Grape Insects Oct 21

For California AG today, I'm Mike Stephens, preemptive steps need to be taken to protect grapes. Michael Miller is the Director of Government Relations for the California Association of Wine Grape Growers. California Association of Wine Grape Growers began more than 40 years ago when a small group of wine grape growers concerned about establishing fair prices for grapes established the Wine Grape Bargaining Association. Until that time, wine grape growers didn't have a statewide organization to focus exclusively on issues affecting their livelihood like other specialty crops did. He explains how education can help prevent the spread of Pierce's Disease and the Spotted Lantern Fly.

There's a big effort at the Pierce's disease class of being sharpshooter board within CDF to do some work around educating the public because if we find it, it's going to look like a pile of mud, you know, on a semi truck, you know, some transportation corridor or maybe a train car is going to be something like that. So it's not going to look like a bunch of weird insects. It's going to look like a mud mass on a on the side of a tractor or something. So, you know, larvae come out of that and they become mature and then it becomes a big problem because they, you know, it's just going to spread everywhere. So there's a big effort to increase in public awareness of the spotted lanternfly and to do what we can to make sure it doesn't get here. But but there's a lot of concern about that down the road, and that's something that hopefully never gets here and the preemptive efforts are going to be successful.