TED HALL Long Meadow Ranch Opening talk given at the Napa Valley Grape Growers, Organic Conference

July 25, 2013 Held at Spottswoode, St. Helena

What Id like to do this morning is make you all to think a little bit this morning about what organic means. We use those words and you kind of wonder what the intellectual foundation is for why were here. And this is a tricky topic and I would assert that most of us in the room after a few quick phrases arent particularly articulate or very secure in actually describing what organic means. And I just want to get you thinking a little bit about this. As Mary said, my foundation grew out of being raised on a small farm in western Pennsylvania ,and my mother was an organic gardening pioneer in the 40s. My grandfather actually raised produce and sold it at a small grocery store that he operated. The joke in my family was that my grandfather was never more than 50 yards from a compost pile. But we also lived there because my father was a chemical engineer. It was the time of World War II. He was involved in helping developing a substitute for, artificial rubber. And as a result there was a lot of concern about security.

This plant was sited in Pennsylvania because it was away from the coasts and as I was growing up my father would mercilessly ride my mother about how she was going to cause him to lose his security clearance. Why would he lose his security license? He said because everybodys going to think youre a Communist. And in fact in 1954 when I was a young boy, my father was absolutely convinced that Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the red hunter, was going to come take my mother away. But the point of that is theres this confusion about what this [organic] really is. If you look up, even in Wikipedia, its a statement about the negative. We dont use herbicide, we dont use pesticide, we dont use chemical fertilizer. Its all about the negative. I was talking to an old timer last night and he said, Oh organic farming thats farming by neglect. You know, think about that. What it also says is that were all heavily regulated. Why would we do this? Not do these things and subject ourselves to a great deal of regulation? You know the typical laypersons view of what organic is is that you dont do herbicide, you dont do pesticides, and you dont use chemical fertilizers. Its sort of like taking off all your clothes, going down Main Street, and giving it up to the forces of nature that somehow this is all going to take care of itself. What Id like you to think about is that its something much deeper and much more complex. The first order - we farm organically because it results in higher quality at lower cost. Its an economic proposition. And if you think about it for a moment, if it werent an economic proposition, why would we be here, why should we be trying to propagate this? Higher quality at lower costs means we raise peoples standard of living in some fundamental sense. And if were not raising peoples standard of living by propagating these practices, all we are is arguing a belief system. Were nothing more than another evangelical arguing a complex belief system. Its as if I were back in an orange robe in Boston someplace pretending I was a Hare Kirshna. So organic is a big idea, with a different concept. Its about a system of farming. Its about the performance of a complex system. It results in higher quality, lower cost appropriately measured. So how did we get here, to feeling that that is very important? Well, our scientific method, thats been propagated by our land grant colleges in the way that we promote academics, basically results in a very narrow and contained framework for solving problems. Its a Newtonian framework. Cause and effect. And its immediate cause and immediate effect is the way most people go about solving problems. Our academic system drives people to specialties. So we take really bright people who are interested in agriculture - or any other scientific topic - who are THIS broad, and by the time their education is complete, they are very, very narrow. So the net result is we have problems being solved in this very, very narrow frame.

The classic simple-minded example is how do people evaluate historically, herbicides. The simple standard for herbicide is, Did the application kill the relevant weed and is the comparison is the application of that product higher or lower than the next best alternative however else we were doing weed control? If its lower cost, and its effective on that weed, we can clearly say that its a practice we should adopt. And in fact papers get written that way and the guys that write those papers are generally plant biologists, and have a fair degree of understanding about particular chemical compounds, and their impact on particular species of weeds. But the interesting question is when thats applied, what did it do to the fertility of the soil? What did it do to the microbial population that was in operation in that vineyard? Or whatever the crop was. And is it possible that that application is reducing the level of microbial activity which is reducing the fertility of the soil which is in turn requiring the farmer to come back and add additional nutrients and other further inputs that seemingly were associated with the conditions in the soil as opposed to application of the herbicide. So, theres a lot going on in that environment. The folks that are making those conclusions they are reaching as judgments are not observing the total impact on that organic holistic system. When I was, 10 years ago or so, at Mondavi, we were still having this raging debate over whether organic farming practices were more or less expensive than conventional farming practices. A side bar: it turns out theres more variation in the quality of management of the vineyard than there is whether its organic or conventional. Think about that. Management matters. But the really interesting question that I asked of many of the assembled folks is whats the expected lifespan of a conventionally farmed vineyard. The consensus view is that, based on our experience here, especially among corporate farmers, is that its 17 to 20 years. The average life of a vineyard is about 18 years. Then the question is whats the average life of an organic vineyard. Consensus view is that its something in excess of 30, probably 35 or 40. Which is the lower cost farming practice? I today feel that this issue if appropriately measured performance of the system over its lifetime makes this a settled matter. The debate really should be over. So when we gather together here, what were trying to accomplish is to observe the performance of an organic system, it is a systems way of thinking. its the interrelatedness of all of the variables that bring about the change in the performance of the total process. Thats the meaning of organic. Were all going to dive today into a great deal of individual specific items, but the big picture is that organic means the holistic performance of the total system. Why do we form...what are the typical characteristics of that total system?

So were not helping people understand organic practices. I basically talk about three little corners of a triangle. Every organic system basically is populated by large numbers of participants, heterogenity of species, operating in an environment of competition that results in a desireable outcome. Heterogeneity of species, participating in competitive environment which results in a balanced outcome. Its that heterogeneity of species and that competition among the multiple participants in that holistic system but also reduced risk. So the last thought Im going to leave you with is again the conventional view is that somehow organic results in the farmer taking on more risk, engaged in farming by neglect. Nothing could be further from the truth. As we all know from IPM and other approaches that the participation of multiple species in an environmental system actually is a net reduction in risk. So this is not a risk that were taking on, its a longer term stable platform. So think for yourself for a moment, the next time somebody asks you what is organic, do you have an answer? You think about why we dont use herbicides and dont use pesticides and dont use chemical fertilizers. Why do you think that is? Because theyre [pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers] intrinsically good? I dont think so. I think what they [prohibited substances in organic] are is they are markers for the fact that if you apply those things in a Newtonian cause and effect fashion, there are often unintended consequences because you havent thought properly about the total system. So the non-use of those three components is because all of us as farmers and thinkers to think through the impact on the total system so there isnt the unintended consequence of lower fertility or the sudden rise of a pest that has resistance to the herbicide or other product that were using. So the intellectual root, the objective that were trying to achieve is healthy status of the system. It isnt not what we do, its why we do what we do. Theres nothing we do at Long Meadow Ranch that I dont have a point of view about why it works from a scientific perspective. We dont howl at the moon. We dont give it up for nature. We do it because we have a point of view about why it works and why it results in a higher level of health. The way that impacts grape performance is that it means a healthy plant results in plants that develop full physiological ripeness in a healthy environment which then improves the flavor profile. It isnt about stimulating or creating artificial stress, or other conditions, to simulate that process of the performance of the total system. Thats the reason organic vineyards last a lot longer. Because the objective is to put them into a healthy status,

as opposed to squeeze out of them in an intensive effort, a greater flavor as opposed to achieving the total health status of the vineyard. So think about a different way of using the word organic. You know there are ideas like organic growth, of organizations. Theres organic performance of systems. Its the organic nature, the whole status measured over the lifetime of the situation that is what organic is about. Its not about the not. Hope you can all have a great day. QUESTION AND ANSWER PERIOD Question: So in the face of globalization of pests...( inaudible) Well, not to be difficult but I dont know what a pest is. Right? We have sucking insects in our vineyard. Aphids - but I dont even think of it that way. We need them -- because they feed our beneficial insect population so that we have a large population of ladybugs. So the total elimination of any participant in the system generally isnt very constructive. I dont want to go way out on a limb as it relates to the European Grapevine Moth if I understand the biology myself in total, and the possible presence of other competitors but I can tell you from a newly introduced pest called the olive fruit fly, that weve had some experience with, that came here and had no natural predator. And weve followed this very closely. We farm thousands of olive trees here in Napa County. What weve seen over time is, because we have fostered a high level of insect participation - in particular, certain species of spiders - they seem to have discovered that this olive fruit fly is a pretty tasty guy. And because of that heterogeneity of species, operating in an environment of competition, the actual impact of that olive fruit fly has been diminished year after year as its become, as the rest of the organic system has adapted to its presence. And to give you an illustration of unintended consequences using that example - and it is something I really want to caution all of you about - the typical person coming to organics still has the Newtonian framework. So theyve been taught, as a conventional farmer, if Ive got European Grapevine Moth, theyll find the right pesticide and theyll apply it. And its all about that one to one application, as opposed to thinking about what they could do to change the total system of health including change to the beneficial insects. Ill get back to your point in a minute. Ill never forget the experience I had when I was first farming a Cabernet vineyard, and we started to get, at harvest time, some red leaves, which I ultimately concluded was a phosphate shortage. And I went to see John Williams who was, along with Beth and her family, and the folks up at Storybook Mountain, we were all on the bleeding edge of organics, and I said John, what do I do about this phosphate shortage. I had rock phosphate. And he said well, Ted add more compost. And the issue was the availability of the phosphate. There was in fact enough phosphate there, it just wasnt available.

So the NPK form of analysis that everybody does in this Newtonian fashion, apparently misses the point of what, how do I make that material available and that had to do with a level of microbial activity in the soil. Which connects back to my herbicide point. So [back to] the fruit fly: OMRI, which is the body that blesses these things that we as organic farmers use, approved a spray called Spinosad - many of you probably know about it. It was a treatment for the olive fruit fly. The issue is that nobody ever tested it and its impact on peas. Now in our farming system we rely heavily on legumes, clovers, to generate nitrogen to fix nitrogen in the soil and also to allow those, that system to operate effectively we need to have those seed heads get fully pollinated. so that we can then mow them in and have them grow the next year. So were desperately dependent upon the peas to make the olives grow, because the olives are very intensely dependent upon the nitrogen. We start to see these loops. So should we have been using Spinosad? Im not sure. And so should we be using some of the biocides that weve been using to go after the EGVM to the detriment of other beneficial species in the environment? Im not sure. Given the potential risk to us, you know were sort on the side, but I was talking to another organic grower at dinner last night and he said I spent a generation growing this population of beneficial insects, especially the spiders, and it really bugs me that Im being treated as a second class citizen, and being asked to apply this, without anybody giving me credit for having built that gigantic population of insects up. So its complex. So the point is, its not oh Ive got a bug, that I dont want to be here, therefore Im going to kill it. The point is Ive got a bug thats participating in my complex system. What impact is that going to have on my complex system over time? And in my intervening to try to deal with that bug in his role, what am I going to do to everything else? And theres a tradeoff. So, this is hard. This is hard for a Newtonian thinker cause and effect, get a product, solve the problem. This is whats the challenge in medicine today. We see it in animal husbandry all the time. Or just use me. I have really bad arthritis. So I get prescribed Celebrex by my orthopedic surgeon. He thinks its great my knees are better. Then my internist says your blood pressures through the roof; its going to kill you. So now you get to take more drugs. And off we go. Cause he was just treating the knee, wasnt treating the rest of it. We do the same thing all the time in the vineyard. So, to be effective, to be effective as an organic farmer, you need to understand chemistry, biology, entymology, physics, you need to think about it, you need to use it in that complex system. It isnt - Oh I dont use herbicide, pesticide, or chemical fertilizer. Big deal. What have you thought about. Question from audience member: Whats your view on certification?

Answer: If youre tracking with me with my intellectual argument, you dont need it. Right. Its a view of life. Its the way to achieve health status. In the most effective way, any more than you need to have certification above what your fitness program is. On the other hand, I think theres two arguments. One is its a compelling discipline. It forces you to think about things differently. When we first came here, I was considered loopy. Everybody thought we were imposing high costs on ourselves in terms of weed control in our mountain vineyards. Because we were using weed eaters. The easy thing to have done was to continue to use weed eaters but the expense made us think hard and through this crazy guy Amigo Cantisano, we discovered that they were boiling weeds in broccoli fields in Salinas with hot flames with preemergent weeds you get them really hot, the weed blows up, because the water boils and youve eliminated the weed. Well that had never been used in a vineyard setting. And we were among the first to adopt that method and guess what, its common practice today. We would never have, probably, felt pressured to really think hard about that if there was an easy trap door or another option. Another goofy analogy, its like Weight Watchers. If you need it, you should probably sign up. The second reason is because organic practices do convey important information to potential consumers, neighbors, and others about the potential risk of certain compounds that otherwise might be used. Its important to have a process of integrity that causes people when they use the word to conform in a consistent fashion. Ive appeared in many of these conferences over the years and at the break will say well I farm organically but its just a pain in the ass to get certified. Thats complete hogwash. If you know enough about what the costs are in your vineyard and your e managing your vineyard responsibly, you already have all the data and its in a couple of files in your cabinet, and its not a big deal. And if you dont know enough about what youre doing that you can complete the certification processes, you probably arent managing very well and thats another reason. Now theres nothing worse than somebody saying well we farm sustainably or we farm organically - except when the weeds get out of control - and then I just use Roundup. Weve all heard that, right - dozens and dozens and dozens of times. Were in a camp though with Beth in that we dont lead with the chin, with regard to organic. We think it results in higher quality at lower cost and thats the rationale. What we would like is someone to say wow theres an amazing profile in that wine and its only 13.5% alcohol. Were really enjoying this. How did they do it? Thats what we want. Not because we were certified organic. Transcription: Pam Strayer