September 3, 2026 · SelectCmte CA Wine Industry2 · 16,999 words · 9 speakers · 105 segments
Good afternoon. We're going to call to order the Senate Select Committee on California's Wine Industry. And welcome everyone to UC Davis for our hearing. Members of the public, our distinguished panelists and experts, and particularly I want to acknowledge and thank my colleague, the majority leader of the California State Assembly, and the assembly member for this amazing district, which includes Yolo and Napa and Lake and Colusa counties, and Sonoma County as well, overlapping with half of my district as well. So it's always a great honor to have Assemblymember Aguiar Curry with us, and she has been extremely active this year in advancing legislation and budget items in order to support California's wine industry. So it's a special treat to have her here in her own district. And I also want to thank Jessica Berg, the dean of the UC Davis School of Law, and the entire UC Davis team for generously hosting us here at King Hall. And I'd like to invite Dean Berg, actually, to make a few opening remarks. Thanks again for having us.
All right. Good afternoon and welcome. As you noted, I'm Jessica Berg, the dean here at the UC Davis School of Law, and we're so very pleased to host this Senate committee hearing to discuss California's wine industry. For over 140 years, the University of California Davis has played a pivotal role in advancing the California wine industry. In 1880, the California legislature instructed the regions of the University of California to establish a program providing for instruction and research in viticulture and oenology. The current department engages in cutting-edge research and educational outreach, facilitating a partnership between the University of California and the Table Grape Raisin and Wine Industries. Our Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, whose mission it is to enhance public understanding of wine, brewing, and food sciences provides public programming, highlighting innovations crucial to the wine industry. And at the School of Law, where we focus on the policy side of things, we have courses in wine law and related fields and even a student wine law society. We view our proximity to Sacramento as a positive and continue to look for ways to establish and expand our connections. Thank you for coming to King Hall, to UC Davis, and I look forward to continuing the discussion about how we can further strengthen our ties with the capital.
Thank you and welcome. Dean Burke, thank you so much. To restate what you said, we wouldn't be here today if it weren't for UC Davis, and not only because we're in this wonderful facility here at King Hall, but the success, the quality, the resilience, the economic impact, the joy of California wine owes so much throughout its history to the scientists, the economists, the creative folks here at UC Davis. And so we couldn't be more proud to be here today and to hear from folks who I know several of our panelists are alumni of UC Davis as well. And that impact, that contribution to the success of the industry and of California's unique world position and competitiveness in wine owes so much to UC Davis. So thank you again for having us. We here today although we excited to be at UC Davis we here because the wine industry in California is battling on so many fronts At our last hearing in Napa, at Napa Valley College, we talked about a lot of the economic and market trends that the industry is facing and how we might address them, both as the state government, but as California, as an entire community. But it also faces challenges from the natural world, whether naturally occurring or not, including the impacts of climate change and successive waves of invasive species, pests, and disease that have been the story of why not just here in California but around the world for decades. The rediscovery of the glassy-ringed sharpshooter earlier this year illustrates just how dynamic this challenge has become in this part of California in particular. This invasive species is a vector for Pierce's disease, which already cost California wine growers an estimated $48 million a year. The senator for Temecula, who is a member of this committee, knows this situation quite well, as many of our colleagues throughout Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley do as well. But the threat is statewide for reasons that we will hear later today, and so must the solutions be. Grapevine red blotch is another growing threat. It's a virus that can significantly diminish fruit quality and yield. And because there's no cure once a vine is infected, red blotch underscores the importance of early detection, clean nursery stock and coordinated efforts to manage the insects that spread it and to have effective detection and rapid response. So even so, California has in its wine industry a long and storied history of resilience and prosperity through challenges just like this. And meeting these challenges will require tenacity, partnership, and investment. They always have. They always will. That's what it takes to be the world's leader in wine. And I know on behalf of the legislature, certainly Assemblymember Aguiar-Curray and myself, members of the select committee, including the president of the California State Senate, who was trying to join us by Zoom. There is no Zoom today, but this is an issue that is of great importance to Senator Monique Lamone, the president of the Senate, who represents Santa Barbara and the Central Coast wine industry as well. This is a top priority for the legislature and I know for the governor as well as it is for so many Californians. I'd like to invite Assemblymember Aguirre-Curray to make any remarks that she would like. And again, to thank her for her steadfast leadership on behalf of the industry, bringing science and nature-based solutions to so many public policy challenges in the state, drawing often around research or practical work in the field. that is happening right here at UC Davis, applying them to California public policy programs all over the place. But both of us have been working hard to both focus state government and the legislature on the overarching challenges that the wine industry face. And then we have each been carrying big and small pieces of legislation to try to address the, I'm not going to say death because we are alive and well, but the challenge of 1,000 cuts that the wine industry faces in California every day. And so Assemblymember Aguirre, thanks again for being a part of today, and I'd like to invite you to make any opening remarks.
Great. Thank you, Senator Cabaldon. Thank you for having us here today. As we know, this is a really important conversation. The problem, this is a problem that's impacting the wine industry, just not in my district but all up and down the state of California And so I here to listen and to hopefully we can find out some solutions The glassy sharpshooter may be a small bug but boy it a threat that poses anything but small I farm my brothers and I farm and we know what it costs when you get some kind of invasive species but here we have in the grape industry we have hard our farmers and growers work hard to protect our crops, their livelihoods and we need to do everything we can do to stay ahead of the pest. We know early detection matters. Trapping, tracing where the pest has traveled, getting ahead of the new detections can make the difference between a manageable problem and a much bigger one. We secured $10 million for the commissioners, but it's not new funding. That's why I asked for funding in the budget to help CDFA and our counties respond now. I'd much rather be spending my time today to contain this problem than wait until it spreads and costs California farmers and taxpayers many more dollars. And we need to think beyond this year. Not just today, but beyond this year. Have a vision. CDFA estimates we may need about $5 million per year over the next three years to expand trapping, surveys, and outreach. If we let this widespread infestation take hold, the eradication costs could be far higher. So we need to start talking about this now so we can plan for this in future budgets. And when I say now, we've been looking at this for a while, and I feel like we go on deaf ears. At the end of the day, this is about protecting California agriculture, our vineyards, our citrus, our orchards, our farm workers, and the communities that depend on them. I'm grateful for all of you to be here today. I'm ready to listen, to learn, and work together to make sure we can get in front of this before it gets any worse. And thank you, Senator.
Thank you so much, Assemblymember Edgar Curry. It is a, it is a, we have a lot of work to do here today. And so we want to make sure we get it right and that we focus the state of California on both glassy-winged sharpshooter and red blotch disease and similar invasive species issues that we're all going to be concerned about. So let's get started with our panel and start learning and moving on to action. and that we're going to begin by inviting Dr. Cindy Crone with the North Coast Area Integrated Pest Management Advisor to give us the big picture overview and some of the recent findings, challenges, issues, and some of the policies informed by our past successes and identify species of concern. Dr. Crone, thank you for being with us.
Thank you so much. Okay. Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. I will repeat them. My name is Cindy Cron, and I'm the North Coast Integrated Pest Management Advisor. I advise for insect pests and invasive species that affect commercial grapes, walnuts, pears, and olives in Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties. Today I'm here to open up this conversation and address glass-of-winged sharpshooter introductions in Northern California and their potential impacts on the grape industry. So this started with a nursery in Fresno area that delivered grapevines to Northern California Costco's in 24 counties in Northern California between April 21st and May 21st without the proper hold tags. So what that means is that the nursery is responsible for putting a hold tag on shipments being delivered out of counties And what that indicates to the Costco workers is I see a hold tag I contact my local ag commissioner, they come down, they do an inspection. And that inspection happens before it's sold on the show floor. Without that hold tag for a month, shipments were being delivered to these 24 counties without being inspected. Luckily, it would have been nice if it was earlier, but luckily there came a point in which a worker in Sonoma County at Costco got a shipment of grapefines, didn't have a hold tag, and was like, wow, this is weird. So they called the Ag Commissioner's office because they have a close relationship with the Ag Commissioner, and they know that in the past they've had these hold tags and they are not supposed to hold the product before being sold. They called the Ag Commissioner's Office in Sonoma County and asked, hey, we got this shipment. Do you want to come down and inspect? And they were, yes, we do. We want to come down and inspect. And they came down to inspect the shipment and found all life stages of glass-ovinged sharpshooter. So that is eggs, nymphs, and adults on grapevines being sold on the show floor. This started the whole process of looking at where else have you shipped your grape finds, for how long has this happened, and going back and tracing to discover that it actually occurred for a whole month, 24 counties. So, in addition, a nursery in Texas sent 10 trucks of desert willow and elephant ears, again to Costco locations, but this time in 18 counties, between June 24th and July 3rd. When entering into California, they passed the CDFA station, and only three of those trucks were given hold tags. That means seven trucks entered without hold tags. Luckily, this was caught quickly, but Desert Willow was sold without being inspected. And when Desert Willow was inspected, they found glassy-winged sharpshooter eggs on that plant material. In addition, in Sacramento, they found eggs of another sharpshooter called the broad-headed sharpshooter. This insect is not in the state of California. It would be considered a quarantine pest. And it can also vector Xylella fastidiosa that causes Pierce's disease, just like glassy-winged sharpshooter. so in addition since that point cdfa during a cdfa briefing on august 12th they have announced that glass of ring sharpshooter fines in six counties shasta sacramento santa barbara santa clara stanislaus and contra costa i have not received an update from cdfa since then so i don't know what has progressed and any more details other than the findings in those counties. So glassy-wing sharpshooter, it vectors Xylella facidiosa, which is a bacterium that causes Pierce's disease. This bacterium enters the plant in the xylem and it multiplies and it It blocks the transport of water and dissolve nutrients upward from the roots. And what that looks like in the vineyard when you see PD and signs of PD is water stress of grapevines, leaf scorch, shriveled fruit, and eventually death of the grapevine in one after the initial infection. Currently, we have no cure for this bacterium. Once it enters into the xylem, there is nothing we can do other than rogue that grapevine. But if that grapevine is not rogued, it is a source of inoculum for other sharpshooters that can acquire by feeding and move it to uninfected grapevines. So we have native sharpshooters. That vector is Islella fastidiosa. We have blue-green sharpshooter, green sharpshooter, red-headed sharpshooter, willow sharpshooter. We also have the meadow spittlebug up in Northern California. So why are we concerned about just another sharpshooter, right? Glassy-winged sharpshooter, why does it really matter? And why it matters is because glassy-winged sharpshooter is not like the other sharpshooters. sharpshooters. They are not equal. They are not the same thing. And the reason being is, let's start with the distance that it can fly. It can fly up to a quarter mile a day. This is an insect that moves across the landscape, and it will continue to move as it goes. Where our native sharpshooters live in the riparian area, they move into neighboring grapevines that are near the riparian area and they move back into the riparian area. They do not move across the landscape. So the areas in which we have disease flare up are the same areas year after year because of this relationship. When you have glass-to-winged sharpshooter that can fly over a quarter mile and it continues to fly, it does not return back to a certain area, it will transmit this bacterium further as it's moving across that landscape. Another difference is that it's considerably larger. It's half an inch. It's about twice the size of our native sharpshooters. And with that, it's a voracious feeder. It ingests a lot of xylem. It feeds on a lot more grapevines than our native sharpshooters. And this can exponentially increase the rate of vine-to-vine and spread of PD during a single season. It also feeds lower on the shoots in summer. Our native blue-green sharpshooter, which is our main vector in the North Coast, feeds on the green, very succulent shoot tips. And if they feed in springtime, that bacterium will travel into the permanent wood for a persistent infection the following year. But if they feed any time from June on, there's not enough time for that bacterium to get to the permanent wood before pruning happens in winter. So it's not a persistent infection. There's a small window in which the xylella is transmitted that becomes a persistent Pierce's disease infection with our native sharpshooters. But with glassy wing sharpshooter, it feeds lower on that shoot, below where the pruning cuts are. it enters into the permanent wood. And it also is able to feed lower in summertime. So it continues. It has the whole season to transmit this bacterium. And in addition, it also feeds on one- to two-year-old grapevines during dormancy. Our native sharpshooters do not feed on the dormant wood, but this glassy-wing sharpshooter can. And so it able to transmit this bacterium at times in which our native sharpshooters don do it So this sharpshooter glassy sharpshooter has over 300 different host species that span over agricultural, urban, and native environments. We cannot limit the hosts of this insect because no matter where it goes, it will find a place to feed. Some of the crop hosts that are affected and that we have in the Northern California area are grapevines, citrus, olive, almonds, stone fruit, avocados, fig, blackberry, apple, pomegranate, pistachio, pear, persimmon, walnut, and that is not a full list of agricultural crops. Some of the ornamentals are crepe myrtle, oleander, hibiscus, bougainvillea, boxwood, privet, eucalyptus, ash, sycamore, acacia. Again, not a full list. There's over 300 species out there. And it's very important to point out when we had to deal with this before, a case study of 1998 to 2000 in which they had the outbreak of Pierce's disease that devastated the Temecula wine region after the introduction of glassy-winged sharpshooter. It is approximated that 30 to 60 percent of grapevines were destroyed or removed due to this infection in order to combat the spread of this disease in a very short period of time. So we've dealt with this before in California, but we haven't dealt with it up here in the north coast. There is a CDFA 2025 economic impact study in which the cost of Pierce's disease to California is estimated at $110 million a year, with $48 million of that borne by the grape growers themselves. If glass of ring sharpshooter becomes established in northern California, it is estimated by this study that the cost to growers alone will more than double to $104 million annually at a time that the grape industry is really struggling, at the time in which the grape industry does not have the money for this. And so with UCNR, we've responded by submitting a rapid response grant two days ago, IMPI on, it's a NIFA grant to able to address some of the needs for extension needs. We are not a regulatory body, but we educate. And with education, we can help prevent establishment. And so this is addressing urban, nursery, master gardener education, and outreach, and commercial grape industry workshops to teach hands-on identification using actual specimens of insects, showing eggs different instars of nymphs and adults they can see with a microscope in person so that they can become familiar enough that if they see it in the field, they know what they're looking at. They know that they need to then report it and then how to report it. Also, this grant will include developing a degree day model tool for growers to use trapping supplies and Spanish translated materials, which is very much needed because our growers that are out in the field, we speak all languages. And it's very important that this information is able to reach as many people as possible. So the invasive species that we talking about today is glass sharpshooter But there are continued threats to California grape industry not just glass sharpshooter This is the hot topic today This is what we all trying to address today because of the Costco introductions. But in the past, we have dealt with European grapevine moth, in which there was a quick response to be able to eradicate that insect. Eradication is not easy to achieve, but eradication was achieved with European grapevine moth. It was a concerted effort between all parties involved. You're at Commissioner's Office, CDFA, UCANR. We all work together from different angles to be able to address this holistically. And in addition, every year I present on Spotted Lanternfly. And it's scary because every year I have to add more states to that list in which Spotted Lanternfly has been found in. And this is another invasive insect that can kill grapefines from feeding on it alone. There are very few things that can kill a grapevine from feeding alone. It does not transmit a pathogen to our knowledge at this time, although there is current research to see if it will transmit Xylella fastidiosa on the East Coast. And so it is important to be aware that there are a lot more out there. There are insects with European grapevine moth. We weren't expecting that. It just arrived, and it landed in Napa, of all places. So it's not the only insect out there that we might need to combat in the future. And with that, I would like to take any questions that you might have.
Dr. Kron, thank you so much for both the comprehensive and thoroughly understandable presentation about some of the issues that we're facing here. I wonder if I could dial back to the front end of the presentation and the Costco tagging, you also mentioned the border tagging as well. Do you see roles for the state or is it principally a federal issue or is it both of us or is it the counties? How do we assure that we don't see that much, that big of a gap in our detection systems in the first place?
Sure. So at UCANR, I conduct research and educational outreach. This would be a better question answered by the Ag Commissioner's offices because they are a regulatory body, and they know what the rules are and where that gap is. I can give you my opinion, but it might not be as well-versed as the Ag Commissioner themselves.
It looks like she's ready, so we'll get there in a bit.
I'll give it a shot.
Okay, so on the red blotch issue, you're also engaged in that one as well. And so where are we seeing that as a problem, and what's the history to this?
so grapevine red blotch is definitely an issue um in in grapevines in northern california and in napa and sonoma county it is an ongoing issue it is different in that a treehopper vectors a virus compared to a sharpshooter vectoring a bacterium they're not exactly the same but equivalent in that there is no cure for grapevine red blotch virus Once a virus is in the grapevine that grapevine is infected and needs to be robed It is an ongoing issue because it doesn kill the grapevines outright but it reduces the quality of wine which reduces your ability to sell that as, you know, a high price tag bottle of wine and ends up moving to bulk wine. Growers lose a lot of money because of that. We know what the insect vector is. There is still research underway to look to see if there's other insect vectors. There has not been any that have been shown to be confirmed other than three-cornered alfalfa hopper, Spicicillus Thank you.
We probably won't hear this from Josh Rubin later, but who knows? You know, one of the, you know, we know that the industry, because of some of the larger market issues, that we may have more vines than can be supported by the market. So can you help explain why losing a few vines to a couple of vectors is still a problem, even if we have too many vines at once? If someone's vines are destroyed by the sharpshooter, why is that a big deal, and what are the implications for the rest of the industry and their neighbors?
Growers can only afford so much. at some point they will go bust. They will not be able to remove that vineyard that has that infection. And what that means is it's a source for the insects to acquire, whether it be grapevine red blotch virus or whether it be Xylella fastidiosa, and move it to the neighbors and even further beyond. And so without the ability to manage those abandoned vineyards and without the grower being able to afford it, it is going to become an exasperated problem. It's not as easy of, oh, we have too many grapefines, it's okay if we lose a few. That's not really what would be going on.
So what you're describing, this is what I was trying to wrap, is that the confluence of these two issues, the demand weakness on the one end and perhaps the desirability for there to be fewer vines is not, is it is a problem especially for those two things to be happening at once because the industry is, for some folks, the industry is not capable of sort of dealing with the vines that are in, that become infected with either the virus or the bacterium. instead they simply become abandoned and then they become a nuisance and an accelerant on the vector moving to other vines and other properties.
Yes.
All right. Thank you. Assemblymember?
I'm sitting here dumbfounded. You know, I realized that we'd had the issue with Costco, and I was surprised it took a little bit of time that someone hadn't identified that before. When a product comes into any warehouse, well, particularly, we'll just use Costco as an example, because I'm sure this is not the only place this has happened, but who identifies, checks out the plants before they even come into the store? What organization does that? What agency does that? And, yeah, do we have any? Oh, okay, I'll bug her in a minute.
I will defer to the Ag Commissioner. This is their area. Big time.
But the other thing is, you know, I was really upset because one of my staff people brought in this little plant. And they bought the plant online, and it was an invasive species. And I said, how did you get that in here, first of all? And I'm concerned about if they're coming through the mail order, what else is coming through? So I'm sure we'll address that as well, because it's something we need to have a conversation on. One of our assembly members, Erwin, did the rule for us this year to see how we can prevent product coming in with invasive species and bugs and whatever else. So I'll let her do it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your presentation was great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. One other question that's related to the science here. So when we dealt, when California dealt with the first invasion in the 90s, there's been a series of both technological and other control measures that weren't available to us in the same manner as they are today. CRISPR editing, you know, other things that you're much more familiar about than I am. Are we better prepared to deploy some of those strategies today? Have our systems, have our governmental systems without impugning or plotting the counties at this point, because we'll hear from Tracy Cleveland later, but are systems capable of deploying or taking advantage of the technological improvements that we've seen in some of these dimensions since the 90s?
I'm not aware of this technological advances being used for xylella fastidiosa and Pierce's disease specifically. I am not aware of research in that specific combination of the two.
Okay. All right. Well, Dr. Vann, thank you so much.
Thank you.
Excellent, excellent start to the hearing. A really good scene setter for us and for our colleagues. So I appreciate you joining us today.
Thank you.
All right, well next we're going to proceed to with all the foreshadowing that we've had up to this point. Now it is time to hear from Tracy Cleveland who is the Agricultural Commissioner and the sealer of weights and measures for Napa County. Tracy Cleveland, thank you so much for joining us and please share with us your perspective.
Wonderful. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair and Committee members. I'm Tracy Cleveland, again, the Napa County Ag Commissioner and Sealer of Weights and Measures. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to speak. I'm very honored. So I'd like to start just by giving a brief introduction to ag in the U.S. I think everyone on this panel is very familiar, but it's always important to touch on, you know, agriculture in the United States, in California, and then in Napa to put it into perspective for you. And then we can dive into glassy-winged sharpshooter. So California is an agricultural powerhouse. I don't know how else to say it. In 2024, California was ranked number one in the U.S. in cash receipts, totaling $61.2 billion. California produces more than 400 commodities, and some of those commodities are almost exclusively grown here. Nearly half of the country's vegetables and over three-quarters of fruits and nuts come from California. So we're feeding Californians, we're feeding the nation, and we're feeding the world. In July, we released our 2025 Napa County Crop Report. No surprise that wine grapes are our number one commodity in Napa, and they were valued at over 968 million So for close to 43 production acres The two previous crop reports 24 and 23 had Napa wine grape crop valued at over a billion So they're big numbers. When you think about agriculture and California, those two words should be synonymous. Now that you have the full picture of what's at stake, let's talk about Gwiss, Pierce's disease, and the Costco, Fresno, and Texas nursery incidents that Dr. Kron touched on. So in Napa, over the course of four weeks, April 21st through May 21st, based on shipping receipts, we received about 220 total grapevines. Customer contact lists provided by Costco weeks later indicate that 110 of those 220 vines were sold to Napa residents. With help from the county, with help from industry, and our residents, really, we inspected and or destroyed approximately 175 vines. So that leaves some unaccounted for. We learned that some of those remaining vines were donated by Costco to food banks. They were destroyed by Costco directly, or they were traced by my team to adjacent counties, adjacent county Costco customers. Dr. Krohn touched on the 24 counties that had receiving Costco's. What she left out is that there were 16 additional counties that do not have Costco's but still had their residents purchasing vines from adjacent neighboring Costco's and then bringing them home. So the total impact there was 40 counties. On the Texas nursery shipment side, 25 counties received material, 18 sold material before they were inspected. Napa happens to be one of the counties that were notified with enough time to inspect and then destroy without having anything sold. But again, it points to gaps in the program. So what are counties doing in response? What's what's the strategy? The general order of things includes containing the spread statewide survey and detection and rapid response. So containing the spread for counties involves our trace forward efforts. So impacted counties immediately began trace forward activities. We were trying to track down all of those unaccounted for vines within our communities. We issued press releases through our public information officers, our board of supervisors, our county executive officers, and then in other social media and media pathways and networks to get the messaging out. And then once we had customer lists, we were able to go directly to the source. So ag staff were deployed to inspect plants at identified sites, confiscating vines as necessary, and then submitting suspect pest samples to CDFA for analysis and identification. The next part is that visual inspection and survey. At these residential sites, we also inspected the surrounding landscaped area. So it's the vine that's coming in. You inspect, you take off any samples, and then you look at everything. Because now those vines and those pests have been in the environment for a while. They could have moved off-site. Dr. Kron touched on the fact that there are over 300 hosts. So that's a big number. and so we were really focusing on looking for presence of glassy wing and then we also added detection traps to those areas as an additional way to monitor for gwis to date napa county added 271 traps to 152 additional sites this is on top of our general glassy wing sharpshooter trapping program where we have a thousand traps out in the in the world on an annual basis and we had four lab confirmed viable egg masses taken from those vines that we inspected So the third and final is that rapid response If multiple life stages of a breeding or a breeding population of GWIS is found then CDFA works with those counties to begin those eradication efforts. And it's a long and kind of drawn-out process. We go through our board. We do a proclamation of an emergency program. So we say rapid response, but it's not really as rapid as I think that it needs to be. Counties also maintain detection traps at high density and continue to conduct visual inspections of those areas. Eradication efforts also include targeted pesticide applications and biocontrol releases. Those efforts can take years, depending on the size of the population and the location. Dr. Krohn touched on some of the most recent eradication efforts. She mentioned six different counties. Prior to the Fresno nursery incident, existing eradication projects, not including those new six counties, included four counties, Solano, Stanislaus, El Dorado, and Santa Clara. Post Fresno nursery incident, we have treatments happening in, as she mentions, Shasta, an additional site in Stanislaus. There are detections, additional trapping and serving with rapid response plans happening for Contra Costa, Santa Barbara, San Mateo, three locations in Sacramento, and an additional location in Santa Clara. So it's a lot. I have to state the obvious here, which is that we are looking at a tremendous amount of work and likely eradication efforts coming down the line with limited financial resources. So currently our focus is those trace forwards and trapping and not eradication, but that has to be something that we're looking at. So when eradication efforts are triggered, a quarantine within a set area is established, and that restricts the movement of commodities and regulated materials outside of that area. So those costs can be significant to growers as well as local, state, and federal partners. If we look at European grapevine moth, we discovered it in Napa in 2009. We eradicated it in 2016. And over that seven-year time span, in Napa alone, we spent $100 million to eradicate. So $50 million to growers and then $50 million to our state, local, and federal partners. So that's not sustainable. The emphasis should be on prevention. Counties at this point are uncertain if we will be made whole for our current activities. So we are left to make decisions about limited resources. So in Napa, I'm fortunate. I have support from the county CEO and our board of supervisors and industry. I have the benefit of a local wine grape pest and disease control district. So Napa wine grape growers assess themselves willingly. They voted to do it. And those dollars are directed by that industry board of directors. And so they're spending money to enhance, and I say enhance, but really I mean backfill some of the underfunded state programs. They're also funding research efforts by our local UC viticulture advisor. They're supporting grower educational seminars and biocontrol efforts. And all of these efforts tie to pests like vine mealybug, red blotch, Pierce's disease, spotted lanternfly, and more. So I don't have the option of choosing to scale back my efforts to protect agriculture in Napa. The total economic impact locally of the wine and grape industry in Napa is billion providing 55 jobs in Napa Nearly three out of every four jobs in Napa County are connected directly or indirectly to wine and grapes as indicated in the Economic Impact Study Commission by the Napa Valley Vintners. So before I conclude, I want to take a quick opportunity to introduce C3PA. C3PA is the California Pest Prevention Program Analysis. I'll say that three times really fast. This study was funded by CACASA, which is the California Agricultural Commissioner and Sealers Association, in partnership with CDFA and the University of California. It's a comprehensive 500 plus page report. So I didn't send it to you because it's 500 pages. But it examines strategies, tools, and funding required to modernize our pest prevention systems, allowing us to keep pace with today's challenges in agriculture, environmental stewardship, and biodiversity. The last analysis of this pest prevention system was completed in the late 90s. So, I mean, that's 30 years ago. And a lot has changed since then. I think I heard trade routes and e-commerce and through shipping facilities and parcel facilities. So there are a lot of additional pathways that are impacting ag and the environment and our economic landscape. So through C3PA, the intent is to provide a roadmap for a resilient pest prevention system that ensures California agriculture and our farms and our farmers continue to thrive while safeguarding our environment and natural resources. So there's more to come on that. We should have an executive summary that we're working on that will be a much more condensed version with more numbers. But in conclusion, California agriculture, it feeds its residents, it feeds the nation, it feeds the world. So it's worthy of sustainable and adequate funding levels to support the continued existence of it and to support our local farmers that engage in, in my opinion, one of the hardest jobs that exists. So thank you for your time and for your support.
So is it a since the acronym seems almost perfected? Is there any chance the analysis converts to an order of some kind? So we will get a C3PO?
I wish I hope that's the hope that's the hope that would be wonderful. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, you highlighted just the immense effort and workload that's involved in this always. And then you add on these pathways, as the Assemblymember was saying, which we weren't doing in the 90s. we weren't having plants delivered to our homes in a box with no tagging or any other information whatsoever. In this particular incident, did Costco neglect to, maybe that's not true, I don't want to use any words that have legal meanings to them, but was Costco expected to tag and didn't? Where is the system not work?
Where's the failure?
Yeah. It wasn't Costco. the state has a nursery program and it's run through the Pierce's Disease Control Program. So there's different types of nursery programs that a grower or a nursery can be a part of. And there's three different programs. And I won't go into too much detail on them, but they sort of differ. So if you're in a generally infested area, then essentially you're mandated to have treatments. Sometimes you're dictated which products you can use. And then there might be an inspection of that treatment at the origin nursery. And then again, at the receiving, I say origin nursery, origin county. And then again, at the receiving county. And then that's where the paperwork comes in. We call it a blue tag, which means it's coming from a potentially high risk area. And so it needs extra set of eyes. So the receiving county then prioritizes and goes and inspects. So in some variation of these programs, one requires very specific materials. One, you have the option of having materials and one of them, a county can witness the application and then in another, they don't necessarily have to, but those shipments usually have to be noticed. So the receiving county has to receive notice. I think it's 24 hours in advance so that you know it's coming and you can assign your staff to inspect that material. So believe it or not, the Fresno Nursery was there. I don't understand how, but they're essentially not in what's considered an infested area. They're generally free from, even though we know that that's clearly not the case because those plants were covered in glassowing. So that definitely points to the fact that there are some holes in the system and the program, and there really needs to be an overhaul of what that nursery program looks like and what the program at the state level is.
That was gentle.
I'm trying. I know so much. Don't blow up.
Okay. Yeah.
I think there's a lot of work we can do to reevaluate and make them better.
so then if it is if there's a blue tag and it's coming to costco in in napa then you
your team goes out and and every time and every time yes and i mean how many folks are on the ag commissioner's team for this purpose for napa i i have a full-time staff of 30 they're all doing different things inspector wise i have uh 13 inspectors and then two three ag standard service workers so my external service workers are specifically doing like trapping and with inspections and then I'll throw my inspectors into it as needed so it's it's a lot we split it usually up Valley down Valley and they just go all over the place all day long looking at plants coming into any nurseries any landscape yards anywhere even residents can call us and we'll come out and inspect plants if they're receiving them
Does the maturity of the plant make a difference on the glassy wing sharpshooter going after it?
I mean, you know, I see fields right now, rootstock. And that makes me nervous just thinking about all the rootstock that's going in right now. And will we find it there? I don't think so. I'd probably defer to Dr. Cron, but I don't think so. Really, it does have a huge host list. And kind of how we distinguish it is if it has a big enough leaf for a glassy wing to lay an egg mass on, then it's probably a host. So lavender is not so much an issue, but certainly elephant ears and grapevines are. But I think they would have to be leafed out.
Okay.
We look at grapevines too. So as vineyards are replanting, we're looking at those also. And we're looking for Gwis, really any pests and vine mealybug.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so what it for for you given your your expertise your experience in this area and just the sheer amount of attention that you have to devote to it I mean do you do you feel like we at a yellow alert an orange alert or red alert Like how I mean, this is always a problem, right? The threat of invasives and some some kinds of invasives are always present in some ways, which is why the county commissioners are so important. but how do you, like, what's your assessment or even your feeling about kind of where we're at today in terms of the level of concern that we should be having?
If red is the worst, I would say red. I mean, we're, because it's, we're talking about Glassy Wing and Pierce's disease today, but really there are so many invasive pests, and we know that there are pathways that we are not covering. We have things coming in and out of the state that we're not able to inspect or look at. People are bringing things in over border stations. They are flying with them internationally, domestically. They're shipping them in the mail. There's a lot of things that are happening that we need better oversight over. So I think some of my partners would say, oh, you know, we're doing okay, and we're doing a good job, but we need to do more. I mean, that's the reality. They're getting in, and at a certain point, they will become established. And then when you talk about eradication instead of prevention, like common sense goes out the window, and so does any kind of reasonable budget. So we are doing better, but the threatscape is getting more intense and more extensive at the same time.
Yes.
And outpacing our ability to continue to improve and to get better at it.
Yes, yeah. And like County Ag Commit, we're, well, the state and general, we're all struggling, right, with budgets and with maybe making cuts at each of our counties depending on what our board needs and is asking us to do.
So we're doing more with less and that's not sustainable.
All right, well, Commissioner Cleveland, I know you probably needed to be at Costco this afternoon, checking a couple of things yourself just to keep up with the backlog, but we very much appreciate you taking the time to be with us and share your expertise with us.
Thank you.
So let's turn next to Josh Rubin, who's the Director of Sustainable Finance at the Bank of Montreal, or BMOs. We'll be hearing about it for the rest of the afternoon to share with us an economic
lens on the situation welcome absolutely thank you so much thank you for the committee for for having us uh yeah and for those of you that don't know um you know bank of montreal of course acquired bank of the west uh just a few years ago so you may be more familiar uh with with uh that bank which of course now part of our operations um i'm in the sustainable finance team but as you probably know you may have seen our uh 24 25 and 26 uh wine market reports that we've put out so we have quite a large wine and beverage book, including Napa, Sonoma, and bits of the Central Valley as well. So we really get a good listen, I think, to what growers and producers are facing right now. I won't dive too much into some of the less than thrilling economic details as far as the downturn is concerned, nor do I want to steal any of Michael's thunder here. But, yeah, obviously an absolute shift, right, really driven by a decrease in consumer demand that's really reducing total tons crushed, right, total number of planted and bearing acres in California. And it really is you know seismic right is perhaps underestimates it So if we looking from you know a peak wine grape crush in 2018 of 4 you know millions approximate a few different reports out there million tons down to 2 most recently in 2025 right So 40% reduction. So you can imagine how that reverberates, right? It's all being grown at some point, right? So if you do the math, you're missing around kind of 30%. And those are some estimates of how much fruit was actually left on the vine last year, particularly in Sonoma County. So really big shift, right? And as you can imagine, it always hits the front line producers the most, right? Growers, winemakers, right? Even by our own numbers, you see that total consumer spend increased to about $120 billion, right, in 2025. And they'll say, oh, that's great. That's an increase. That's about 4% or 5% over last year. But if you look at total inflation, right, which has really occurred kind of after that winery gate, if you will. It's really occurred at on-premise and retail. The share going back to producers has actually shrunk, right? And why is that so important, particularly when we're talking about invasive pests and glass-winged sharptrota in particular, that's, you know, you've got to cut lines somewhere, right? And unfortunately, pest control is always on the chopping block. You know, some listening to our, you know, clients, they've been able to get some pricing increases, right, but it's pretty minimal. So really what that, the end result is, oh, I've got to cut something. I got to look at my operating budget and find something there. And that's why, and we hit on it earlier, like the numbers of plants involved, you know, only a few plants here infected, right? It may seem, why do we care about that? That's so small, right? But the potential for these to become such a large problem, both counties and statewide, is huge, right? Because you imagine that's just that easy line item to cut. And really, if we look at, I'll kind of step back a little bit, because I'm going to transition into this issue of, okay, so we've removed those vines, right? And a lot of removal is done correctly. You completely rip out all your grapevines, right? You try to pull as much residual grapevine material as possible, so you don't have much of a host left in that hopefully fallow field. It's very different if you just try to hit a pause button on a vineyard operation, right? You really can't do that. I know there's some very large growers that are claiming to be able to do that effectively, but you need maintenance sprays. Most importantly, when it comes to glass wing sharpshooter, you need trapping and you need vineyard scouting. Eventually, we'll have robots that do it all for us, but you still need people in the field looking for those problems. So if that becomes a line item that you get rid of, you can have the slippage where you're going to get these pests, you know, just kind of passes our radar, you know, kind of through the filter, our vineyard and becomes a really big problem. And that's where, you know, abandoned and unmaintained vineyards become, I think, and you mentioned it earlier, Senator Cabaldon, about that intersection, right? is like, well, we got economic stress and then, okay, we have glass-winged sharpshooter. And it's really that combination that could lead to alarm, red said flags, potential disaster, recent red flag already So that the only one But if we look back to Temecula right and granted our tools were somewhat limited in that outbreak part of what made it so bad was you had these huge reservoirs in citrus untreated citrus groves right next to these producing grapevines So you imagine that now these kind of unfarmed, unmanaged vineyards are out there and can be a potential residuum, if you will, or, yeah, for Pierce's disease and obviously the glassy mean sharpshooter. So, you know, I think that really becomes the threat and the danger, and we really have to pay attention to that. So if you look at, say, the last three years, hopefully I'm not stealing your thunder here, you know, 120,000 acres of grapevines pulled out statewide, you know, how much of that was done effectively that there's no residual grapevines left is a big question, right? And I think we need to allocate funds to study that. You know, I tried to find some estimations of how many abandoned or unmanaged vineyards. It's probably thousands to 10,000. It may not be a huge number, but it's a significant number, right, that we need to keep track of. I think State Senate Bill 732 was a really good step in the right direction, right, that allows for fines to be kind of established for these unmanaged vineyards. But if you look at the economics of it, you know, vineyard removal, of course, it depends on where you are, could be $5,000 to $10,000 per acre. You know, the maximum penalty for SB 732, you know, if we even get to the penalty phase. everything should start as a conversation, right, is really 500 to 1,000, right? So you almost have, you know, a 10x number that's very difficult for the grower, you know, or the winery with a state vineyard to overcome, right? So it may be, unfortunately, the last, the path of least resistance, right? Oh, just we'll put that vineyard on pause right now, we'll spray it a couple times, you know, and we should be good, right? That is what we really need to worry about, right? And, you know, I think it's important to remember that ideally, you know, the wine grape grower doesn't have this burden themselves, right? I think there, you know, and hopefully there's some funding, you know, allocated somewhere. We can certainly talk about it more for complete vineyard removal, right? If you have these vineyards in distress, there could be a change of ownership. I mean, some estimates are about we could have 30% of the California wine grape industry kind of shaken out or gobbled up or purchased by somebody else or not really active in the next two to three years, right? So the potential to have these unmanaged acres is huge. You know, having funds available for complete removal, inventory first, then complete removal, you know, I think is incredibly important, right? Those are kind of the main points. you know that I wanted to you know talk about today because I see that as really the the greatest risk right the the intersection right of this really essentially the the grower is going to have less money right they need to make a decision and and this pending threat right of residuum in these unmanaged vineyards you know a much greater conversation and this may be a bit out of scope for what we're talking about today is just kind of the future of land use overall, right? Particularly in heavily impacted counties right napa sonoma coastal counties we can you know what are our options if we're going out of grapevine ideally we talked about fallow right but that's uneconomic for a while you know what are we going to do that land is it available for groundwater recharge you know conservation energy production right i guess you did warn me about that land mine so i did step on that intentionally but i i think it's a really important part And we really have to look at this not just as a shakeup and a right sizing of the wine grape and the wine industry in California, but California agriculture as a whole.
Right. And what what crops come in? I mean, I went through the viticulture enology program here and actually studied Pierce's disease. So I saw the agave plants when I drove in. I thought that was so cool. But I mean, we're going to have to switch to some crops. I think in the valley, it can be a little bit easier on the economics. But for coastal, Napa and Sonoma, there's only a few crops that we could switch to. Premium olives, floriculture, right? The list becomes pretty small. So I think there's a much larger question, not for us to solve today, is, yeah, how we manage these lands in the global framework of, you know, California agriculture.
And I'll stop there.
Well, you brought it up, and we're in Yolo County. Is agave one of the, it wasn't on Dr. Kwan's list, but is that a host species as well for the sharpshooter?
No, okay. It should not be, but we'll find out. We'll get back to you on that one.
Please tell me no.
Well, thanks.
Thanks so much for, I mean, I think the picture that you're painting is a very important one around that we're experiencing this here with the glassy-winged sharpshooter with respect to wine grapes and other crops. But it is a larger issue that we're facing where this confluence of factors that may be causing more farmland and more cropland to go out of production at the same time that we're dealing with invasive species and the challenges to which that going out of production accelerates the problem of the invasive species spreading. We are definitely seeing that throughout the state and not just with either wine or with the sharpshooter, certainly in the lower San Joaquin Valley where water issues have contributed to lots of farmland going out of production, but also in many cases simply being followed with no management of species. So this is a much bigger issue in a big respect. So thank you for pointing that out. We didn't really get to probe with Tracy Cleveland much, but maybe between the two of you, I mean, for counties that don't have the special district supported by the wine grape growers, how are they grappling with this? I mean, and it came to mind just because Mr. Rubin was describing that, you know,
the challenges for growers to contribute on their own properties to be able to be as vigilant as they would hope to be. You know, they share our collective interest in this, but they are facing many, many challenges all at once. And so the special assessment in NAPA provides a way out of that collective action dilemma to some extent. But I wondering if you have some insight as to what does it mean in Sonoma and YOLO and other places where they may not have that tool You know for NAPA it definitely provides a buffer And then it an opportunity for growers to direct how we use those dollars that they assess themselves So it it a huge resource
We've had it for over 20 years. We actually just reauthorized it. We did a public hearing last
month, so it should reauthorize for another five years. I do know in Sonoma, they were, they have the same momentum and effort going on a couple of years ago and they just could not get it off the ground. So growers were not voting to implement an assessment and because you need a set amount of people to vote for it. I don't remember if it's two-thirds of the grower industry, but they didn't want to do it. They didn't have the money to do it and they weren't interested. So it didn't happen. So we're fortunate and then other counties that don't have that to fall back on and to support some of the things they're trying to do, they definitely struggle.
they struggle yeah that's uh it's not your problem it's not my problem it's our problem
you know you can't just put up exclusion netting around Napa County and say you know we're covered right and that that's the uh kind of really the what is so scary about this problem right is that you can't put up borders you know you can't put up blockers you know it really is a community it has to be a community-based control effort and those of course don't end it at county or even state lines and just to kind of you know echo a little bit you know we've had you know very successful growers that and and wineries that are weathering this current storm you know they see some of their premium bottles you know above 12 above 20 doing okay you know the lights at the end of the tub tunnel and when asked what do you most worry about you know and then standing around the field it's like well i'm worried about that abandoned vineyard there and that abandoned vineyard right over there and I'm in the middle of Napa Valley you know it's certainly something that our growers and our clients in particular are concerned
about I'm glad you talked about abandoned vineyards unmanaged vineyards there's a cost of those right and I think doing policy and working with my colleagues they don't put that piece into what's it cost to do work with the farmer taking out of vineyards very expensive and that's why you have these abandoned ones is that they just cannot do it and if they do it's so expensive for them and to recoup any of their money in the long run is really difficult so one of the things i think we have to acknowledge and we have acknowledged because we work in ag and we are northern california um the our colleagues don't understand it and as many times as we try to educate and help them understand i mean this this is preventative stuff that we could be doing but there's a cost to that and nobody wants to hear that what the cost is and what's the cost to the consumer to the farmer etc i'm looking trish is sitting up here in the top and she goes into all of our offices and educates so many of our colleagues and you know it's like talking to a wall is that oh that's not our problem you know and so i'm frustrated when i hear and i know because we farm we just took out our orchard it was so expensive to take it out come back and put new irrigation and make sure the soils ready to go you know put in the new trees and making sure the trees are healthy before they even get to the to our farm so there's all those costs that I think people just don't understand and I think that's how we get these invasive species going from farm to farm when it's just sitting there and yeah it it definitely a terrible issue that we got to figure out Absolutely We heard some pretty large numbers right of what at stake right But it very hard to convince someone you know how much that avoided catastrophe that didn happen
You know, put that in the real dollars that you need to spend today, right? That becomes a very difficult blocker.
Yeah, how do you eradicate it? How do you take out the vines? Do you burn them? What happens then? What do you do with the wire? I mean, there's so many things that people just don't get. So thank you for your presentation.
Oh, you're welcome. You open a can of worms with me.
Yeah, this conversation reminds me of a bill we just heard in the legislature around converting properties out of the Williamson Act and its protection for agriculture into solar panels. And we can debate the value of that policy. But it didn't. That legislation did not have any requirement that you pull out the crops or the rootstock or anything. So you could simply convert the land over, but there's no accountability around some of these issues. And that's why building the understanding and the fluency, especially for some of our exclusively urban counterparts around how the system works, is so important. So I just want to ask you, Mr. Rubin, you know, given the Bank of the West is not Bank of Montreal, is Quebec or are there other governments in, you know, in the world or in North America that are doing anything, you know, innovative or instructive that we might learn from here in California about how to address this?
Oh, yeah, that's, you know, of course, you know, you know, ice wine. Of course, you have Okanagan Valley that's more similar to Napa. A lot of production, you just don't have the same pest and disease issues because of the overwinter freezes and everything. Right. So classic wing sharpshooter, you know, won't be a great, you know, really won't be a problem for them anytime soon. I'm knocking on wood right now. An interesting, you know, prevention, very different industry. but also what I work in is controlled environment agriculture and the Canadian greenhouse system in Ontario and just the level of biosecurity involved in isolating different greenhouse grows. You know, they're dealing with tomato virus, which is threatening their entire industry, talking about crop switching, cucumbers, et cetera. But really, the cost and investment in biosecurity is always top of the conversation, right? And really understanding to protect these local homegrown industries that have a great background and story and putting some government funds behind that.
That's certainly Canada and Ontario in particular is really good at. All right.
Thank you. and please let the folks of Ontario know that we love Ontario,
everything about it, and especially their name. So I appreciate you so much.
Absolutely.
Let's turn to our final panelist, who's Michael Miller, the Director of Governmental Relations for the California Association of Wine Grape Growers. We've talked all about wine grape growers all day today. So now let's hear from their voice. Michael, welcome.
Thank you, Senator Kibaldan and Assembly Leader Aguirre-Curray. Before I begin, I do want to say I appreciate you holding this hearing. You both represent a destination wine region in the world. Your community makes some of the finest wine in the world and these hearings are important I appreciate you doing that I also want to acknowledge the leaders of both your respective houses They both represent wine regions the pro tem and the Senate speaker as well And we know that they're engaged in these issues because what we're talking about today affects their constituents, affects your constituents. And we appreciate your leadership and engagement on this. So I can't think you're enough for this. And I also want to piggyback on one thing that you said, Senator Acabaldon. To our friends from Canada, please drink more California wine. We love our friends from Canada. Please, please buy more California wine.
All right.
So with that, I'll begin. You've heard a lot of information today about the situation with WIS and other pests. It's a very serious problem indeed. We know that for many growers and winemakers, they're struggling to stay in business, and we know that many of them have already lost the struggle. And so what we're talking about today is important. As we wrap up the hearing, I'm going to focus on potential solutions. I want to offer some ways forward in dealing with the situation. Let me first address the Costco situation. We appreciate the $10 million redirection of CDFA's e-fund toward the ag commissioners on this program. It's very important. It's helpful. But that action also reduces money available for other things. For example, if Tracy finds that she has a problem with the spotted lanternfly in her district, the e-fund has now minimal funds available for that. So we really looking for additional state funding to deal with the issue. Our estimate is that there needs to be about $26.8 million in new funding dedicated to deal with the Costco situation. The industry has already stepped up with new funding. Additionally, we anticipate some federal support coming soon. We hope, we hope, we hope. But we also need some state funding. And we're hopeful for that because we recognize that there will be opportunities in January, maybe some early budget action or some additional things you can do. If there's a special session, maybe there's an opportunity there. I'm sorry.
But we're hoping.
I appreciate that.
That said, the second thing we need to deal with is the overall funding of the Pearson's Disease Control Program in general.
When the program was created 25 years ago, it was built on the promise that you would have three tiers of financial support. You'd have federal support, state support, and industry support. The industry has contributed more than $90 million since the inception of the program. At the federal level, there's ongoing funding every year. At the state level, that funding stopped during the Great Recession. And we recognized there was a budget crisis at the time, and hard decisions had to be made for difficult reasons. But that said, since then, only $5 million of state money has been spent on this program. And that was a one-time expenditure in 2017. So in short, that is not sustainable. The lack of funding has resulted in reducing vital activities that are needed to control the GWIS population. And remember, this is a control program. It's not an eradication program. They're not trying to eradicate GWIS. They're trying to control it. So the activities to control that have to be funded and that the lack of funding is how we wound up with whist in backyards in Fairfield. We have nine counties currently right now that have whist in populated residential areas and five of those counties had a problem before the Costco situation. So the Costco situation doubled it, but we already had an existing problem. So what we're looking at to get to that three tiers of support again, I think the state These are best probably $10 million annually in that program to make it sustainable again going forward and that's something that we can do going forward should be a major part of the conversation. Third we need to look at the potential causes for the spread of GWIS. While the glassy-winged sharpshooter can fly a long distance as Dr. Kwan said, we know with the Costco situation that didn't happen. They didn't fly from Texas to Fairfield, it didn't fly even from Fresno to Napa it was on through the goods movement system and through shipping plants that were infested from then plants from nurseries so we need to look at that as a statewide issue and not just a local region by region issue because what happens in one place affects the entire state the take away the nurseries is that we need to know that the nurseries are already doing a lot of good things and they still have a problem if you've got a nursery that is spraying, they're monitoring, they're doing everything that's required, but the whole area around the nursery is infected with GWIS, it is a real difficult problem to manage because when that the plant goes on that truck and that community is full of GWIS, that truck is going to take the GWIS and send that elsewhere in the state. So we need to look at how we can help the nurseries better manage that by probably spraying close to the nurseries and maintaining, controlling that population to a level that we don't spread it across the state. With the Texas situation, we had 10 trucks come in from Texas. Three of those, only three were identified before they got here. That means that our border protection inspection stations aren't working the way we would like them to work. And I want to be clear, it's not their fault. Again, when you go back to the Great Recession, they lost funding. They were underfunded, they're understaffed, and they have a difficult job to do. But we've mentioned the glass, the spotted lanternfly. That plant, that insect, when it comes to California, it is likely to come either one of two ways, either on the highway
system or on the rail system. So the border inspection stations are vital to making sure that we want to know when it gets here and try to block it down. We've already had shipments where they found the egg masses on an art fixture that was shipped to Sodoma. And they caught it in time when we were lucky. We found dead spotted lanternfly on airshipments because they're not very hardy. They get the cold weather in the plane and they die. but we know that there will be some truck, some RV or something that's going to have an egg mass on it that's going to come down to Interstate 80, and if it's not inspected and they don't catch it, it's going straight to Napa, Sonoma, and other agline regions. So we need to do something to make the inspection stations more effective. Regarding treatment methods, I want to suggest a couple things we can do. One is somebody mentioned robotics and how we can use robotics to better go through vineyards and identify things like leaf roll or mealybug. When a robot can go through and scan the thing and come out with a full map of where the problem is, they can treat it better. They can identify specifically where the problem is, go in with another robot that will spray just where it's needed. IT WILL JUST USE THE PEST MANAGEMENT TOOLS THAT ARE NEEDED AND NOTHING MORE AND IT CONTROLS IT MORE EFFECTIVELY AND TIMELY AND STOPS THOSE SPREADS ADDITIONALLY WHEN YOU LOOKING AT THE TOOLS THAT WE USE WE APPRECIATE THAT THE LEGISLATURES OFTEN COME AND ASKED TO DEAL WITH MANAGING THOSE PEST and stops those spreads Additionally when you looking at the tools that we use we appreciate that the legislature has often come and asked to deal with managing those pest management tools But recognize that every time that the legislature says you can't use this one or you can't use that one, you're taking one more tool out of the toolbox to grow us to deal with these pest issues. So we need to make sure that we have the tools necessary to do the job. And finally, we talked about when you have the terrible situation where you have to rip out your vineyard, right? And I appreciate the majority leader's comments. It is a tough thing for people to do, but they have to do it in many cases. It's expensive. A big area where there's a problem with that is in the Central Valley. What's happening there is, in many cases, the economics, they take out the vineyard. You have to. In other cases, however, it's a diseased vineyard that grower can look at the tree assistance program and get some funding if they can pull that out and deal with that issue however under the tree assistance program you have to burn it you can't mulch it you can't chip that you can't it has to be burned or you lose that federal support in the Central Valley you can't burn anymore it's prohibited now so what they're doing is they're looking at things like curtain burners right high demand it's not available it's incredibly costly what the sookin Valley air protection district did was to come up with some funding for those growers where they said we will give you a grant of tap cover the cost that money dried up last summer there's no money available for that so what we've asked for the last two years because we've seen this coming is we've looked at the greenhouse gas reduction fund as a potential way of funding that effort if the district can get some funding from the GGRF and then use that to help growers deal with this issue that'll be helpful because what happens when they can't deal with it is that a couple things one you've got the video that's taken out and just left their piles of vineyard that becomes a haven for for rodents as well as the disease that if it was a disease a vineyard and now that becomes a threat to the entire region so those are some of the options that we have that I want offer today. I guess going forward, I recognize how we got here and where we are. There are tough decisions that have to be made, but I think we have to deal with it. I'm just writing down some of the comments made from Dr. Kron. 110 million dollars in crop loss annually. That's real. Tracy mentioned if it's green, yellow, red, we're at red. That's real. Josh used the word seismic. These are real problems. As a former staffer in the Capitol, I know that people come to you all the time asking for a handout, asking for something, and they say the sky is falling. The sky is falling. It's bad. It is really bad, and we need some help. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Thank you.
All right, if you have questions.
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
I appreciate the, just the long action list that we can take up together in the Capitol as well. So appreciate the specificity and the range of options that will help us maybe get to orange from red and are worth considering. There one other I happen to chair the technology committee for the Senate and we are anticipating the world is anticipating that some of the major technology companies particularly the two AI labs and SpaceX may go public in the coming months or in the coming couple of years which will mean potentially large episodic windfalls of cash on the tax rolls and we don't know when, we don't know how much. We actually don't even know if we'll be able to spend it because of the GAN limit, so that's a separate issue. But as most of the budget requests that we both receive are ongoing permanent budget requests, and you've identified a couple of those just now, and those are important for us to consider. But I do think it's also separately we should be thinking about if there are substantial one-time revenues, what might we do that would attack the problem in a way that would avoid longer-term costs. So for example, if we're trying to, if eradication is possible in some of these places and in some of these vectors, but it's too expensive, but it is feasible to accomplish, then we We ought to be thinking, we ought to ask ourselves the question at least, if we had enough money to fund eradication now or in the next year or two, would that, and we would do that at a significant scale with more than one vector, could we not reduce the 10 million that you're describing, because that's chump change, but avoid potentially the pressure for even much larger costs on an ongoing basis. So I would encourage our folks who have testified today and other experts to help us think that through. Eradication is not always an option for a variety of biological community concern and other reasons, so it's not the panacea. And eradication is just one of these dimensions where we might see, is there a big play that we might do? By one time I don't mean just once, but maybe twice. Not forever, that would allow us to really get at the root of the problem and also to do so in a way that doesn't require us to keep adding another 10 million and another 10 million and another 10 million in permanent ongoing commitments. So appreciate the list that you've given us, Michael, and just ask us to think about this additional dimension as well, the extent we might make significant one-time investments or short-term investments that would eat at the basic problem itself.
Thank you. I'll commit to try to come up with some options for you to consider. Thank you so much. Thank you.
As I said here, I think about what does eradication look like, you know? What does it really look like and what's most bang for our buck when we do that? And, yeah.
That's a great question. It's challenging to answer. We do know the PDCP program, the Pierce's Disease Control Program. We've had, I think the stats are, 18 QIS eradications throughout the state over many, many years. So we can do it. We're very good at it. But that was always one-offs on a much smaller scale. So, yes, now we're facing more eradication efforts and needs that are popping up all over the place. It's a little bit like whack-a-mole. So I think we kind of trying to figure out um if that can work how it will work Um and then playing the long game you know what do we focus regionally do we focus on high wine growing regions I mean it there a lot of ifs a lot of what ifs if we leave it to be you know leave this county to become infested and then we just accept that it is you know how does that impact agriculture there how does that impact the economy how does that impact anything that's coming from that county to Guisfree County, so there's a lot of things to think about. We can eradicate, and we've done it, but never on this scale. So that's definitely a whole different part of the game. If I could add on to that, too. I did read on some of the history about when the program was created, and they did look at statewide eradication of what that would look like, and the costs were huge. They just said that it wasn't really manageable, but through this control program was more fiscally recruited.
Yeah, then also, I mean, statewide eradication becomes a continual whack-a-mole, right, because, again, you're going to have importation potentially from nurseries out of state. You know, there's always that risk. So, you know, I wouldn't want to say that eradication is impossible, But, yeah, it certainly we can – it's one thing for California to be very on top of it, very aggressive. But, again, it's that we have to look at other southeastern United States and from those areas as well as an issue. It's looking at the costs on both sides, the eradication effort and then the continual management effort that's, like, happening in Temecula and other areas. So, yeah, you look at all of those parts. I would speak speaking for Napa. I am pushing for eradication if it were to pop up in Napa. I don't think I have a choice at this point to to look outside of that. So I would push for that. If whether that's realistic or not, I don't know. But that's that's kind of where my head is at now. So I'm definitely thinking long term and then a little more outside of the box. If we don't follow this traditional path of eradication, then then what can we do? what can I do ahead of what we normally do, if that makes sense. We have an incredible institution here at UC Davis. Hello, UC Davis. We need some help. Just saying. And kind of connected to the issue of whether eradication is necessary, and Senator Cabaldon mentioned it earlier, you talked about CRISPR, right? I mean, yeah, in most crops, right, you can either, well, I won't say that word, but you can generally use resistance breeding, bat crossbreeding, molecular techniques, right, to have resistance within your crop, right? And a very common place, you could say, oh, it's going to take us 15 years to get there. You know, PDR1, the resistance chain for Pierce's disease, actually comes from grapevines that evolved in Mexico and southeastern United States. It's like, oh, great, let's stick it in everywhere, which would work in other crops. And wine grapes are so unique because we're attached to 800, you know, 1100-year-old clones that mean everything, right? And the genetics, it's just a very, very different landscape. So even if Pinot Noir looked the same, tasted the same, produced the same wine, if the public knew that there was other genetics that were brought in, it just becomes a different issue. And I just bring that up because it's great that there's that obeisance, lack of a better word, to tradition. But other crops, you don't really need to deal with that. You know, you can have a new cultivar come out every two to three years, and people are expecting that. But that's just not the, at least the California, you know, vitus vinifera-based kind of wine grape landscape, if you will. If I could add on to that, too, there's been research here at UC Davis on this, Cornell, Oregon State.
Others were looking at how do we make the grapevine more resistant to Pierce's disease. And the PDGWIS board has put quite a bit of funding into that research every year. It is a tough nut to crack as Josh said for a bunch of different reasons. But when they took 800,000 out of that research this year to deal with the costco situation, that research is on hold a little bit because we have to deal with the emerging crisis. So it's a balancing act where limited resources you can do what you can.
Yeah, you know, during the the we were dealing with glass wing sharpshooter the first round. California's budget was structurally extremely different. California is the only, I think this is still the case, California is not just the only state, it's the only government, state or national government on the planet that has something akin to a $30 billion permanent deficit and years in which it has a $30 or $50 billion one-time unexpected surplus. That's now a feature of our public finance system, and it has been since Facebook went public. That's not new. But I think, you know, especially those of us who have been around for a while, we keep thinking that's going to stop, and we will be like any other government or company or nonprofit where we're mostly thinking about what to spend each year. But our budget's not like that any longer, and that's an enormous challenge for those of us that are trying to make a budget. But it also opens up a different set of a different box of solutions that is unlike what you could imagine in Ontario or Mississippi or anywhere else. And so, you know, my view is it's incumbent on us to at least consider those what would anywhere else be seen as moonshot plays, but here are actually quite possible if you just pick the right year. and in some sense they're more possible than how do we add $26 million to CDFA every year? I think that personally I think that's doable, but it is as much of a challenge as in a year where we have a $20 billion IPO from OpenAI and we're like, well, could we spend $100 million on an eradication program this year? That's actually much simpler than $26 million forever. So we just, so it's, I'm simply encouraging, you know, researchers, innovators, creators, you know, advocates and others to think about these, the opportunity set differently. So that we can make sure that if there, you know, when there are these big dividends from some of these world changing, economy changing technologies, that agriculture in particular is not left behind. and that we're assuring that we're tackling the red crisis, not the communist one, but the red light crisis that Tracy Cleveland has outlined. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks so much to our panel. Extremely enlightening. Very much appreciated and very practical and actionable. I appreciate all your work, both for our hearing today, but also the work you're doing every day to tackle this and many other overlapping crises. We now gonna turn to public comment if we have any We invite any members of the public to come forward maybe line up at the center and then we be taking public comment at the podium here where we first saw the dean of the
law school. Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon. Noelle Kramers with Wine Institute. Wine Institute represents California wineries. Really appreciate you holding this hearing this afternoon to delve deeply into the impacts of the glassy-winged sharpshooter and what can be done to help California wineries, as we all know, are challenged right now. And this is an added challenge that they don't need to face. I want to express appreciation for the recognition by the majority leader that there is a need to provide additional funding and to have those conversations next year to help address this issue and respond to the increasing number of eradications that we're going to need to undertake. So I also wanted to follow up on a point that was raised earlier about the research needed and if there's opportunities for using new technologies to address glassy-winged sharpshooter and Pierce's disease. And the Pierce's disease glassy-winged sharpshooter board at CDFA, which is funded in part by industry, Mr. Miller mentioned, over $90 million since its inception of industry dollars, but without state funding, that limits what's available for research. And then with the glassy-winged sharpshooter impact, we've had industry funding that's had to go to fund that, which takes away from research. So we're just, with the limited resources we have available, we're not able to address the concern that is present today. there's also a need as was mentioned before about a having a broader discussion about invasive species and the methods for preventing their introduction because everyone wins when we prevent pests and diseases from being introduced because that means we don't have to spray additional pesticides to treat those new pests and as we all know California is a leader in sustainability. And new pests and diseases make it even more difficult for grape growers trying to grow their grapes sustainably and maintain their certification. So there are a whole host of reasons why we should have the bigger conversation, one, about funding, but two, about making sure that we're improving our methods for keeping new pests and diseases out and how we handle and respond to them when they are present. So thank you again for holding this hearing today and I look forward to continued discussions.
All right. Thank you.
Welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm Tricia Gerringer with Agricultural Council of California and the California Association of Nurseries. Thank you very much to the chair and the majority leader for this hearing today and appreciate all the comments made. Ag Council represents vineyards, almonds, pistachios, peaches, tomatoes, citrus, and more. And my own family grows wine grapes and raisins, my mom and my brother, in the San Joaquin Valley. So this is an incredibly personal issue and very important statewide issue, of course. Thanks to the chair and the majority leader for the $10 million in the E-Fund. and for the recognition all throughout the summer to push for funding. We greatly appreciate that. I am here today to speak on behalf of our members from the California Association of Nurseries As has been said they are very much on the front lines as others have expressed And they're not just on the front lines of GWIS, but also many other pests. For many of these family-owned nurseries that we represent, they feel that they're in crisis now. They are working around the clock to address GWIS, to control GWIS. and be so much part of the solution. But they are in some cases as family-owned businesses spending six figures of their own funding in order to fight this really critical emergency situation. We are working alongside our friends at the California Association of Wine Grape Growers and others in agriculture to support the $26.8 million as mentioned by Mr. Miller. And we, of course, are in regular communication with multiple ag commissioners and working with CDFA officials on a better strategy going forward just to have better coordination in the future. Our members are absolutely committed to developing a stronger framework. I know the commissioner mentioned that and toward moving toward more meaningful improvements to the GWIS and Pierce's programs to be more effective and to collaborate on additional state funding and better pathways, as the chair mentioned, and more opportunities as a sector that's one of those front lines of defense. We know that that's crucial. So appreciate the time and thanks for the hearing today. Look forward to continuing to work with you.
Thank you. all right good sequel we're gonna we're gonna go back to our last hearing and that's right
one of our the oldies but goodies yes that's right that's right um i did have the pleasure of presenting to the board uh in in napa the last the last meeting um but since you're here today at uc Davis and our name has come up many times throughout. Obviously, thank you for being here and excited to hear the conversation today. You talked about moonshots and these possibilities. And I would just like to to raise, you know, the the point that I think one of our greatest places to invest is in our university systems. This is where these changing technologies have have come from. And if we're thinking about applying things like CRISPR, I can tell you we have faculty here at UC Davis that are ready to do that with no funding to be able to do it. So all of these issues that we're talking about today are kind of encapsulated in that. Our CSU system, our UC system, just amazing entities to be able to tackle these problems. Not only do we generate new knowledge, we generate the people who then go out into that industry and lead that industry. and are problem solvers in the industry. Cindy's an example of that. We mentioned another alum of the program. So if there is a moonshot, I think it's going to come, you know, from a place like a UC that does that. What we've seen instead in the recent past, and PDGWIS board has been mentioned many times today, to note that that board now funds research on seven different pests and diseases. It's not just Pierce's disease, And that's because all of these diseases are emerging and there's no money elsewhere to do it. So PDGWIS is taking it upon itself to tackle red blotch and mealybug. I can tell you in conversations with people who have gone through that process of applying there they presented with the difficult task of deciding where their limited budget is going and what has happened in most recent years is they decide to fund one grant on each disease, and that means only one project is getting funded out of maybe tens that are being asked for. So, again, just echoing that we are here at UC Davis. We have a long history with this industry. We're very proud of that history, and we're ready to help. And if there are investments in those moonshots, we'll gladly take on that challenge if provided the opportunity. So thank you.
Thank you. All right. Looks like we have one final public comment.
Senator Cabaldon and the regular curry Chris Reardon California Farm Bureau and I wanted to thank you for this hearing today I think the one alarm bell not only besides this issue that sort of goes off in our head is two years ago we were dealing with the Oriental fruit fly in the Inland Empire you know some years ago we were dealing I think before both you got here we're dealing with the light brown apple moth issue particularly in the Bay Area our fear is what if we We have a couple things going on simultaneously here. What do we do? I appreciate your discussion about one-time monies, but boy, what if we have numerous infestations that we're dealing with? That's what concerns us. And we are very concerned about what we've done for the last 15 years, but I'm not sure we can just depend on that one-time monies. I think it's a great idea, but it seems to me we have to invest serious monies as we look down the future just not only on one issue, one infestation, but numerous infestations at the same time. Particularly with the transportation challenges with rail and trucks and border station challenges, etc. So that's the one thing I would indicate is that I think we better be prepared for more than just one. Thank you.
Thank you. Agreed. So we try to fund moonshots for cancer, but we still work on the annual flu vaccines. It's that they're not one or the other. They're tackling different dimensions of the same problem at once. So I appreciate the panel, all the public comment that we've heard today. It's been extremely instructive. And I think just to return to the very beginning of our conversation, and the majority of this point at the outset as well, that even the scale of some of these investments, both one time and ongoing, compared to the total value of these crops and all of the jobs and the towns and the communities that depend on them, it really does pale in comparison. And it's why we've been advocating so strongly to try to make the necessary baseline investments for exactly the kinds of initiatives and just ongoing work for detection, for intervention, for prevention, and everything else that has been described today. So I think the case has been made very clearly once again on that. And I know we will be taking this back, as well as other members of the committee who will be watching the tape of today, back to the Capitol to renew the battle. I know several of you will be with us in making sure that we try to get those resources, but also get the attention and the focus that these issues and the very real threats pose. This happens to be the 50th anniversary of the judgment of Paris, which – The moment when California shocked the world with the quality, the excitement, the innovation of California's wine in the first place. And it's a reminder that our position in the world of wine is as much a vibe as anything. that wine, like many others, is just one of those products, one of those crops, one of those things that is as much about the feeling and the vibe as it is about the chemistry. And it is one of the reasons why it's absolutely critical that we protect the reputation of California wine grapes and California's wine industry as well. And we've seen other places in the world that have not recovered from invasive species, both because of its impact on production, but also because it affected the global reputation of those places. And we not going to let that happen in California We cannot As has been said we talking about one of California most significant industries just in sheer economics I know for both the Majority Leader and me, for the communities that we represent, it is the essential lifeblood. It is the defining characteristic of so many of our communities. But also for California as a state. The wine in particular is, in some sense, the definition of California's cachet, its success, its class, its sophistication, its creativity around the world. And that matters in California's soft power, our economic power, and our ability to continue to lead in so many other ways. And so we will remain focused on this to be sure in the budget legislatively and in following up on today's hearing. In addition to future hearings of this select committee I also want to invite folks to follow this We will be in the budget subcommittee that oversees CDFA and the Senate side which I happen to serve on We be doing additional follow work in the spring as we consider the governor's budget proposal to assure that the investments that we're talking about today are funded and that the appropriate priority is being placed on them as well. So thank you so much for today's feedback, for the clarion call, for the rich amount of information that you provided and the very, very actionable policy ideas as well. Let me invite our majority leader, Assemblymember Aguiar Curi, to make any final comments.
Thank you all for being here today. The only thing I'd like to say is that we will have a new legislature pretty soon in November, and there's a lot of new faces that will not understand what we do in agriculture, and so I invite you to go into their offices, share your stories, tell them what's important in California, what important in the industry They need to be educated There a lot that have no idea what we do and the importance of agriculture in northern California throughout the state obviously So I just want to encourage you to meet up with our agriculture We have an agriculture committee in both houses and there will be committee hearings maybe select committee hearings. So thank you very much for coming today. We don't give up very easily. We work hard on trying to make sure that the economy in California stays thriving. So thank you all for coming today. And again, thanks to UC Davis for hosting us. And I also want to give a particular thanks to Nicole Kueh-Nelson, who's sitting to my left. She's been here the whole time, but she's the staff that supports this select committee and who has been in contact with many of the folks that are here today. But she's the expert. She helps to make sure that these hearings get translated into legislative and budget action as well. So thanks to Nicole. Thanks to each of you. And with that, the select committee on California's wine industry is adjourned. Thank you.