UC Davis professor talks mechanization to Allied Grape Growers

The labor shortage in California vineyards has the industry looking to increased mechanization and now that effort has spread into academic research, the chairman of the UC Davis viticulture and enology department said on Thursday.

“I think mechanization is really big,” said David Block, who heads up the department.

Block spoke to members of the Allied Grape Growers, a marketing cooperative for about 500 growers across the state, at their annual meeting at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek Hotel in Santa Rosa. He outlined his department’s education and research as well as its work to help benefit the state’s $25 billion wine industry.

The department has established itself at the forefront of environmental farming practices, such as developing techniques to use less water in the vineyards and bring greater sustainability to winemaking. That includes the Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building, which was built in 2013 and became the first self-sustaining, zero-carbon teaching and research facility.

While water is a persistent concern, Block said he has heard from more people in the industry about greater interest in mechanization, especially given a labor shortage driven by tighter immigration standards and competition from better-paying industries.

“When we go around the state, no matter where we are, labor is becoming as big of an issue as water,” he said.

The department is in the process of hiring a new faculty member to work on vineyard sensors to monitor grape crops during the growing season, he said. There is already a device, he noted, that can drive through vineyards and capture data such as potential yield management.

The research would include various efforts from pruning to harvesting, Block said. Some in the industry have embraced machine harvesting as a cost-effective measure and there are large swaths or areas where it’s done on the North Coast. Yet there is still resistance among many winemakers, who believe that hand-harvested grapes are better because they are less likely to be bruised and so make better wine.

“The key is going to be how do you do that and maintain quality,” he said. “Some of that is going to be straightforward and some of that is going to be less than straightforward.”

One faculty member, Anita Oberholster, has already done some comparisons of fruit harvested by machines with that harvested by hand.

“Really, the differences have not been that large,” Block said of her research. “That’s why my feeling is, some of this is going to be easy to do; some of it won’t be.”

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com.