Bevill: Look at our website BevillVineyard.Com Get you right to the, right to the website.

[00:26:47] Craig Macmillan: Well, I want, to both for being here. Thanks, Duff, and thanks, Brooke, for being here.

[00:26:51] Duff Bevill: Well, thank you for reaching out to us.

[00:26:53] Brooke Parsons: You're welcome. Thank you.

[00:26:55] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by Valent. Bio-sciences a leader in biostimulants constantly delivering, cutting edge innovation to maximize their customers yields and ROI.

[00:27:14] Their are 40 plus products span the three bio stimulant brands providing solutions for every acre. Make sure you check out the show notes. For links to Bevill vineyard management. Articles on the Ford Pro Pilot project and sustainable Winegrowing podcast episodes. 120 autonomous drone vineyard spring. 219 intelligent sprayers to improve fungicide applications and save money. And 225 California's ban on autonomous tractors.

[00:27:44] If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. That helps us reach more listeners. Like you, you can find all of the [email protected] / podcast, and you can reach us at [email protected].

[00:28:00] Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.

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1 August 2024, 4:00 am
3 minutes 45 seconds

238: 5 Sustainable Tasting Room Habits | Marketing Tip Monday
[00:00:00] By acting environmentally and socially responsible today, we get future generations, a healthy place to call home. The actions that you as an individual take, have an impact.

[00:00:11] Welcome to marketing tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry. These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:29] So you can show your customers that you share their values.

[00:00:33] The summer months, bring more staff and guests into tasting rooms across the country. Invite your whole team to join in your brand sustainability efforts. When you practice these five sustainable tasting room habits. Tip one is to conserve. Simple actions like completely shutting off water faucets after use and notifying management of leaks help conserve this limited resource. Turning lights and appliances off when not in use reduces electricity. Consumption.

[00:01:02] Although the commercial end use energy sector uses the smallest amount of energy of the four sectors, which include transportation, industrial, residential, and commercial. The majority of the energy used comes from fossil fuels, small efforts in the workplace, reduce reliance on non-renewable energy. Tip two is to recycle responsibly.

[00:01:24] We know the importance of recycling, but when heading to the bin with recyclables in hand, it's easy to forget the nuances. Some items can be recycled together, like cardboard paper and some plastics and metal. Glass is, usually recycled separately. And sometimes that's separated by color. It may be tempting to line up a recycle bin with a plastic bag. But it can actually be detrimental to your good efforts.

[00:01:48] Plastic bags can clog recycling machinery. Contaminate other recyclable materials and potentially lead to recyclable material ending up at the landfill. Instead, keep those items loose or use a paper or reusable bag to line the can. Your wine bottle corks can also be recycled and turned into many useful items.

[00:02:08] Start a collection container and send it off to be repurposed.

[00:02:12] Re cork has a map of drop off locations that makes it easy to find a cork recycling partner near you. Consider teaming up with neighboring tasting rooms to send your corks together. Tip three is to reduce and reuse. Upgrade to glass and metal dishes in the break room to cut down. On single use plastics, Sanitize and reuse water bottles for serving water. These small changes can drastically reduce your weekly waste. Tip four is to source locally. Check out local artists and small businesses for crafts, snacks, and knickknacks to offer for sale in your tasting room. This is a great way to introduce your guests to local talent and support your community. And tip five is to bike or carpool to work.

[00:02:58] There are several alternative transportation options available today For eco-conscious commuters. Trips can be shared by carpooling or using public transportation to reduce the number of cars on the road. Riding a bike e-bike skateboard or one wheel has The added bonus of getting your blood pumping.

[00:03:17] We are here to help you tell.

[00:03:19] Your customers, how your brand protects natural and human resources with the sustainable story program. This simple, yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal message. And it just got better with the new online course. Go to the notes. Click on the link titled to tell your sustainable story, to sign up and start writing yours today. Until next time, this is sustainable.

[00:03:42] Winegrowing with the vineyard team.
Tell Your Sustainable Story
We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.

This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!

Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
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22 July 2024, 4:00 am
29 minutes 39 seconds

237: Helping Farmworkers Manage Stress
Farmers and ranchers have some of the highest suicide rates of all United States occupations. Misty Oebel, Health and Farm Stress Extension Educator at Michigan State University works with a team to help farmworkers manage depression and anxiety. Their educational initiatives, outreach, and teletherapy give farmworkers who often live in remote areas access to help without a commute or social stigma. Misty highlights the importance of community support, recognizing signs of stress, and maintaining a resilient mindset through learned optimism. She reminds listeners that the farmer is the most important asset on the farm.
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Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

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Transcript
Before we jump in, please note that this episode contains discussion on suicide. If you prefer to skip this one, there are nearly 250 other episodes to choose from. If you need resources or support. Call or text the suicide and crisis lifeline at 9 8, 8 for 24 hour free counseling services in the United States.

[00:00:26] Beth Vukmanic: Of all occupations in the United States, farmers and ranchers have some of the highest suicide rates. Welcome to sustainable winegrowing with vineyard team. Where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, executive director. Since 1994, we have brought you the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.

In today's podcast Craig Macmillan, critical resource manager at Niner wine estates with a long time sip certified vineyard and the first ever sip certified winery. Speaks with Misty Oebel. Health and farm stress extension educator at Michigan state university. Misty works with a team to help farm workers manage depression and anxiety. Their educational initiatives, outreach and teletherapy, give farm workers who often live in remote areas.

Access to help without a commute or social stigma. Misty highlights the importance of community support, recognizing signs of stress and maintaining a resilient mindset through learned optimism. She reminds listeners that the farmer is the most important asset on the farm. Before we get into the interview, I wanted to share a message from Lupita, a vineyard team.

Juan Nevarez is Memorial scholar. She says my parents left Mexico to give my siblings and me a better future. I want to make them proud by finishing school and pursuing my dream of becoming a pediatrician and the Salinas valley so that I can give back to my community.

We know that higher education is important to many students, but paying for college could be challenging.

This unique program provides financial and support services to the children of California's vineyard and winery workers. So they can earn a higher degree. You can help a student like Lupita, make their dreams come true by making a gift. By visiting vineyard team.org/scholarship. Or look for the link in our show notes. Now let's listen in.

[00:02:35] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Misty Oebel. She is a health and farm stress extension educator with Michigan state university extension. Thanks for being on the podcast.

[00:02:44] Misty Oebel: Well, so much for having me.

[00:02:46] Craig Macmillan: And today we're going to talk about a concept called farm stress. When I first heard the term farm stress, I was thinking of farms that were stressed, you know, land that had been overworked or was in decline and that kind of thing, cause that's a lot of the stuff that I talk about and study, but that's not what we're talking about in this context.

What does farm stress mean in your world?

[00:03:05] Misty Oebel: So in my world, I'm focused on behavioral health. I look at providing education about stress, particularly chronic stress and its impact on the agricultural community. So I think it might be more accurate if we went by the term of like farmer stress or stress on the farm, but that's not the way it's titled.

So farm stress is what we go by.

[00:03:25] Craig Macmillan: One of the things that brought your project to our attention, and it's really extensive. MSU Extension is doing a lot of work in this area. It's really impressive, and we'll hear some more about that. Suicide rates are one of the highest in the occupations of farming and ranching of any occupations in the United States, actually.

Which a lot of people might be surprised to find out. And related to that, there's also very high incidence of Depression and or at least meeting the criteria for depression and for generalized anxiety disorder. And, you know, by these, I want to make sure that we're clear that, you know, we're not talking about simply being like, Oh, I'm sad.

Oh, I'm depressed, but actually things that impact your ability to function, your actual mental illness conditions

[00:04:05] Misty Oebel: Right. That's exactly right. When we're looking at these numbers a lot of we're studying it through self report. So it's asking questions. It's not asking a question like, do you feel depressed? It's asking a question like, are you having problems with your appetite? How is your sleep changed? How are your relationships with other people?

Are you experiencing irritability on a regular basis? Those are the kinds of questions that they ask. And then those are the criteria that they're looking at when they're saying agricultural workers are you know, we're finding that about 60 percent of the people that are participating in these studies are meeting the criteria for.

depression, about 55 percent for generalized anxiety disorders. So this is significant because that does impact your ability to function.

[00:04:50] Craig Macmillan: And are also risk factor for things like suicide and substance abuse.

[00:04:54] Misty Oebel: And that's exactly right. We see much higher rates of suicide rates amongst agricultural workers than other occupations. We do see, really high substance use rates as well. Alcoholism we see is reported with heavy use for alcohol amongst farmers is about 38 to 50 percent of farmers in America, which is pretty significant.

The other issue we see is farming or agricultural workers also have the highest rate of stress related death. due to disease. So that's a very major concern for us.

[00:05:25] Craig Macmillan: It's a major public health health issue. Issue around this. When you said you were , asking these questions, getting this, this data, how is this data being collected? How do we even find out, this is an issue?

[00:05:36] Misty Oebel: There's a preliminary study that's coming out of Illinois State University. It's being done by Rudolfi and Berg. They're the ones that are leading a lot of the information on this. And so there's the study that I'm going to quote most because those the numbers that are most they're the most relevant to me because I do work in the Midwest.

And so what we're looking at is we're just when we start to see those statistics like the high suicide rates, the high rates of death by stress related disease we start to see the amount of issues we're having with alcohol and opioids and even we're seeing some stimulant use. increase at this point.

Those are all things that start to trigger us to do a lot of research and try and figure out what this impact is and why it's happening.

[00:06:13] Craig Macmillan: And I'm guessing that is where the MSU extension managing farms for stress program came from.

[00:06:18] Misty Oebel: Yes, there was a significant need. The USDA was asking for people to participate in and start providing education and support for farmers because we were noticing that there were some pretty significant issues within the community.

[00:06:32] Craig Macmillan: This is one of those things that's true for a lot of areas of public health. How do you. Get to the populations that need the help because people don't always come forward looking for help or there the demand there? People are having issues and they're coming looking for help. What's the what's the the interface?

between the farm stress program and the target population

[00:06:56] Misty Oebel: Sure. So one of the things that we're doing through our program, we spend as much time as possible in rooms with growers. Speaking at a lot of conferences, speaking at a lot of meetings. We spend as much time as possible, putting our faces out there and trying to build that rapport.

And I have yet to speak in front of a group of people on a farm stress and not have people waiting in the wings afterwards to talk to me about that. So there is some face to face connection there. Sure. We also have people who hear about us through like news or hear a podcast or read an article and then they go looking for our website and then they connect with staff that way where they're reaching out to us and saying, I might need a little bit more help.

Can you help me with this? So that's pretty common. We also receive phone calls and emails from people all the time who say, Hey, my veterinarian said I should reach out to you or my accountant or, you know, my Miller, it's these people who they have professional established relationships with who are saying there's something that's not right.

right? There's something going on here and you need to talk to somebody about it. And so we connect with people that way. But I would say quite honestly, the number one way that we are connecting with people is we get an email or a phone call from someone who loves a farmer. So it's a parent or a spouse or a sibling who says, you know, my, sibling, he has this farm, he's been working on it for a long time.

He's really, really depressed and he's not doing anything about it. And we're getting really, really worried about him. So there's a lot of different ways that we come in contact with these farmers. I would say probably the number one way is because somebody noticed something was going on and then they connected them with the appropriate resources at that point.

[00:08:32] Craig Macmillan: And that's an important point the role of community and family and our social networks The old see something say something Sometimes it can be hard to do when it's a loved one and probably the most important to do when it's a loved one.

[00:08:42] Misty Oebel: I agree with that. Just this year alone, I've talked with six different families as they're surviving the loss of a loved one to suicide. And one of the things that keeps coming up is I noticed something was going on, but I didn't want them to be mad at me. I didn't want them to be upset.

I didn't want to hurt their feelings. And it's one of those things that I think we would all rather have somebody be upset with us than to lose that person. And so that's really important. If you see something, say something, notice something, refer them to somebody. It's also really important to start learning about how we can communicate.

You know, how to ask open ended questions, how to ask difficult questions and how to practice those active listening skills so that when somebody is answering the questions, you're hearing what they're saying and you're not just waiting for that opportunity to start talking again. Those are all really important.

There's trainings that we can offer through MSU Extension. There's an open course that's available on our website. It's called Rural Resilience. It's open to the community and it's free and it's online. So it's, it's really useful, but it's literally trained to teach you how to recognize signs of stress in yourself and how to manage that stress, but then how to recognize signs of stress in other people and then how to communicate with them and have positive communication that could be helpful.

[00:09:52] Craig Macmillan: So you mentioned this website. We just talked about how you kind of get in contact with the population. What are some of the other methods that you folks are employing around this to get people help? What is the kind of help that you can provide?

[00:10:03] Misty Oebel: Some things that I think are really useful, again, that referral process is really important to us. So if you know about us and then you see somebody that you care about is struggling, please let us know. Through MSU Extension, we offer a lot of other programs that aren't necessarily related to farm stress.

So it's not unusual for us to talk to like a field crops educator or a fruit crop educator, and they're coming to us and they're saying, Hey, I'm working with this farmer. And we're seeing these behaviors and I'm talking to them and I'm trying to get them to talk to you. That's pretty common as well. So those are all resources we have available.

We offer through the website, we offer a lot of things. And I always tell people if you're interested in the Farm Stress and you want to know more about our program, if you go to our website, and it's usually pretty easy if you type in like MSU Farm Stress. we're usually the first result. We come up pretty quick.

And that website has everything. It has articles we've written. It has educational materials. It has those programs like the training materials available as well, that online training. And then it also has a form that you can fill out for our teletherapy program, which is also really beneficial.

[00:11:04] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, so I was just gonna ask about that. So you are able to put people or connect people to talk therapy services either tell therapy or face to face.

[00:11:12] Misty Oebel: Yeah, it's actually, it's one of the programs we're really proud of. We have this opportunity to provide it to people who are connected to the agricultural community. And it helps because there's a lot of barriers within the farming community to getting, you know, mental health services. You know, most farming is done in rural communities.

So we know rural communities have less access to medical services, let alone behavioral health services. We know that then if somebody is interested in going to like counseling, it's going to take them longer to travel to a therapist. And then they're going to sit there and they're going to come back.

There's also some stigmas attached still to like mental health issues within rural communities. So you know, when you talk to a farmer and they say, you know, I just don't want them to see my truck sitting in that parking lot. I'm just really concerned about that. I don't want people to think something's going on.

And so teletherapy is a resource then that it removes those barriers for them. You can do it from the comfort of your own home on a laptop or a smartphone. They use cameras, so you're still able to see the person. You're able to have a conversation and talk with them.

It's completely confidential. And then it's a really great resource then because then It removes the barriers and makes it accessible to everybody. The other piece of that is sometimes one of the barriers is cost. That can be really prohibitive for people, especially farmers who are independently, you know, they work for themselves, so they're not always insured, you know, so this can be a problem.

And so MSU extension has the availability. We actually provide for and cover the costs for any agriculture workers within the state of Michigan. At this point, our funding is limited, but we're able to then cover the cost of that. So there's no cost to the farmer either.

[00:12:44] Craig Macmillan: How many folks are you getting in contact with? How many folks are taking advantage of this?

[00:12:48] Misty Oebel: At the moment, I don't have the numbers. That would be something my program lead would have. I just refer people. It is something that we refer people on a pretty regular basis, probably one to two a week we make a referral or we talk to somebody about sometimes more. So I think that that's a pretty good estimate that we are definitely reaching people this way.

[00:13:06] Craig Macmillan: And that actually just reminded me of something else. So is this referring folks to behavioral health professionals that are outside of the MSU system. Is this, is this program funneling folks to other existing folks or is this counselors and therapists and prescribers inside the MSU system?

[00:13:23] Misty Oebel: We work with partners. This is one of the things we wanted to do. Like for example, I have a background in counseling psychology. Our program lead has a background in psychology as well. We have the backgrounds in it, but we don't want to be doing therapy because that takes us away from that education piece.

So we refer to licensed therapists and it's been really good so far. I think it's been a really great program. We try to look for therapists that have a background in agriculture as well. We recognize the subculture of farming is unique, and we don't want to send them to people who are not going to understand where they're coming from.

We want to make sure that there's that background there already.

[00:13:56] Craig Macmillan: In your experience so far can you describe what some of the aspects of a agricultural subculture are like? Because I agree with you. I think there's very much some commonalities. And there's a cultural component that's different than other aspects of American life. What are some of the things that you've seen and what are some of the barriers that come from that?

[00:14:18] Misty Oebel: Oh, goodness. Yeah, there's a lot. There are things that are so unique to farming that you don't see literally in any other profession. You rarely see people who identify so much with their work as growers and farmers. People who, you know, It's so inherently ingrained into who they are. It's becomes part of their identity.

I could use an example. It's kind of how I came into the firm stress work. My dad grew up on a farm and, you know, just a little farm had six brothers and sisters, parents. They worked this farm and his father passed away when he was 17 years old. And within a couple of years, they realized that without.

Their father, they really couldn't continue the operation. They started selling equipment, selling animals and leasing the farmland. And when I asked my dad about it, when I was a kid and was asking questions about what it was like when he grew up, one of the things he said that's always stuck with me is he said, you know, it was really strange to be a farm kid without a farm.

Even after the farm was gone, he's still so identified with that aspect of his identity that it just. never occurred to him that you're not really a farm kid without a farm mate. He still was. And so that's very unique to farming. There's a legacy aspect of farming that we don't see in every other profession as well.

There is an understanding that this is something that we want to continue to go on. And we passed into the family. So kids are growing up knowing there's that expectation that, that This is going to be passed on and we will be taking this over. So there's that legacy aspect of farming. There's the idea that you're in a rural community, so you have fewer neighbors than people in urban areas.

So sometimes that can mean that you have really strong community nets, but other times it can mean that you feel really isolated as well. As we're entering a more modern area and we're seeing less individual farmers. I want to say it that way.

We're seeing bigger operations, less small farms that can also feel really isolating for farmers because less people understand what they're going through, less people are able to relate to them on that level. There's so many things that are so unique to this subculture. And and they're also just so, so much, when we say salt of the earth, we're literally talking about farmers.

They are the people who are out there day to day. They feed us. They're taking care of the land, and they take such pride in their work, and they're so conscientious about that work. I think that's really important to recognize. They're a completely different culture of people, and so I think it's really important.

It's really valuable that this work exists just for the fact that this is a culture we can't lose in our country.

[00:16:40] Craig Macmillan: Absolutely. And you know, having programs that say, Hey, we we understand you and where you're coming from, I think might help a lot. And I was very impressed by what I've seen online. It's very welcoming the way that it's presented. It can be very daunting to try to reach out for something that you've just assumed no one's going to understand, right?

And if you kind of get the sense that there are people there for you who understand who you are and where you're coming from, I think that definitely helps. There are a couple of things that I noticed that I thought were really cool. One thing is the idea of resiliency. A resilient mindset and a productive mindset are two things you have.

Materials about developing and maintaining and etc. Can you tell me about those two ideas? I just think that's just so interesting

[00:17:24] Misty Oebel: I'm gonna argue, and I'm always gonna argue this, that a resilient mindset is a productive mindset, because a resilient mindset I think we could define it, if we're going to define it just at its simplest terms, it's, it's learned optimism. I think there's already innate optimism when we're talking about agriculture anyway, because otherwise, how do you face a drought one year and then go back and do the same thing the next year?

You have to be optimistic. I mean, you just have to, it's innate. But I think that a resilient mindset is that learned optimism, which is we're able to accept that, you know what, things don't always go the way we want them to. Things often happen that we did not hope for. We face uncontrollable circumstances all the time, especially in farming, when you're dealing with weather or, you know, pests, things like that.

So we have to be able to accept when things aren't going well and still be able to move forward with the idea that things are gonna be okay, even though things aren't going well. Now they're gonna be okay and we're gonna get through it. I've survived everything up to this point. I'm gonna survive this.

I'm gonna go on to the next thing, and it might look different, but it could still be good. And I think that's that resilient mindset that we talk about. And there's so many benefits of a resilient mindset. You know it decreases depression and anxiety. We see better physical health because our cortisol and adrenaline levels, those stress hormones are lower.

We also see again that ability to move forward and to be adaptive and to be more focused on problem solving than getting stuck on just what the problem is. So that resilient mindset, I always argue this resiliency is is productive. If you're not resilient, you're going to struggle and you're going to get stuck.

And then you're not going to be very productive.

[00:19:02] Craig Macmillan: I'm gonna call on you as a practitioner now? What are some examples of techniques or tools or things that I can that I can do that. They will help promote this in myself

[00:19:11] Misty Oebel: The two most important aspects in resiliency is making sure you have that community. So making sure you're building a community, you're finding people who support you, who understand you and who care about you. That's the number one thing that is actually the most influential factor we have found in resiliency and whether somebody is going to bounce back from a difficult situation.

Community social connection. We actually find isolation is really, really dangerous. It increases depression and anxiety, it increases cardiovascular issues, and suicidal ideation goes up when people feel lonely. So, community is number one. The second thing I always argue is really focusing on that emotional health piece.

And we can do that in a lot of different ways. But one of the simplest ways is to start practicing those mindfulness techniques. And sometimes when I say that people are like, Oh, that's that hippie, dippy stuff. And I don't want to do that. You know but what we're really talking about there, did they just put a name to it?

It's just being engaged. It's just being present in your moment. Cause sometimes we get into the habit of. I'm stressed and I've got a lot to do and we get into this autopilot mode and we just keep working and we plug away at it and we feel really good because we just keep going. But when we're doing that, we also have to ignore a lot of other things that are going on and we're not really aware of what's happening.

So practicing mindfulness. Because practicing mindfulness allows us to be engaged enough to be aware of what's going well so we can be grateful. Gratefulness is really great for you know, resiliency. The other thing that it does is it allows us to notice when things aren't going well, and that allows us to do that problem solving and be like, okay, what can I fix?

And then if something can't be fixed, okay, I can accept this can't be fixed, it's out of my control. And that's also really important for resiliency. And then that third piece to when we're really aware of what our moment is like it allows us to be aware of our emotions and to recognize them as they're happening and to process them instead of doing the thing where we like are just shoving those emotions down because I'm busy.

So I'm going to shove it down and then I'm going to keep working and then another emotion flies in and you know what? I don't want to deal with that right now either. So I'm going to shove that down too until we blow up because we have just this overwhelming flood of emotions we've been ignoring. And so when we're practicing mindfulness, it allows us to process them as they're happening and they never get to that huge overwhelming stage.

And we can practice mindfulness in a lot of really simple ways. It's not complicated. It's not something that you have to go through a class or something to learn how to do. You know, it's a journaling. I'm going to sit down every night and write down what went well today and what didn't. It is meditation or prayer breathing exercises, really, really simple breathing exercises that just make you pause.

and stop and notice what is happening around you and in your body. That's it.

[00:21:53] Craig Macmillan: And I'm guessing You're communicating these ideas in various forms. I mean, there must be print form, there must be video form, there must be face to face form. I mean, are you doing clinics, trainings, newsletters? What are all the different avenues that you're using to communicate these very, very, very practical, very specific things?

What routes are you using to get those to people ?

[00:22:14] Misty Oebel: Like I said before, if there is a room with growers in it, we try to be in that room. We, we speak at every opportunity that we possibly can because we do want to make sure the message is getting out. We participate in podcasts. We write articles, we write a lot of articles. We are actually in the process of re updating a lot of our program materials right now to make sure they're all fresh and all the information is new and current.

So we do that. Those are all available online. The training programs that are available online. We talk to families who are in the middle of it. And so we talk to people on the phone. It's not unusual for us to spend an afternoon at a farmer's kitchen table. talking with them and figuring out what their next steps are.

Literally any avenue. So we have all of these print materials that are available, a lot of stuff available through our website, but we are also people who are available. Should there be a need for that as well?

[00:23:03] Craig Macmillan: Something else that I noticed that I thought was great is, you know, obviously farm stress doesn't just affect the adults that are involved. It also affects youth. And like you talked about this generationality aspect and how important it is. Just like you said, farm kid without a farm. It's farm kid.

You know, that's part of the kid. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how that's fit into your program?

[00:23:23] Misty Oebel: Yeah. That same study that I was talking about earlier by Rodolphe and Berg, as those numbers have come out, they also did study on farm youth. And what they found is that the numbers for depression are the same. About 60 percent of farm youth meet the criteria for general depression. We see slightly lower on generalized anxiety, it's about 45%. The number that I find really interesting, I want to know more about, is 62 percent are reporting the, the diagnostic criteria for separation anxiety, which is very, very interesting. Yeah, that one kind of throws me. I don't know where that's coming from, but it's really interesting. And I'd like to know more about that one.

What this tells us is that as parents and adults, we're not doing as good as we think we are and hiding how we're doing. It tells me we're not doing as good as we think we are in hiding, you know, when stress is occurring, when we're depressed, when we're anxious. Kids are pretty intuitive and they pick up on that.

I know my kids have called me out on stuff like that before and like you weren't hiding it as well as you think you were. So that happens. I think there's also when we go back to it, there's that legacy aspect of it where there's an understanding that if this farm is going to continue, somebody is going to step up, somebody is going to take over it.

And so you see really young kids who start assuming the responsibility of the problems. well before they really need to do so. So that is absolutely impacting them as well. I think it makes it really, really, really important for parents to be paying attention for those signs of stress in their kids as well as in signs for themselves and their neighbors.

They need to be paying attention. Are they showing mood changes? You know, are they suddenly really irritable? Are they having problems sleeping? Am I seeing differences in their appetites? Are they shutting down? Are we not talking as much as we used to talk?

There's a lot of things that we need to pay attention to when it comes to our kids just to make sure that they're okay and so that we're able to connect them with the support that they need earlier rather than later.

[00:25:13] Craig Macmillan: Is there one thing, just one piece of advice or one observation that you would recommend to our listeners around this topic?

[00:25:20] Misty Oebel: Can I go with two? Is that ok?

[00:25:22] Craig Macmillan: Two is great, do two.

[00:25:23] Misty Oebel: Okay. One of the first things I want to come back to. It's something that we've talked about a few different times. Is this idea of the generational aspect and the legacy piece? Because that is absolutely a barrier in farmers in, seeking behavioral health support.

There is kind of this idea of like, well, my dad was a farmer and he never saw a therapist and my grandpa was a farmer and he never saw a therapist. So is there something wrong with me now if I need additional support? And what we kind of forget is that depression and anxiety are not new. And if you're facing it, your dad probably had it too.

Your grandpa probably had it too, but they were struggling silently and never got the support that they needed. And I think that when we're looking at generational stuff, we always try to do it a little bit better with each generation. We want the farm to be a little bit bigger, a little bit cleaner.

We want to make sure that our processes are a little bit smoother. With each generation, it gets a little better and we do the same thing with parenting. You know, we want to be a slightly better parent to our kids than our parents were to us, and we hope that they do the same thing with their Children.

So I think that makes it really important that we recognize that just because past generations weren't receiving help, that doesn't mean we shouldn't receive help. It actually makes it more important because we're trying to prioritize that, and we're trying to make those changes in the family. So that's the number one thing I can think of.

And then the other thing, this is something I tell farmers all the time is the growers and the farmers that I know are very, very conscientious when it comes to caring for their land. And their animals and their crops and buildings and equipment, and they invest a lot of time and money into the maintenance of all of those things, because their assets but I'm always going to argue that the farmer is the most important asset in any farm.

And so I really feel very strongly that it's important that we prioritize caring for ourselves and we recognize that self care is not selfish. It's very important. If you're the most important asset on your farm, you've got to make sure that you're taking care of yourself.

[00:27:21] Craig Macmillan: I think that is a fantastic observation. Absolutely. Where can people find out more about you and more about the Farm Stress Management Program?

[00:27:30] Misty Oebel: I'm always going to recommend you go to our website. Not only do we have all of those great resources, but you can connect with staff through that website. We have all of our pictures on there. I'm on there. Dr. Remington Rice is our program lead. He is phenomenal. He has his information even in multiple places on the site.

So please reach out to us if you have any questions, thoughts, concerns want more information, that's the best way to get ahold of us.

[00:27:53] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. Our guest today has been Misty Oebel. She's a health and farm stress extension educator with Michigan State University Extension. Thanks for being on the podcast. This is one of those areas we don't talk about very much. And I'm really glad that we did. And I think the work you guys are doing is fantastic.

And I hope that this model gets picked up in other states. We see it more widely applied because farming is important. And because farming is important, that means farmers are important. Just like you said, it's our asset. So thanks for being on podcast, Misty.

[00:28:22] Misty Oebel: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:28:23] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by vineyard professional services. Vineyard professional services works throughout the central coast of California, providing vineyard management, financial planning, vineyard development, equipment services, and a range of consulting services to wineries, growers, and investors. Established in 1997. VPS has leadership in San Louis Obispo, Santa Barbara . San Benito and Monterey counties. Their primary focus is effectively growing vineyard assets for quality and client profitability. Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Misty. Tools on how to cultivate a productive mindset.

And managing stress on the farm. If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the [email protected]/podcast. And you can reach us at podcastatvineyardteam.org. Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

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18 July 2024, 4:00 am
3 minutes

236: Safely Keeping Birds at Bay | Presqu'ile Vineyards' Sustainable Story | Marketing Tip Monday
What does it mean to farm sustainably?

Sustainable farming is a collection of practices spanning from water and energy conservation, to soil health and biodiversity, and social equity.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

There are so many examples of sustainability in action to point to right outside of your window:
- Native landscaping: minimal irrigation and maintenance needs.
- Cover crops: promote soil health and provide refuge for beneficial insects.
- Alternative energy sources: reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
- Owl boxes & raptor perches: birds of prey feast on vertebrate pests.
One topic that sustainable farmers get asked about often is pest management. In this Sustainable Story Marketing Tip, learn how Presqu’ile Vineyards utilizes technology to manage bird pests in a more environmentally and economically sustainable way.
Safely Keeping Birds at Bay
Birds like finches and starlings are common vineyard pests. They damage fruit and canopies, and will even create nests in the vines.

To protect their crops, vineyards typically use bird netting. While effective, netting comes with un-sustainable downsides: they break down in the sun, installation and removal necessitates a lot of labor, and they create waste over time, as nets must be replaced every few years.

Presqu’ile Vineyard knew there was a more sustainable way to handle their unwelcomed feathered visitors. In 2023, they installed five bird lasers.

Spooked by the beams of light, the birds stay away. But if the light beams repeat a consistent pattern, the birds will ignore the lasers and reenter the vineyard.

To maintain the perceived threat, the laser beams are programmed for a variety of motions.

As for the effectiveness of the lasers, Andrew Heilbrun, Vineyard Manager, says that “monitoring bird pressure visually is pretty easy. We saw very little damage this past season after installing the lasers.”

On top of serving their main purpose as an effective method for bird abatement, Andrew notes that their new laser systems offer several other benefits:
- Removes tripping hazard for employees.
- Doesn’t affect non-target animals.
- Reduces waste.
- More financially sustainable.
The bird lasers at Presqu’ile Vineyard have proven to be a Safe Pest Management strategy with benefits that touch all 3 P's of sustainability: People, Planet, and Prosperity.
Tell Your Sustainable Story
We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.

This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!

Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
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8 July 2024, 4:00 am
29 minutes 48 seconds

235: Battling Vineyard Fungicide Resistance with Glove Sampling
To understand fungicide resistance in the vineyard, a group of United States scientists formed the Fungicide Resistance Assessment Mitigation and Extension (FRAME). Sarah Lowder, Assistant Professor and Viticulture Extension Specialist at the University of Georgia describes a nationwide sampling project to test for resistance markers. To get samples, they are promoting a new collection method called glove sampling. This process leverages the time that fieldworkers are in the field running their hands through the vines. They collect samples by rubbing their gloved hands on a cotton swab and sending the sample to the lab. Research shows that glove sampling results are very similar to spore trapping, a process that samples the air flowing through the vineyard.
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Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.
Transcript
2024-07-04_235_Sarah Lowder - glove sampling for mildew_Otter

[00:00:00] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Sarah Lawder. She is Viticulture Extension Specialist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Georgia. And today we're going to talk about some exciting new advancements around monitoring for powdery mildew and other related topics. Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.

[00:00:16] Sarah Lowder: Thank you very much, Craig. I'm very excited to be here.

[00:00:18] Craig Macmillan: First though, I want to start with something I just found out about that applies to this, and that is the grape frame networks. Can you tell us exactly what that is and kind of how it came about and what it does? Okay. Thanks, Craig.

[00:00:29] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Yeah, the FRAME Network is part of a USDA SCRI grant.

This is a project that was funded several years ago, I believe in 2017, as part of the Specialty Crop Research Initiative Project System. And FRAME Networks literally stands for Fungicide Resistance Assessment Mitigation and Extension. networks. And so this was a grant that was really intended to look and learn so much more about how fungicide resistance works in the vineyard for powdery mildew specifically.

But this was a group, a very large group of scientists from all across the country from a wide range of different disciplines looking into how we can better address fungicide resistance for vineyards and for powdery mildew specifically.

[00:01:12] Craig Macmillan: But there's also applications either now or in the future for other fungal diseases like downy mildew, et cetera.

[00:01:18] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Yep. They are currently working on getting a new iteration of this grant, Frame 2 as it were that will hopefully be able to address also resistance in Downy Mildew and Botrytis Bunch Rot.

[00:01:29] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. This is really exciting because what I saw was that there are people at Washington State, Oregon State in California, and then on the East Coast.

So hopefully this work will continue. What exactly kinds of things does Frame do?

[00:01:45] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, so we had a multi pronged approach for this project. One of the big parts that I was a part of is looking at the assessment of the fungicide resistance. So one of the things that we did was collect powdery mildew from all across the country, from states and vineyards all over, all over the place, and then look for different fungicide resistance markers in that mildew.

That can hopefully help us much more quickly assess if we have fungicide resistance present in a sample. One of the big groups of fungicides that we looked at was the QOI fungicides, the Sturbulurins, also sometimes they're called or the FRAC Group 11, with FRAC is the Fungicide Resistance Action Committee.

Is what the FRAC group would be for that and those just kind of group your different fungicides based on the mode of action. So how they work on the different diseases that they're attempting to control. And so we were looking at this group, this group 11, the QOI products which operate by attaching to the mitochondria, so the powerhouse of the cell.

And just preventing them from being able to produce energy and so the, the spores die and you don't get any more growth of that disease. But because it's one of those products that works like a binding site if you get resistance presence it just means that your fungicide can no longer attached to the disease and then it can grow in the presence of that fungicide and then you can even no matter how much you spray that product it can still continue to grow.

By looking at there's one particular mutation that occurs that causes that resistance in this group of products and we're able to run a test much more quickly than you can otherwise do a lot of different fungicide resistance testing And tell whether or not you had QOI resistant or sensitive Mildew in your field so you knew whether or not you could use that product or not

[00:03:35] Craig Macmillan: What about frac group three?

That's another one that we have known Resistance issues with the demethylation inhibitors. Is that part of the project as well?

[00:03:43] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely Absolutely, the DMIs demethylation inhibitors, absolutely, the FRAC3 Group 3 are a group of products that have a little bit more complicated unfortunately of a resistance pattern rather than just having one particular mutation.

There, there are a bunch of different things going on in those products. But we do have a marker that can help us get a sense for the resistance. It's not as necessarily reliable as the QOI. Frack Group 11 product resistant testing, but we can test that as well and give us an idea of whether or not we might have resistance to DMIs present in the field as well.

[00:04:19] Craig Macmillan: Are there other frack groups that have potential or have found some resistant populations coming down the pike?

[00:04:28] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Anything that has a very specific mode of action really has some potential for having a resistance develop in a population.

[00:04:36] Craig Macmillan: Great.

[00:04:38] Sarah Lowder: We're, we're looking at some of the modes of action. We have not heard as much of field failures due to resistance to a lot of other products, but we wanted to, like, kind of get a, get a jump on looking for some of those other modes of action to see if we can develop. Test to be able to monitor that, monitor that much more quickly before resistance becomes as much of an issue.

And we were able to get a lot of that information for like the SDHI groups, which is the group 7 products. Although again, we're not really hearing too much yet of any field failures for powdery mildew control from the SDHIs. As well as looking much more into some of the mechanisms for how group 13, quinoxafen how well how the resistance might work in that system.

All of those are stuff that we were able to do because of the Frame Network project team.

[00:05:26] Craig Macmillan: That's really great. I hope that we can continue that. That's really important work. In order to do that kind of thing, you need to get samples. And you and your colleagues are promoting a new method for monitoring for powdery mildew and collecting, I guess, ASCA spores, I would imagine, is what you're collecting.

Tell me about it. There's videos on YouTube. It's really exciting.

[00:05:47] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely.

[00:05:47] Craig Macmillan: It involves a glove.

[00:05:49] Sarah Lowder: Indeed, we call them glove swabs, which is one of the projects that I was able to help lead as a part of the system. Because you hit the nail on the head when you are trying to monitor fungicide resistance.

The first step that you have to do is actually find the mildew. And you want to find this before you have a control problem. You want to find it while there's still not very much mildew present in the field. We looked at, we looked at a bunch of different ways. Not everything worked very well. But one of the ideas that we had was, oh, We have vineyard workers moving throughout the field all the time.

Could we potentially use these people who are already in the field doing normal stuff to also potentially collect powdery mildew? And we found that as you're moving through the vineyard, as you're moving your hands along the canopy, you're able to collect powdery mildew. Conidia spores, actually, it's generally, it's their summer spores.

are collecting and you're able to take a, just a cotton swab. So many of us have taken a COVID test that you've had to stick up your nose. It's a very similar, similar swab that you take with your hands. And you can stick that in a tube and send it to the lab for processing. This system worked, I think, way better than any of us were expecting it to.

It was actually much better than trying to go out there and look for it physically. And you can do it much faster because it's just literally, you can be walking through the vineyard with your hands in the canopy, take a swab. and collect it, and you can find that so much faster if you're already having to do a lab test for that product.

[00:07:16] Craig Macmillan: And also the potential here is that, let's say I've got a crew out and we're doing a shoot thinning in the spring, so they're handling the canopy all the time, we could swab some gloves and then send that out to be tested and get an idea what's out there.

[00:07:27] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. Absolutely. And as you're already testing for whether the field is out there, you can also use the same test to tell whether or not you have resistant mildew to the QI fungicides.

[00:07:38] Craig Macmillan: Is this quantitative?

[00:07:41] Sarah Lowder: So, it is run on a quantitative quantitative PCR. So, in theory, it does give you some information on how much mildew is present. In the QI QPCR test, in the test that tests for the fungicide resistance pattern, it tests a piece of DNA in the mitochondria, and you can technically have different numbers of things.

Mitochondria per cell, individual cell, and so the, the quantitative, it does give you that information, but it's not necessarily the most reliable information. So as, as a scientist, I'm always hesitant to say that, oh, you can get quantitative information, but it, in theory, it does give you a little bit of information about how many spores at least you were able to collect.

You can tell a little bit of that information.

[00:08:21] Craig Macmillan: Can it tell me something along the lines of, I can go out and sample at the very beginning of the season, maybe even post bud break, and say, oh, we have nothing there yet, and then come by later and test and say, oh, we have something there now. Is there a qualitative aspect to it?

[00:08:41] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. So we tested it and compared the glove swabs to visual scouting to compare it to someone actually physically going out and looking and found that the glove swabs were much more sensitive. They were able to find the powdered mildew much faster, and also much sooner than the OR than our visual eyes were able to do So.

But we also tested it in comparison to impaction spore traps. So these are tests that actually had come out of a lot of the lab that I worked in the foliar pathology lab with Walt Mahaffey at the USDA for a couple years previously with like Lindsay Thiessen that they were able to test these impaction spore traps which sample the air that flows through the vineyard.

We're collecting that many of the vineyards in the Willamette Valley of Oregon which we did a lot of the testing in that area as well as in Areas like Napa, California have a bunch of these spore traps present that we were able to test it in comparison to these spore traps, which have been used pretty widely in the system.

And what we found was that our glove swabs were showing us very similar information to these impaction spore traps which was really cool because a lot of these growers absolutely do use already these impaction spore traps to look at when they're going to initiate their fungicide spray programs.

So, in theory, yes. You could absolutely potentially use these glove swabs as a fungicide initiation indicator.

[00:10:01] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, that's what I was getting at, and that's, that's a really exciting technology. Because obviously we're trying to control the amount of material we put out there, and obviously part of resistance management is being careful what you put out and when.

And so having a good idea of what the timing should be, I think, is really important. And then of course, as everybody knows, People who listen to this podcast know, by the time you see it, it's too late, baby.

[00:10:24] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely.

[00:10:24] Craig Macmillan: You know, it's, it's, it's, you're chasing a ghost. And so, here's, here's our Ghostbuster tool, where we can catch that ghost before before it comes too much of a problem.

Now you said, send these off for, to a lab for analysis. What what labs are we talking about?

[00:10:39] Sarah Lowder: The initial frame grant project is technically at a, has come to an end and so the funding that originally funded a lot of this testing has ended, but now we're able to supply all of these protocols and testing materials and stuff to a lot of the different private labs elsewhere.

So I know one of the private labs that does the impaction trap testing. service in the William Valley of Oregon has taken over that process, as well as I know a bunch of different labs like I know at UGA here, where I am currently, they have some tools and able to do some of those testings or do some of those tests as well with the qPCR.

And so even if you, a lab where you send a lot of your materials, if they happen to have a qPCR present and you're strongly interested in doing it, you can talk to them to see if they might potentially be willing to add this into their repertoire.

[00:11:24] Craig Macmillan: So, this technology is starting to make it out into the world of commercial plant pathology.

[00:11:29] Sarah Lowder: Yes.

[00:11:30] Craig Macmillan: I may have a plant pathology lab that I already work with, I can talk to them, I can make some phone calls, and for instance, a commercial lab in Oregon, they're a business, so they still may do samples from California or from Washington or from Ohio.

[00:11:44] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, potentially.

[00:11:45] Craig Macmillan: It's not limited by territory.

[00:11:46] Sarah Lowder: Correct. You can send these samples and as long as you're not leaving your samples out in the sun and in the heat for a long period of time they can be shipped off elsewhere as well.

[00:11:55] Craig Macmillan: Where do you see this technology going? What's, what's the future here? We, we, we've just kind of touched on it a little bit, but what, in your, when you close your eyes and imagine the long term impact of your work, where do you see this kind of thing going?

[00:12:08] Sarah Lowder: One, I would love to see a lot of this information being used more regularly to be able to test this a little faster. And eventually, one day, we may be able to test for all of these different resistance genes, all of these different resistance patterns within the same sample. So you could be like, okay as a normal part of my practice, I'm going out and taking these glove swabs or whatever else that I'm looking to test.

Even if I don't use a glove swab, but I can come in and take my powdery mildew sample and send it off to the lab and get a, just a score sheet of exactly what fungicide products could be used or could be not used. That would be really awesome, because no one wants to buy a product that it's not going to work, and no one wants to put a product out that's not going to work for any reasons, environmentally or financially.

In the wallet or just for labor purposes. It's just a win, win, win situation. If you know, you don't have to use a product and instead you could choose a different one.

[00:13:01] Craig Macmillan: Oh, this might be a related, very practical matter. So gloves, touching vines, no problem. I can have workers. I could have actually my VIT tech go down a row and then swipe the canopy.

Where do I get the swabs because we're talking about something has to be a sterile protected swab, just like the COVID test swab. Where do I get those?

[00:13:17] Sarah Lowder: Yeah so a lot of the times, or at least for a lot of this test that we did originally they were groups that we sent out, or like just kits that we would send out to the different cooperating practices.

But essentially, it is literally the same tool. It's a polystyrene cotton swab tip and we normally will put them into these little half tubes that kind of keep their tip protected, and then you will stick it back into the plastic wrap that it came in, and then wrap it up so that it stays more protected. But it is, it is literally the same tool that you often will use for those COVID tests, which made it really hard to get that right at the beginning of the pandemic.

[00:13:54] Craig Macmillan: Where, where can I get them? Where can I order them from?

[00:13:56] Sarah Lowder: So I can send a link for the type of material that we're looking for. And then you can shop around for the same tip at a couple different locations and find the best price.

[00:14:06] Craig Macmillan: That'd be perfect. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. So folks, you can go check that out and find the materials that you need.

And then you can also shop around for the labs and see who's doing what. And again, if a lab is getting a lot of phone calls. That's going to encourage them to adopt this new technology. What is kind of the, the current state of the nation, if you will, in terms of fungicide resistance, what are the hot new topics, what's getting funded?

What are people working on and where are they working on it?

[00:14:33] Sarah Lowder: Fungicide resistance is certainly a hot topic that has a lot of different research happening in a lot of different areas. I could literally fill your entire podcast probably with talking about this topic. One thing that I'm very excited about is to hopefully see this Frame 2 iteration happen that is, being submitted for funding for this next funding cycle this year, but it is looking to hopefully also add in testing for downy mildew and betritis bunch rot, which are also two big diseases that can cause a lot of issues.

Especially now that I'm over here in Georgia, I'm very excited to hopefully get to test much more of the downy mildew which can be quite the struggle in the vineyard. And we're getting much more information on a lot of the other modes of action that we're working with. I'm excited to see a lot of the information come out about some of the quinoxephins.

Some of this information that we have started to work on and we haven't seen much field resistance to these products yet. But if we continue to use them, then they may still pop up. And so hopefully making sure that we can get ahead of the game for these other products.

[00:15:37] Craig Macmillan: I'm very happy about that because I'm old enough to remember when the DMIs came out and it was like, Oh my god, it's a secret.

It's the silver bullet. We're never gonna have to use sulfur again. Yay, and then it was literally within a couple of years they failed in some places. Now, the Fungicide Resistance Action Committee is publishing better information, more information, more accessible information every year about what's new about the different code groups.

And they're also now putting a category in, or they have for a long time, but they have a category in there about the potential for resistance. So they'll say, yeah, there's known resistant populations for this. This one has got high potential, even if we haven't found it yet. And that's directing research in that direction.

And I think that's really important that we stay ahead of these things. things, looking at where the potential is, as well as where there's known issues. So that's really fantastic. This is going on at what OSU, MSU, I think, Tim Miles in Michigan Walt Mahaffey in Oregon. I think Washington state.

[00:16:35] Sarah Lowder: Mm hmm. Michelle Moyer is the viticulture specialist at Washington state university, who's been the project director for this project, led with Walt Mahaffey, who is the foliar plant pathologist at the USDA located in Corvallis. the horticultural crops units. And then a whole, a whole group of scientists from across the nation.

There are people at UC Davis. There's people at Michigan State University. Even while I worked on this project in my role at Oregon State, I'm at with the USDA in Corvallis, Oregon. I'm now here at the University of Georgia working with Phil Brannon, who was the University of Georgia, Scientist working on this project and who actually was the person that convinced me to actually apply for the job that I currently now sit in.

[00:17:20] Craig Macmillan: That's great. You know, we do still have a little bit of time left. This is a huge topic, but I found it interesting as I was doing research on you and looking at your publications. One of the things you've been involved in is research on collective action. and information transfer among growers related to disease management.

And I am really fascinated by this topic. My background is in sociology. So my background is in people, talking to people, doing people stuff. And as we know, things, not just diseases, but also insects like mealybugs, etc. It's an area wide issue. And what you do or do not do on one farm affects what happens or doesn't happen on another farm.

Can you tell us just a little bit about what that research was like, what you did?

[00:17:57] Sarah Lowder: Absolutely. So that was really coming from how do we branch out from some of the fungicide resistance? Like how do we use a lot of this information that we are getting? One of the things that we were realizing is that some of the vineyards that we were working with, that we were getting some of these tests from, even organic vineyards who were not using any, they weren't using the QIs.

They also weren't using any other synthetic product. We're still seeing sometimes very high rates. of the fungicide resistance to these different products. And what we really found was that a lot of the information that we were able to look at was really so much more useful on that larger scale when we were able to look at all of this data in the aggregate.

And so one of the things, which I'm going to talk about my experience with the Oregon State, in the William Valley Vineyard growers especially, that they took all of this information, that they took the data, powdery mildew information that we are getting from their impaction spore traps. They were taking the fungicide resistance data that we were giving them, and they were sharing all this information with each other.

And we're able to say, Hey, oh, I was using this product, you know, on my field this year and next year. And then I started to see a lot of issues. You didn't see it immediately, but you saw it pretty closely after I did, even though you followed the patterns elsewhere. And so they were able to take a lot of that information and aggregate it and share together and be able to use that much more quickly.

I didn't talk too much about how much of the fungicide resistance that we were seeing. We definitely did see some differences in some of the states. that we were looking at, although it was generally pretty high rates of resistance to the QI products across the nation. That degree was less in a lot of the places in Oregon where a lot of this information started and where they shared a lot of this information from the get go.

So one of the things that we wanted to look at was how does this information come across and then what do people do with that information? Absolutely. So when you get into the area wide management, when you, when you start talking about it, you're like, okay, while I manage my property, Unfortunately, a lot of these diseases aren't just staying on my property.

If we could, if we could keep everyone isolated, then we wouldn't have to talk about a lot of this information management information management across all these different regions. What do we do once we have that knowledge and once we're sharing all of these spores back and forth even if we don't necessarily want to share that.

But if we can also share some of the information on what we're all seeing, we can all manage it a little better. Even if it's just as simple as like, Oh, my sprayer was not calibrated correctly and I'm starting to see More powdery mildew in my vineyard blocks. If you communicate that to your neighbor, then they may be able to increase their spray intervals a little bit more in order to not lose their crop because they're going to have to deal with a much higher crop load.

And they could be looking at the spore information. They could be looking at any of these monitoring effects that they're collecting. But if you can know that a source population nearby is going to be pushing more spores more readily, that's even before it's hitting your vineyard. So it's getting that information even a little faster than you would with some of the spore monitoring efforts, if that makes sense.

[00:21:01] Craig Macmillan: That does make sense. And so, in terms of the collecting the information, this doesn't just have to be glove swabs or, you know, impaction traps. This simply can be people saying, hey, I'm seeing mildew pressure that's pretty intense, or I'm seeing it earlier, or whatever. Other people are saying, I'm not seeing it yet, but I know I'm downwind of you, for instance.

Or, I know that my conditions are still very conducive, so I might be able to, like you said, increase my spray intervals, maybe check my calibration, check my coverage. It's a, it's a heads up. Basically from from one grower to another. How is this information shared?

[00:21:34] Sarah Lowder: So there are lots of different ways that this information is shared One of the ways that we wanted to look is at just what did people find the most useful when they were Looking for different information on either new diseases or old diseases or all that kind of thing And some of the stuff that we were finding was that people really found their colleagues, just those person to person conversations that they were having to be the most useful information when managing any diseases.

And while people certainly found, which I was happy to hear, that people found their viticulture specialists, their extension agents, to be extremely useful when helping to find this information, they really were still, the the most important part was their colleagues and their neighbors, the other growers in the area.

And so you can look at different ways that people communicate, which we, one of the things that we did was look at a communication network. So just exactly how is that information flowing in the system? And there are certain people, which this may not necessarily be a huge surprise. But there are certain people that a lot of people go to, to learn more information about stuff, especially as someone that is looking at a region and be like, Ooh, I have one, this super great new tool, mate, I have something even cooler than the glove swabs.

And now I need to tell. the growers about it. I need to see if we can actually use this in a commercial way that'll be viable. You can go to some of these more influential individuals within a region and then hopefully see that information spread a little bit more quickly than it might otherwise if you just kind of picked your people based on just where they were located or even just the closest ones you get your hands on.

As it were.

[00:23:09] Craig Macmillan: Gotta find the node. Gotta find the hub,

[00:23:11] Sarah Lowder: find the node. .

[00:23:14] Craig Macmillan: This is an interesting topic to me because one of the things that I think we've lost from a cultural standpoint is the coffee shop. People who are now retired growers have talked to me about how you're on your farm. You know, before sunup you get things running, you get going.

People are doing what they're doing. Everything's fine. And then you go to the coffee shop about nine o'clock and everybody's there. And that's where the information would get transferred. And this goes back to the, you know, basic farming decades ago. We don't do that anymore. What we do is we're there at Sunup before Sunup, we get things running, we get done, then we're back in the truck and we're on the phone and we're going to the next ranch and we're not connecting with people.

In that kind of social conversational way, the way that we used to. And so hopefully we can revive some of that either through meetings or through internet or through just simply networks, like you said, if there's a relationship, you can just simply call somebody and say, Hey, I'm starting to see this and hopefully we can build those social networks and see the collective benefits

[00:24:12] Sarah Lowder: and find more ways to bring us together.

[00:24:15] Craig Macmillan: Find more ways to bring us together in a world that seems to be forcing us apart, right? No. On this topic of managing diseases and monitoring diseases, is there one thing you'd recommend to our listeners around this?

[00:24:27] Sarah Lowder: There are lots of different diseases in lots of different ways that a lot of things are managed and we talked a little bit about Collective action in the sense that a lot of times some diseases are more effectively managed on a much wider scale than an individual Farming unit so like you could do the best practices in your own vineyard but if you have Someone next door doing lawn best practices that could just mitigate all of the hard work that you just put into it.

But it's hard to say anything on the large scale other than the fact that Talking more with those around you has a much wider benefit for disease management on all scales And just also grow better cultural practices, better more information on learning. I may be someone in the academia realm, but I always think that the more you can learn, the better.

And your neighbors are in the same game as you are, especially in vineyards. I feel like the mantra of the rising tide lifts all boats is very much in effect.

[00:25:24] Craig Macmillan: So we can learn from extension and from all that great stuff that's out there, but we can also learn from each other. Sarah, where can people find out more about you and your work?

[00:25:31] Sarah Lowder: Yeah, so now that I'm over here at the University of Georgia, where I'm most easy to find is through the Viticulture Extension website. It's called the UGA Viticulture Blog. We post a lot of information relevant to those growers in the southeast, but we also have a blog posting that sometimes will go out via email if you would like to sign up for that, backlog of what we've posted.

It's the easiest way to find me. I'm all around the University of Georgia system.

[00:26:00] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. Thank you so much. Our guest today was Sarah Lowdre. She's a Denture and Viticulture Specialist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Georgia. Thanks for being here. This was a great conversation.

[00:26:10] Sarah Lowder: Thank you, Greg. I had a great time.

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript
4 July 2024, 4:00 am
2 minutes 55 seconds

234: Sustainable Tasting Room Tips | Marketing Tip Monday
Your tasting room may be the most customer-facing facet of your wine business. This makes it the perfect setting to display your dedication to sustainability.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these twice-monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

On a recent Vineyard Team staff trip to Oso Libre, we immediately noticed how they showcased their passion for sustainability through out the property.

By providing visual cues at your tasting room, you can let your guests know that the wine they sip is more than delicious – it’s environmentally and socially responsible.

This Marketing Tip will inspire you to share your commitment in fun, decorative ways.

I highly recommend going to the show notes and clicking on “Sustainable Tasting Room Tips” to see pictures of all the great signage we found at Oso Libre.
Sign Sustainably
Oso Libre highlights their sustainable certification right from the front gate with a custom sign. Their passion is seeded throughout every area of the property. From sustainable signs posted on the fence line to informational pieces at the tasting room bar, every wall has a message that connects guests with what sustainability means to Oso Libre.

Consider where your guests meander to at your property and how you can place signage to tell them more about your brand.

At Oso Libre, curious tasters are enticed by a plaque as they walk along the vineyard rows to the tasting room front door. This sign defines the seven values of sustainability; Social Responsibility, Water Management, Safe Pest Management, Energy Efficiency, Habitat, Business, and Always Evolving.

By creating a piece of in-depth material, you welcome your customers to dig a little deeper and learn exactly how your brand embodies sustainability.

Philanthropy is very important to Oso Libre’s owners Chris and Linda. A sign in the shade by the outdoor seating shares information about their Por Vida Foundation. Proceeds from various winery activities like events and bottle sales are donated to cancer research, veterans’ services, animal services, and family support programs.

Consider how you give back to your community and tell your customers about it. They will love learning how you take care of our most valuable resource - our people.
Tell Your Sustainable Story
We are here to help you tell your customers how your brand protects natural and human resources with the Sustainable Story program.

This simple yet powerful free tool helps you tell your own personal sustainable message. And it just got better with a new online course. Go to the show notes, click the link titled Tell Your Sustainable Story to sign up, and start writing yours today!

Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.
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24 June 2024, 4:00 am
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