The referendum to tax grape growers to fight off the
glassy-winged sharpshooter has been extended by two weeks, but
people in the wine industry said low turnout was the result of
confusion and not a lack of support, and that they
’re not worried the initiative will fail.
The referendum to tax grape growers to fight off the glassy-winged sharpshooter has been extended by two weeks, but people in the wine industry said low turnout was the result of confusion and not a lack of support, and that they’re not worried the initiative will fail.
Paul Kronenberg, president of the Family Winemakers of California, said the extension is the result of confusion over the voting process.
“There were 7,000-plus people that we had to get to and there’s a variety of factors,” Kronenberg said Friday. “It’s a very complicated process and it’s a fairly big universe.”
The Sharpshooter was discovered in California in 1999. The insect preys on a variety of crops but carries a plague, Pierce’s Disease, that is particularly lethal to grapevines. The disease essentially clogs the plumbing in a vine, making it impossible for the fruit to receive water and nutrients.
George Guglielmo, of the Guglielmo Winery in Morgan Hill, said his family voted for the initiative and that he believes winery owners and grapes growers throughout Santa Clara Valley support it.
“I haven’t talked to many people about it, but I’m under the impression that the industry as whole is supportive,” he said. “It’s a problem that could become a major problem for the state.”
Eric Wylde, Santa Clara County’s supervising agricultural biologist, said his staff trapped two sharpshooters in San Jose in April, but has not seen evidence of the pest since then. In addition to the trapping program, the county inspects nursery stocks from southern California and, every other week, releases 1,000 parasitic wasps, which destroy sharpshooter eggs.
“They’re smaller than a grain of rice and they won’t sting people,” Wylde said.
If it passes, the referendum will extend a three-year-old tax on grape production. The tax is set by the Pierce’s Disease/Glassy-winged Sharpshooter Board, which is made up of grape growers and vintners. The tax is on sliding scale that can go as high as $3 for every $1,000 in grape value. In each of the last two years, the tax has been set at $2.
Kronenberg said there are many grape growers who don’t pay the assessment directly and so didn’t realize they could vote, and that several growers who operate under different business names received more than one ballot.
“Sometimes if there’s a bit of confusion, you don’t act,” he said. “We think that contributed to the slowness of votes coming in.”
The California Department of Food and Agriculture has now received more than 40 percent of the ballots, the threshold needed to for the initiative to pass. To be successful, the measure must receive a majority of the votes cast by the growers who currently pay 65 percent of the total assessment, or 65 percent of the vote cast by the growers who pay at least half of the assessment.
Matt King covers Santa Clara County for The Morgan Hill Times. He can be reached at 847-7240 or mk***@gi************.com.
