[CVF] Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson]

Hi Everyone
	This article on the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter is written by an Organic 
Farmer Shepard  Bliss in Sonoma County to be submitted to local newspapers 
in  Sonoma , it was posted on the California Vineyard Forum which is 
sponsored by the Sierra Club. Read and get a more informed look at it's 
impacts and causes and how organic farmers will be harmed by the spraying.
				Wes

Written by Shepherd Bliss owns Kokopelli Farm, outside Sebastopol, which 
specializes
in organic berries, apples, eggs, and educational farm tours.
Sender: Vineyard Forum <CALIF-VINEYARD-FORUM at LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG>


The following article on the sharpshooter has been submitted to various
local publications.  Since I will continue writing on this matter, I would
welcome your comments on the approach I am taking.  Should you see it in
print, I would welcome letters to the editor in response, since the
advocates of pesticide spraying are likely to write.

We will also have a meeting next Sunday to consider what direct actions to
take if spraying does occur locally, which is very likely.  Please contact
me for more information on that meeting.
Shepherd

The Sharpshooter Insect Is Not My Enemy

By Shepherd Bliss, Kokopelli Farm

"The chickens are coming home to roost," my Uncle Dale would observe on our
family farm in Iowa.  Now another winged one--the tiny glassy-winged
sharpshooter--is arriving for the bountiful monocrop meal set by the eager
wine industry.

A campaign of hatred--driven by fear and maximizing profit--is being waged
against this small insect.  But is our hungry guest really an "enemy," as
wine propagandists contend?    Or is it nature's remedy for an unbalanced
monoculture?  Is nature merely taking its course, as humans seek to control
it?

The local daily newspaper presents the wine industry's one-sided view of the
sharpshooter as enemy.  It is time to consider how it might help us examine
a voracious wine industry that consumes forests, orchards, and land.

Scientists warned the speculating wine industry that nature would balance a
monoculture.  "One of the consequences of the trend toward expansion of
large-scale monocultures is the loss of habitats for natural enemies, which
results in increased pest problems," write three University of California
scientists, headed by Dr. Clara Nicholls, in a 1997 article entitled "Plant
Biodiversity and Pest Management in a Northern California Vineyard."

But does the wine industry listen?  No.  They continue cutting down forests
and apple orchards to plant non-native vineyards.  They venture into
riparian areas around rivers, which sharpshooters love.  Along with poison
oak, sharpshooters may be considered "forest guardians," protecting what
remains from further human degradation.  They carry a "Keep Out" sign.  The
wine industry has gone too far and needs to be reigned in.

I hate to say "we told you so."  But we did.  In l997 and l998 I published
articles in the Press Democrat, the Sonoma County Independent and elsewhere,
as did others, warning the expanding wine industry of the monoculture risk
they were taking.  Nature abhors a monoculture.

A decade ago wine grapes accounted for only 20% of Sonoma County's
agricultural revenues.  They are already over 50% and head toward Napa
County's 90%.   We warned against putting all our eggs in one basket.
Sonoma's agricultural economy depends too much on wine's boom and bust
cycle.

The luxury wine industry, full of pride, works to transform the image of
this area from the natural Redwood Empire to the profitable Wine Country.
To defend that image it demonizes tiny insects to prepare the public for the
spraying of toxic pesticides.  The sharpshooter probably will arrive here
soon, and then be fired upon.

Organic farmers and others will defend their private property, even at the
risk of being jailed.  What will this do to the wine industry's public
image?    Stories on "Organic Farmers Defend Land from Spraying" in
newspapers around the U.S. and the world could hurt the North Coast wine
industry more than the sharpshooter.

I have spent eight years of hard labor (others have spent more) to build an
organic farm.  A few mintues of spraying the highly toxic Sevin in search of
sharpshooters (which is what authorities plan) would destroy my organic
farm.  I will not stand idly by and watch my livelihood be ruined.

The sharpshooter may be a gift horse in disguise, repeating the message to
the hard-of-hearing wine industry,  "Back off.  Stand down."  Sonoma
County's rapidly expanding wine industry is already running off food farmers
unable to pay the big bucks for land.

Pierce's Disease--which some grassy-winged sharpshooters (GWSS) might
transmit, especially to stressed vines--is not new.  It has been here for
over a century.  The wine industry should have crop insurance that will
cover their losses and should not use the nearly $40 million in tax dollars
commited by federal and state agencies to bail them out.

If it were not the GWSS, nature would send another balancing remedy.  The
ravenous farming practices of wine over-planters created the problem,
setting such an abundant table, not the innocent sharpshooter.  The GWSS is
not my enemy.  It is a symptom of a deeper problem.

People's fears are being  manipulated for the economic benefit of the wine
industry.  The sharpshooter is described as a "new, dangerous bug," "the
plague," "vicious pest" and "voracious insect."  I have seen this tiny
insect; it merely looks like another leafhopper, similar to the ones that
damage my berries.
A simplistic good guy/bad guy dualism has been propagated.  The sharpshooter
is called as "the biggest threat ever to California agriculture."  This sets
the stage for the fight of the century--the noble wine indusry and its
governmental allies against the big, bad sharpshooter.

"If you took insects away now, everything would collapse," notes Montana
State University entomologist Kevin O'Neill.  Organic farms depend upon
beneficial insects, such as pollinating bees.  I plant insectaries--plants
that draw lady bugs, dragonflies, spiders, and other beneficials.  I also
like insects like butterflies and depend upon worm boxes.

My berry vines will survive the leafhopper attacks, as will those of
sustainable grapegrowers.  After the sharpshooter eats, we will have a
pruned and more manageable, moderate wine industry.  A sustainable wine
industry will be rebuilt by the many good local vineyardists, even if the
sharpshooter harms some vines.

If an "agricultural emergency" is declared and mandatory ground spraying
occurs here--as in Sacramento and elsewhere--authorities could come on my
private property and spray without my permission.  Writer Will Shonbrun
describes this as  "home invasion."   Spraying would hurt the many--animals,
people, plants--to benefit a few at the top of the wine industry.

Spraying would sacrifice an industry--organic farming, which grows healthy
food--at the wine god's altar.  Sonoma County has the second highest number
of organic farmers in California.  That could soon end, leaving the local
economy even more vulnerable to nature's next balancing agent.

So-called "pests" adapt to pesticides.   Only natural and preventive means
should be used to contain the sharpshooter.  Spraying may spread the
sharpshooter, as it leaves contaminated plants, seeking food and shelter
elsewhere.

The wine industry has too much power in Washington, Sacramento, and Santa
Rosa.  If it were another industry, spraying would be dismissed as a
hazardous non-solution with multiple negative unintended consequences.  The
risks of spraying in terms of public relations, organic agriculture, health,
politics, and the environment will turn out to be far greater than any
economic benefit.

Perhaps the real solution to the alleged sharpshooter problem is to deal
with the cause of their arrival and declare a moratorium on planting new
vineyards in Sonoma County?   Houses do not belong in flood plains, and
vineyards do not belong close to the forested and riparian habitats of
sharpshooters.

(Shepherd Bliss owns Kokopelli Farm, outside Sebastopol, which specializes
in organic berries, apples, eggs, and educational farm tours.)


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