From the Fields: Joe Valente, San Joaquin County winegrape grower

By Joe Valente, San Joaquin County winegrape grower

The grapes are past bud break. We start our fungicides for mildew control, then applying a little bit of fertilizer as needed. Water has been a mixed bag. January was dry, and then we hit some wet spells, but for the last three or four weeks we’ve been in a dry spell again. But we’ve had adequate moisture from the rain, so we’re not having to irrigate yet.

The market is stagnant. In the Lodi area, there’s been a large number of vineyards removed—more than I’ve ever seen in one year. There’s still a lot of vineyards that are unpruned, so the assumption is that they will probably get removed or not be farmed at all. 

With the overall market and contracts, people are trying to figure out if people are just drinking less, if people don’t want to spend the money and is the younger generation not as much into alcohol. Hopefully, it’s a cycle that’s short-lived and we move on, but we’ll get through it.

Since we do operate two wineries, there’s concern about what the tariffs are going to do to the wine industry—and what they’re going to do to the almond industry and all industries in agriculture. There’s a lot of uncertainty out there. Hopefully down the road we’re talking about how great they worked and how they’ve improved agriculture and farming.

As far as technology, the autonomous tractor is probably what we’ve been looking into. There was a meeting locally a couple weeks ago with a couple of different types of autonomous tractors and equipment. I think that’s where the technology is going to lead to in agriculture.

We’ve been working with one, and you’ve got to follow the Cal OSHA regulations. You can’t have anyone nearby the field at all. The technology is improving on it. Like any new technology, there’s challenges with it, but I think it’s probably going to be something that will be very common.