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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana Jericho. Hello, I'm Dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties we are an agricultural county and today we are going to be talking to john west to be the new agricultural commissioner sealer and let's

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find out what his duties and responsibilities are and see what's happening in our Ag county john it's good to have you here today. Good morning dana, nice to be here. Yes, it's all, it's fun to have the agricultural commissioner on because I just love all the

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agriculture in our county john, since you were appointed the Agricultural Commissioner sealer last october, you've had a number of issues that have come up that are new and very challenging. Do you want to tell me a little bit about them? Well, one that probably a lot

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of people have heard about is the vineyard development and replacement ordinance and it came about because we've been so successful at growing excellent wine grapes here in Sonoma County. We produce excellent grapes and we produce world class wine out of those grapes. So we're planning more

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and more grapes and people are planning them on the flats and the hillsides and unfortunately we've had a couple of individuals who didn't do the right thing as far as development, as far as erosion control, as far as protecting the environment protecting riparian areas. So we

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had some media events are actually some people who did the inappropriate things. We had erosion. It was a concern to the public and of concern to the industry. So industry got together grape growing industry with an environmental group and they said, let's be proactive about this.

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Uh there's already laws on the books that are going to punish people who caused this erosion from water quality control and fish and game. But they wanted to turn it around and and make it so that the people that are developing these vineyards do the right

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thing to begin with. So they met and they came to an agreement and went to the board of supervisors last november and the board of supervisors designated county council and our department, the county council to put the language together us to administer an ordinance and the

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ordinance was passed after hearings and discussions, much discussion in in May of this year. And since May, we have been uh looking at some of the nuts and bolts of the ordinance, as far as minimum erosion control plan, as far as erosion control uh planned standards

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and of course fees because it is going to cost the growers fees to be under this process. Do you um do you have any idea what approximately those fees are gonna be? Is it going to be based on size of the vineyard or is it going

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to be based on intensity of grading on the slopes? Probably both of those, but it's still going to be determined by the board of supervisors. We, we pretty much know our cost now and we're going to present that to them, uh, and then they can determine

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of course, you know, smaller acreage, smaller fees, more slope, possibly more fees. So probably all of that will go into the mix and it will be their determination. But and size of vineyards are planning versus like if you're planting five acres versus 500 acres, what about

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if you're replanting, say you already have a hillside vineyard and you have old vines and you want to replant them, replace them due to phylloxera or whatever other things are happening. Um How does the new ordinance affect this? Well, anyone who's gonna be planting a new

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vineyard or replanting an old vineyard will will be included in this ordinance and it starts october 1st, so that if you haven't started a project and starting a project means clearing the property, preparing the soil for the vineyard After October one replanting or a new vineyard,

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you'll have to come in and talk to us and there's various levels um uh for the new vineyards, the levels will be 12 or three related to slope and soil type. So if you're on, depending on the soil? Again from 0 to 15, you will have

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to only meet minimum erosion control plans. Come in, tell us where you are. Give us a map, We may or may not go out and check check you out for level two and three, you're gonna have to prepare an erosion control plan level to the grower

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themselves, can do it level three, they're gonna, it's gonna require uh an engineer or some type of a professional to prepare the plan for them and those plans have to be approved by our office before they can proceed. One question that I have, we have so

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many vineyards going in and and I was just recently out and I noticed that uh Lake County is going crazy with vineyards, napa County is still building, putting in vineyards. Mendocino County is going crazy. Are we gonna have too many vineyards? Well, you know, I don't

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believe so, it's funny, you know, in this county we've had ups and downs in a lot of different commodities, in fact, wine grapes at one time in the twenties, right around prohibition time, we're close to 40,000 acres of grapes. So, and that dropped uh through the

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years into the sixties where we had around 25,000, we've had prunes go up and down. We've had pairs, we've had hops, apples, of course, yeah. And I see it as uh, you know, when we talk about Sonoma County, we have a million acres. Um And when

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we're talking about 45 or 50,000 acres, that's 5.5 or 4.5 to 5% of our total, I don't think it's extreme and I'm just happy that we have successful agriculture and wine grapes are being successful and I think it's good for uh not only the county financially,

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but our lifestyle. Um Do you foresee many problems with this new vineyard ordinance? Well it's, you know, it's, it's brand new. I'm sure there's gonna be bumps in the road and, and I think we'll probably look at it for a year and the board has indicated

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that let's look at it and see how it's working and then maybe come back and adjust in a year. So now this takes effect October October one, October 1. Now say that you have a vineyard in the alluvial valley of the county where its prime farmland,

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prime agricultural. Do you still have to come and see the agricultural department for a vineyard unfortunately. Yes. So it's everyone any grower b they flatlanders or on the hillsides are gonna have to come see us. So it's the vineyard planting and replanting ordinance, Not the hillside

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or I've been hearing hillside ordinance hillside, it started it started the hillside and then when it was finally passed it was planting and replanting just planting period. If you were planting new, replace vineyards are putting in new vineyards, you've always had regulations for planting. Um I've

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noticed like when you're driving out in the countryside, especially this time of year, you see that plastic, which is over the ground and that's where they're fumigating for different diseases and soil, um disease. Uh do you think that how is this going to affect the hillside?

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Because I've noticed now that I see this on hillsides and I see that there's a lot of runoff that is occurring and people are planting like crazy. I have never seen so much planting on the hillsides as I've seen in the last year since, before October

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one. I think what it is is owners want to get that vineyard in before they have to go through the AG Department. What is your feel on this human nature? You know, I mean of course if you don't have to jump through a hoop, you're going

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to try to avoid it. And so when people or the growers aren't sure of what it's gonna mean to them is yet, we're gonna do some training for them. We wanted to do it in august before harvest, but we didn't have all the fine points worked

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out as yet. So we're hoping that most of the first projects that we're gonna have after october 1st will be replacement, a lot of growers will harvest and then they'll remove the vines and prepare the ground. So do you have an educational program to, yeah, we're

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gonna be starting in november and I believe right now we've got three events scheduled. I don't have dates or times for you, but we'll announce those to the community, may I ask what type of events? So our viewers out there? Well they're gonna, we're gonna try

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to get some fairly big halls and we'll do power point presentation just to give them a background on the history is how this came about and why and and what are their responsibilities under this new ordinance? And also how do you know how to determine slope

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where to go, get help if they need help with the erosion control plan, those kind of things brings back rise over run equals percent of grades, you know? Yeah. Okay. Another agricultural issue is the right to farm ordinance. I know nothing about that ordinance. Can you

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tell us? Sure, Well the first there we have a right to farm ordinance right now is passed in 1988 and it came about because agriculture is important to Sonoma County. The board recognized that we're getting more and more urbanization and there's more conflict at the edge

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where we have urban and egg coming together because a lot of practices in agriculture aren't conducive to residences being next to them. The hours of operation, you know, early in the morning, late at night, uh, dust, noise smells, use of pesticides, uh, sometimes a lot of

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traffic during harvest or, or a lot of people when they're pruning and harvesting. So it's uh, the board said at that time, there are normal farming practices and they weren't nuisances so that if it was a normal farming practice a grower could operate without, you know

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the fear that they would be declared a nuisance and somebody would have a court case against them for those practices. Uh This most recent attempt and it hasn't been passed by the borders yet, it did pass the planning commission is that they're gonna include some more

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zoning areas. Rural residential being one and they're going to give notice to people when property is sold that they're gonna be living in an agricultural area. And another part of it is if there's a new development or new building going on then it will be actually

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be recorded on the deed and what it will do. I think it's gonna be great for people moving into the area because they'll be put on notice. You know, the there are practices that are normal to ag and be aware of those before you make this

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decision of living in this area. Um Yes, Sonoma County is full of agriculture, it's just everywhere and um new subdivisions, there's already limits in places they're not where they need to be a certain distance away from The agricultural operation. 200 ft I believe is well it

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just, it depends if agriculture was there first and then there's a new development, then there's usually setbacks put on there either 100 or 200 ft depending on the type of agriculture. Yes. Do you have any information on those Types of agriculture? Uh such as a vineyard

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operation? It's usually 200 ft. It's land, there's land intensive and land extensive and intensive as orchards or vineyards or things like that extensive would be like grazing land. Uh unless of course there we do hear a lot about that in the news from time to time.

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So what is happening is growers cannot do anything they want correct now. I mean they have a mirrored number of laws and regulations that they have to abide by our pesticide laws and regulations, hazardous materials laws and regulations. Air pollution, water, you know, protecting water quality

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laws and regulations. So they already have a lot of laws to abide by and it's, these are just for what is considered normal in in normal farming operations. So um, they're not allowed to do anything they want. They never have been allowed to do anything that

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they want. Although growth seems to be encroaching More and more upon our egg. Yeah. And it's difficult because now in the United States, I'd say less than 2% of the people produce for the rest of us. We need to break stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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If you have diabetes. There are a world of reasons to get a dilated eye exam because diabetic eye disease doesn't have to take away your sight if you need any more reasons. Just look around you Welcome back to Sonoma County in the 90s, Let's rejoin John

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Westby and John you were just talking about the farmers and they have responsibilities also in our ag community. Um, I understand that um, you have the public does have an input on what is happening with the agriculture. How can the public be involved if indeed they

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live in the peripheral area or they, I would think that if you plan on moving into an agricultural community in the country that is just part of the package, you are going to have these operations going on around you and, and that's it. But if you're

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in the peripheral view, how can the public have an input? Well, of course they can call us our phone numbers 5652371 they can call, you see cooperative extension, they can call Farm Bureau, they can call one of the commodity groups, the grape growers or the dairymen.

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But you know, probably a lot of times we'll tell people call call the individual that you're wondering about or what practice they're doing or and on the other side we're being more proactive as I was saying earlier, there's fewer and fewer agricultural entities and more and

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more of us urbanites. So I think it's gonna take a bigger role in explaining, you know who I am, what I'm doing, why I'm out in the field, those kind of things so that people, people don't know and they're kind of fearful at times of some

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of the practices that are going on. Yes. You know, it's really funny. I, as you're talking, I have visions of my grandfather and he would drive his spray rig because we've always been farming community in this county and you know, he'd be absolutely yellow with no

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mass, nothing from the sulfur and things that he was praying and he lived to a good old age. Well, that probably wasn't the best technique and that's not what we're telling people to do. No, no, of course not. I mean, it's so different today that there

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really is. It's all different than it was 30 40 years ago. I understand that you started a new program this last year called the high risk pest exclusion program. And what is it? Well, we've always done past exclusion. In fact, commissioners got, we got our start

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back in the 1880s because at that time California agriculture was booming. A lot of plant materials being imported from other countries and with it came plant pests and you took a pristine area and you brought all this plant material of these pests that had never occurred

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before and they exploded. And so the legislature at that time said every county in California can elect horticultural board of commissioners and it was their job to inspect these plants shipments. So it's been our main function for, since that time to look at plant materials coming

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into California and Sonoma County and over the years. I mean, you know how travel is today. You can be from one point in the world to another part in a day. And um, we have not been able to uh look at everything seven days a week,

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24 hours a day. So this, the legislature last year voted to give us more money so that we could at least hit the high risk pest uh situations, uh, plant material that's coming into like our county for the first time. And look at those things for

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for past like med fly, mediterranean fruit fly gypsy moth, japanese beetle that have cost us a lot of money. The people of Sonoma County a lot of money to uh look at in the people of California to to eradicate what is the gypsy moth? Gypsy will

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last in fact, last year we had three that were trapped in Sonoma County. It's an three moth. Male moth. Um It's a moth that originated in England. It was brought to the northeast part of our country to start a silk industry because it's, it's related to

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the silk moth in china as the egg mass is kind of a silky covering on it and it and they released it into the, into the northeast and it can defoliate trees and it does thousands of trees. And so it's a pest that we don't want

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to have here in Sonoma County. So to that end, if we can exclude it by looking at shipments, then we try to detect it by trapping it and we have a number of traps each year over 1000 for various various insects. And last year we trapped

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some. Once we trapped something, we try to delineate where it is so that we can eradicate it. And last and last year we put out more traps in the three areas where we found it found no more. And this year we're putting out more. But we

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also do um, detection surveys. We look at high risk areas like where tourists, tourists come in and where campers are ours to look for various pests that we don't have here. What should a Sonoma County resident do if they find something very unusual and they and

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they don't know what we'd be very happy if they give us a call or bring it in because the more eyes and ears we have out there the better because I mean you garden probably and most people do or or have some kind of landscape and

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usually you know what's normal and if you see something unusual or see some disease or insect or weed or uh something that you don't know what it is. Bring it in if we can't identify it. We have laboratory facilities in sacramento where world class experts can

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identify almost any disease or weed or insect. So please please help us by bringing in those types of sand. I was gardening. I found a little snake and it was really cute, this little snake. So I put it in a jar and I brought it in

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and I suspected it might have been a baby rattlesnake. And yes, indeed it was. And your ag department got really upset bringing this little rattle thing I said that's okay. I took it home and let it go. Oh yes, very. But it had no rattles yet.

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It was just, it was just a little, it was very cute and you know, I took it to the dentist first because I had to go there first and everybody was just don't touch it because it might be a rattlesnake. But anyhow it did turn out

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to be. So that was interesting. Let's talk a little bit about, you see, Extension and the wonderful people. I just love using, utilizing them there at your department. Well they're they're not part of our department is completely separate. No, they are University of California Extension in

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our building. And they are they are a branch of the University of California. They do research in the field and a number of different areas, viticulture and livestock and all kinds of small farming things. And so if you they do actual experimentation in the field, Rhonda

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smith are viticultural goes out in the field and test different things, Resistance of certain root stock planning schemes, different materials to control different pests. So they are the research and advice resource, part of their absolutely fabulous. Anything you want to ask, any leaf or twig or

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plant animal you want to bring in, they're there to help you. And they have a special expert in different areas. And they also have their master gardeners that are there not all the time. But we share a lot of times. The master gardeners aren't there were

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there and we will take a sample, but we like to keep appraised of what's out there as far as what's common. And so we we talked to them all the time. Um You have three divisions in your department. We've talked about the agricultural division. What are

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the two other divisions? Well we have weights and measures and we have animal regulation and weights and measures is probably the little is known as far as our three divisions anytime you buy any kind of product. And it's measured by some type of device commercially. It's

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required that that device be sealed by the sealer of weights and measures and all on the sealer. Although I don't do the work anytime you buy gasoline, anytime you buy uh take a taxi anytime you purchase water or electricity. Those devices have certain requirements as far

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as being uh made sure that they're correct so that you're getting what you pay for. We also uh look at uh quantities of commodities, your cereal box in the morning, it says 12 ounces. How do you know? We check it all the time. We actually purchased

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those. Take it out, weigh it and make sure, I mean we don't do all the products that are in the store, but all the sealers in California do that. And when we find a trend, then we all start working on it. We also look at petroleum

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products, gasoline you purchase, make sure that it's the right octane and, and then it's not contaminated with water or some of the things. We have a lab in sacramento that can check those things. So, weights and measures is an integral part of our kind of our

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commerce and protection of consumers. Animal regulation. It's just what it sounds like. We have two divisions. Well not two divisions, but two aspects actually, we have field operations and shelter operations for the unincorporated area of Sonoma County, the uh Rosalynn portion of uh santa rosa, the

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town of Windsor and the city of Cloverdale. And maybe soon to take on the city of santa rosa. But we will see as the humane Society has now informed them that they will no longer provide field services and shelter services. So we might be expanding our

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shelter and we might be expanding field operations. But we'll see. So in our shelter, we do a lot of work as far as you may care of animals when they're not wanted. We do unfortunately, a lot of euthanasia of animals. And we have a volunteer organization

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that's really working extremely hard to reduce that number as our, as our staff. Can I ask what what kind of measures they're taking? Because I've had, um, your animal control section on the show and I want to have them back because I like them to bring

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some pets they have there because the last time the pet was adopted before. Well, that's part of what we do. We have. We now have a website where people can get on and I don't have the call letters, but people can on the website, people can

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look at animals that are available for adoption right now. We're looking to, we don't have a full time volunteer coordinator and because our staffing hasn't increased three years as much as we want wanted to. The volunteers have been great for us. So we're trying to get

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a full time volunteer coordinator right now. We have a halftime. So we're, we're hoping then with that we can train animals more. It's been proven that animal that can do simple, uh, sit and things are more more adoptable. Um, we're trying to evaluate animals more. We're

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trying to work with more rescue groups as far as placing animals out to, to those that people have interest in certain breeds. So there's a lot of things and we really need, if people want to volunteer at our shelter, you can call 5-4 70 100. And

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we'd be, that's the animal shelter we recently adopted to buffalo that you were getting, they had broken loose in the West County and they were running and they were running, Yes, they were, they put on four or £500 and the male has turned very nasty and

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aggressive and the female is sweet. She actually goes out and babysits the calves, the cattle calves. So we really like her and she's very gentle. But he's he's he's not quite as gentle. Is that buffer low? That's buff buff is the male and female. They had

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some indian names but anyhow, so there you do have a wide variety of livestock all the time. And you know, we talk about dogs and cats, but we get rabbits and rats and I want to pair it. Well there at this point they're illegal. I know,

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but I want to share it. Anyway, back to back to the topic here. Uh, we've talked about other issues a lot. Um, and um, I know you get a lot of questions in your office. Um how are pesticides used even in organic farming? That is something

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that really comes up like when I go to the farmer's market, they say, oh, it's all organic. How do you know, I mean a lot of people don't know that organic growers can use pesticides, pesticide just means something that's gonna control control the past and there's

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a whole list of organic pesticides that organic growers can use sulfur is one of them in wine grapes also, uh, plant derived pesticides like chrysanthemums or excuse me pyrethrum that comes from chrysanthemum or wrote known a lot of soaps can be used in organic. So it's

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kind of a misnomer that there are no pesticides used on, on organic farms crops. Okay. And what our growers doing to reduce these pesticides? Is there any research or things happening for quite a while? I mean for one thing, the type of materials around are much

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less persistent. When I started, there was still a lot of the chlorinated hydrocarbons that stayed in the environment for a long time. So the products that are used now are much less persistent. Also, growers are looking to uh, integrated pest management where they actually look at

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models a lot of times for control of various pests, like for powdery mildew, they look at a temperature degree day model and and moisture determine when's the best time to treat the same thing with coddling moth. You know, they can predict through temperature modeling when the

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flights are gonna peak and when's the best time to apply instead of just willy nilly applying pesticides. They're also looking at different uh, ways to to farm. Now, probably when you look in vineyards, you look at the fruit roll and you see that there's no leaves

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in there. They're pulling leaves and what that does is make air circulation a lot better so that you don't get bunch rots. And if you do then you can direct the fungicide right on the fruit so that to control those things. So growers are doing a

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lot of things to reduce the amount of pesticides they use because they're expensive and they really don't. Yes. Well it sounds like you have uh, wear many hats, you have a lot of responsibility and a wide variety of responsibilities. So I guess over the next few

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months we're gonna be hearing more about the vineyard ordinance. And of course we're hoping that there's gonna be more success than the animal shelter in adopting out the animals and um, just living in harmony in the county. So with the farming and agriculture versus our population

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growth anyway, we're out of time and I want to thank you john for being on. It's always fun to have you here and maybe we can have you again soon. Thank you for joining me. I'm dana D'Errico And this is Sonoma County in the nineties. I

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look forward to seeing you the next time