Page 54 - Grapevine MayJune 2021_REV

Around The Vineyard

sucked in and out and not into some other office.
Further, the contact with vendors and employees
was minimized.

Vino Farms had to deal with positive cases, their
human resources director was an absolute rock star
throughout the entire process. From the start of
the pandemic that the State of California appeared
not to be equipped to handle contact tracing. Vino
Farms did the best they could to implement their
own contact tracing. There were several positive
cases but only 25% of the employees that tested
positive for the virus were contacted by the state
but their HR director did. The HR staff worked
around the clock, seven days a week to make sure
that the employees were kept safe and informed.

The 2020-21 season has been a difficult period
of time with statewide fires, there were missed
days of work especially on the Paso Robles area.
The company did their best with a reduced crew
by limiting hand picking. Some changes that were
implemented will continue. The 2020 year was one
of the worst years for viticulture, besides COVID,
fires were a huge issue, and fruit was rejected due
to smoke taint. It is Craig Ledbetter’s hope (and all
of ours) that 2021 will be a recovery year.

Conclusions

Many of you may wonder why a plant pathologist
is writing about the modifications that vineyard
managers needed to implement during the COVID
19 pandemic. Firstly, I am a pathologist and have
specialized in viral and other pathogen infection
in plants. Also, I have followed the pandemic with
great interest, learning about viral transmission,
vaccines, and ways to mitigate the disease. For
many years I have preached growers on the use of
different activities to mitigate plant disease. Most
of the time, I have been told that these methods
(testing prior to planting, entering clean fields prior
to working in infected ones, change of workers
clothing to avoid movement of mealybugs, etc.)
are expensive and labor intensive. We heard from
the speakers that “workaholics transmit disease”
and that they have been compassionate and asked
their workers to “slow down”. Therefore, I think
that my message to vineyard managers and nurs-

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