{"id":4370,"date":"2023-06-29T23:20:08","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T23:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/?p=4370"},"modified":"2023-06-30T02:55:40","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T02:55:40","slug":"echoing-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/2023\/06\/29\/echoing-extremes\/","title":{"rendered":"Echoing Extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, on June 6-7, I was back in Washington, DC, this time for a meeting of the USDA\u2019s National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education and Economics (NAREEE) Advisory Board. The Board advises the Secretary of Agriculture and Congressional ag committees on issues relevant to research and the three Es in its title. My fellow NAREEE Advisory Board members and I were appointed in Fall 2021, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was our first in-person meeting. And it unfolded under a dense cloud of smoke from wildfires burning hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, in Canada.<\/p>\n

Three weeks later, on June 26-29, I found myself in Napa, CA, hosting NGRA\u2019s Midyear Board meeting, and attending the Climate Change Symposium produced by the American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) in conjunction with its 74th annual conference\u2014the first of which was held in 1950. In a cosmic coincidence, that\u2019s also the year of the single largest recorded wildfire in North American history. Canada\u2019s Chinchaga fire<\/a><\/strong> was sparked in British Columbia on June 1, 1950, and raged through October of that year, burning an estimated 3.5 million to 4.2 million acres. The Chinchaga fire also produced the \u201cGreat Smoke Pall\u201d<\/a><\/strong> of 1950, which was observed\u00a0across North America and even in Europe. Without today\u2019s global news reporting network, some feared the haze signaled nuclear Armageddon.<\/p>\n

As June 2023 concludes, our own modern \u201csmoke pall\u201d has returned to the Northeast and Midwest, with Chicago reporting the worst air quality reading<\/a> <\/strong>of any major city in the world on June 27. At the same time, temperatures near or above 110 degrees are baking the South and even Northern California, where NGRA is based. Of course, this scorching heat follows late spring deep-freezes in the north. Extremes on extremes.<\/p>\n

The NAREEE AB I mentioned above reports in to the USDA\u2019s Chief Scientist, Dr. Chavonda Jacobs-Young, who spent time with us at our meeting. She talked passionately about USDA\u2019s commitment to a \u201cproductive agricultural enterprise that\u2019s profitable and sustainable, where all farmers benefit.\u201d But Chavonda was careful to note that \u201csustainability in the context of climate change is not the same as resilience.\u201d Farmers are, by nature, resilient, she said. \u201cProduction agriculture requires constant innovation and adaptation\u201d to whatever Mother Nature brings.<\/p>\n

Applying growers\u2019 innate sense of resilience to the research and discovery, development and adoption of climate-smart solutions is how we\u2019ll sustain our industry. Scientists are on the case\u2014not just at USDA but at research institutions across the country. They\u2019re seeking to understand and mitigate the impacts of the extremes we routinely see in our lives, on our vines and across our acreage\u2014extremes that have been building and compounding for decades.<\/p>\n

Taking their cues from industry stakeholders like you, grape researchers are breaking down the chemistry of smoke exposure on grapes and wine and racing to develop mitigation strategies. They\u2019re working to decode the biomechanics of heat- and drought-tolerant vines and apply those traits to more susceptible varieties. They\u2019re spinning out innovations to mechanize and automate more labor-intensive tasks to, yes, improve production efficiency, but also minimize workers\u2019 exposure to hazardous air quality and dangerous temps.<\/p>\n

Much has been done in each of these areas and a lot more work lies ahead. But as we cope with climate extremes, maybe it helps to know solutions are on the way.<\/p>\n

Donnell Brown,<\/strong>
\nPresident<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, on June 6-7, I was back in Washington, DC, this time for a meeting of the USDA\u2019s National Agricultural Research, Extension, Education and Economics (NAREEE) Advisory Board. The Board advises the Secretary of Agriculture and Congressional ag committees on issues relevant to research and the three Es in its title. My fellow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ngwi-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4370"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4377,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4370\/revisions\/4377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}