A new wine from enviros

Townhall.com ^ | 4/18/03 | Rich Lowry

[kattracks]

So many Americans are engaged in a boycott of French wine at the moment that some French importers are pressuring President Jacques Chirac to cry Uncle (Sam). But environmentalists, as ever, have different priorities than the rest of the country: They are busy protesting Napa Valley wine.

The picturesque trellised fields there make most people, especially anyone with a taste for cabernet, consider Northern California closer to heaven than any place on Earth since Eden. But the fields are maligned by greens as "alcohol farms," the environmentally catastrophic result of "the graping of the land."

Now, there's something amusing about sensitive liberals in one of the world's great bastions of progressive thinking warring among themselves. The stereotypical Northern California vineyard owner is a wealthy yuppie who appreciates the outdoors and the finer things and wants to live within an hour's drive of San Francisco, the Left Coast's left-most city. It must be discomfiting for him suddenly to be considered no better than a smoke-belching coal-plant operator.

But hold your amusement. California wine has, during the past couple of decades, become as American as baseball, apple pie, Budweiser and Jack Daniel's. The vineyards are threatened by an environmental extremism that can properly be considered part of -- together with smoking bans at bars, hamburger lawsuits and all the rest of it -- "A War on Anything You Might Happen to Find Pleasurable."

One charge against the vineyards -- some of which are built on the sides of slopes -- is that they might dump dirt into streams, fouling the water. It has happened occasionally. But the definitions of water pollution and of what constitutes a stream -- practically any rivulet of rain runoff -- have become maniacally broad.

Environmentalists complain that the vineyards are a monoculture, i.e., just one, ecologically sterile, crop. Although some of the newer vineyards have eaten into forests, most of them have replaced other monocultures, apple orchards and the like.

Finally, greens worry about endangered species. Heaven forbid that a mud puddle might be disturbed that provides a habitat to a vernal pool of fairy shrimp, but it is only by stretching the federal Endangered Species Act to the point of absurdity that vineyards can be portrayed as despoilers of the planet.

As the wine industry has boomed in Northern California in recent years (fueled by annoying Internet millionaires), an important shift in perception has taken place. Vineyards were once viewed as an alternative to tract housing and other nasty development, but now are themselves seen as nasty development.

That makes them vulnerable to every tool of harassment in the environmentalist arsenal: numerous lawsuits (the Sierra Club has sued the local government and growers), zealously applied federal regulations and ever-tightening local land-use and permitting rules.

Starting a vineyard is inherently dicey. It usually means borrowing a lot of money to buy land that costs about $100,000 an acre, and then it take years to get the vines growing high-quality grapes. On top of it all, now there's the expense of hiring lawyers, endangered-species specialists and perhaps fish biologists, and the risk of unplanned delays imposed by aggressive regulators.

"It has become a very involved legal, scientific and technical process that stretches over months and maybe years. It renders many properties potentially uncommercial," says Christopher Hermann, who heads the West Coast law firm Stoel Rives' wine-law group. (Yes, there is such a thing -- without it, unfortunately, vineyards wouldn't stand a chance.)

For vineyard opponents, putting property out of commission is the point. Some critics have taken to calling the growers "merchants of death," as if they're selling crack. They apparently haven't gotten the word that a glass of wine a day can help prevent heart disease, never mind pleasing the pallet and soothing the spirit.

Patriotic, common-sensical imbibers should have their marching orders: Boycott French wine to annoy Jacques Chirac and his countrymen. Drink Californian to annoy the enviro-weenies.

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group.

©2003 King Features Syndicate

Contact Rich Lowry | Read his biography

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

All the more reason to buy California wine! You can annoy the French and the enviros with one fell swope!

[petuniasevan]

Same bunch who are boycotting Starbucks, I'll bet.

Funny, funny useful idiots.

[Carry_Okie]

I'm sorry to say it, but this person really doesn't know what he's talking about, because there really is another side to this story.

I live near one of the prime grape growing areas on the Central Coast: the Santa Cruz Mountains. Grape prices were astronomical during the great dot.com bubble. Nearly everybody and his brother on in Silicon Valley was looking to cash out their stock options on a house in the mountains, bask in the cachet of being a vintner, get that fat agricultural tax write-off, and lock in an anticipated ten grand per acre annually. Yuppie retirees and stock-option cashouts butchered many a good oak forest and pasture to put it in grapes. Now there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, but oak forests on the Central Coast consequently declined 18% in acreage in just one decade. So the effect isn't nearly as small as the author states.

An awful lot of these people had no idea what they were doing. Many put the vineyards right next to streams (glassy winged sharpshooter land). Others bulldozed very steep land. Most didn't know a damned thing about drainage or erosion and even less about weed control.

It takes several years and a lot of water for a vineyard to put out adequate production. Until the last couple of years the prices still looked good. Then, just as a lot of that new capacity was coming on, the dot.com bubble busted and grape prices predictably tanked. So now a number of these guys are simply forgoing maintenance on their brand new, and rapidly eroding fenced weed patches.

I guess I do take it personally, but perhaps that's because my immediate neighbor, down-hill and up-wind is doing exactly what I have described. There's another just like him down the road about a quarter mile. Now, I really don't care what my neighbor does with his land as long as it doesn't screw up mine, but that's just the problem.

Right outside my neighbor's grape fence is a stripe about 100 feet wide and a thousand feet long where he owns every noxious weed known to man: starthistle, maltese starthistle, sheep sorrel, Italian thistle, French broom, bull thistle, scotch thistle, and the weed from hell, hairy catsear. He won't spray them either. He's too busy and he doesn't like chemicals. It's also too steep to disc.

Now remember, that that two and half acre strip is upwind. In addition, I guess I should mention that I already maintain a fifty foot weed buffer on his land, but at least it's under forest cover. The seed blows under and over the trees.

I have spent thirteen years and tens of thousands of dollars restoring habitat on my property. My place is so steep in places one must hang on ropes to weed. I've filled two garbage bags full of Italian thistle heads (they're about a half inch across, each). They were growing in a native blackberry patch on an incredibly steep slope. Worse, catsear can breed when they are but a half inch across, but they can grow to over two feet across and can convert my native meadow into a mat of weeds in less than two years. Catsear can grow on vertical rock walls and under clumps of grass. They layer and and are relatively hebicide tolerant. They seed seven months a year and sprout all winter long. It's a nightmare. I spent nearly 500 hours controlling catsear on my property this year alone. I spend hours at a time bent over crawling on the ground looking for weeds. It's mountain lion country.

That's what this kind of stupidity means, and the idiot who wrote this piece without understanding the total picture should try commiting his life savings, risk his neck, and forgo his career to do something good and watch it attacked like this without recourse. That's right. The County likes the tax money from vineyards, but they like taxes on new houses even better. As a result, there is no weed ordinance and won't be until they need ont to put a few vintners out of business to make a fat profit for a few select political donors who will convert the vineyards to development so that they can raise revenue.

So there you have it, the story that didn't get told. The saddest part of it is that if the government wasn't managing the environment we might have a weed ordinance and somebody could at least be in the private habitat reserve business and afford to do more of this kind of work.

[Carry_Okie]

Please consider the post immediately above.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[farmfriend]

Allow me to add first hand information about the grape industry. Limk to thread.

Three years ago several factors converged simultaneously on the California raisin market.

1. Apple juice from China and Argentina were dumped on the domestic market displacing grape juice as a commercial sweetener. Production from 20,000 California raisin grape acres became surplus.
   
2. Recent plantings in Turkey matured and provided lower cost competition in the European market. Production from 15,000 California raisin grape acres became surplus.
   
3. Major wineries overestimated the rate of growth in the market, offering rural land owners attractive contracts to plant wine grape varietals. Over planting of wine grape varietals along the California Coast and in Oregon brought an oversupply of more than 25,000 acres to the domestic market displacing the Thompson Raisin variety.
   
4. The total surplus from these three issues equal 60,000 acres (150,000 tons) and is the basis for the problems.
   
5. The oversight organizations for the raisin industry were slow to react to these severe threats after a long string of years in which supply and demand were in balance. A full growing season and one half of another passed before raisin growers took action to reinvigorate these organizations and develop a program to bring a balance to supply and demand.

[Carry_Okie]

It's been a while since you've seen a rant like that one out of me, hasn't it?

[Dog Gone]

The saddest part of it is that if the government wasn't managing the environment we might have a weed ordinance

How would you propose to get a weed ordinance without government management? This seems to be a very contradictory wish.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

Sounds like a real dilemma, amigo. Is the strip fenced off? In Australia, we'd run a double strand of hot tape along each side, and put a few goats in there. They'd clean up those noxious weeds, pronto. Cheers, By

[Grampa Dave]

I can guarantee you that the enviral whackos in Napa's Club Sierra pushed this ordinance for two reasons and it had nothing to do with weed, flood control or anything nice. They had at least 3 goals listed below:

1. To extort donations from the big vineyards to Club Sierra.
2. To put smaller vineyard owners and farmers out of business and to gain control of the property that these people owned.
3. Once these beachheads in the vineyards and other private property were established. Then use that hammer to prevent other property owners in the Napa Valley from building or doing anything with their property. That would have meant zero anything and probably razing of a lot of personal property in the valley.

Well, it backfired big time for them. The small vineyard owners became members of Club Sierra and voted out the former head and two of his enviral nazis/facists. They elected vineyard owners and farmers to the board of the local Club Sierra to replace these vile eco facists who hate property owners unless they are super rich and donate to Club Sierra. These real stewards now control the Board of the local Club Sierra.

The new board has had open meetings with farmers and vineyard owners and the local media. Now the enviral nazi/facist tone of the local Club Sierra is gone. We are hearing good stewards talk about wise use and protection of the land.

That is the other side of this story, and most of us feel that it is a very good thing.

[Carry_Okie]

The ordinance would merely say that the transportation or harboring of noxious weeds is the responsibility of the property owner.

"Property" includes either a weedpatch, garbage truck, backhoe, or County road mower.

All I want is assignable responsibility. If this guy didn't control his weeds, I could hand him the bill if I could make a reasonable civil case. Frankly, I would prefer an established civil precedent, but this would do.

[Dog Gone]

Ha! What a great story!

[Grampa Dave]

It ain't just a story. It is a reality. Hopefully, that reality will be replicated all over California in other communities.

[Carry_Okie]

That is a pretty fair representation, that exactly matches what I've predicted many times. Fortunately, there was also a good outcome, for now.

The only thing that made taking over the local Sierra Club possible was a large enough and wealthy enough contingent to get it done. Timber landowners, having already been decimated by the State, weren't so lucky. My guess is that, having failed locally, the State is where the RICOnuts will go next.

[Dog Gone]

That seems like a slippery slope to me. If the government can dictate what plants (including native plants) may or may not be grown on private property, a significant ownership right has been transferred from individuals to politicians.

[Grampa Dave]

I thought of you when this happened. The former head of the local Club Sierra and his two outed envirals were stunned and predicatably poed.

Many of these vineyard owners have informed Baghdad Mike Thompson not to try anything on a national level re vineyard and small farm so called drainage controls. He needs their donations which is another story. He may just wake up some day to a list of the wine makers and vineyard owners who donate money to him. Many of us consider him to be no better than the French re his pro Iraqi stance.

[Carry_Okie]

Re goats:

My neighbor could probably do goats. He already has a fence on one long side of the invfested area, the opposite side has a definite boundary at the tree line. The topography of the fence line is a straight traverse. Finally, he doesn't care if the vegetation is only annual grasses.

Our land is a very different case from my nieghbor's. While his parcel is an even treeless alluvial slope down toward the creek, ours is very rugged land with lots of low oak branches for mountain lions and numerous low sandstone cliffs. Fencing goats, even with portable electric fences, would be an extreme hassle (I've looked into it, Premiere has a good product line BTW). It's possible, but you don't have lots of choices about the fence line and penning them up at night to keep them alive would be problematic.

Goats are also a scorched earth approach. You would have to have so many goats that they'd be starving to get every last forb within the enclosure. They would eat the bushes and wildflowers before they got a high enough number of catsears and thistles to control them. Although they would leave grass cover, they don't have a prayer of controlling catsear if your goal is restoration of native vegetation.

We already have deer working on the catsear now. They love the stuff. Athough is slows down the seeding, it can make the situation worse. Catsear regenerates so fast from a torn off taproot that it will seed with a vengeance within a week. Worse, where there was one seedhead when the stem was munched off, there will soon be five or more.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the information!

[BSunday]

This thread was made for you = )

It's alright cause it's midnight, and I got two more bottles of wine
- Delbert McClinton