Labor + Mechanization Flashcards
Past exam questions
2017: Labor supply for vineyard work is decreasing in many parts of the world. If this trend continues, how will this affect viticulture, and how can vineyard managers around the world best prepare for, and handle, a shortage of workers?
2012: Compare and contrast harvesting options available to a vineyard owner and explain how these options affect wine quality.
2009: What are the advantages and disadvantages of increasing mechanization in the vineyards?
1995: Discuss the effects of mechanization in the vineyard with particular reference to the health of the vine.
1992: Does mechanical harvesting affect the quality of the finished wine? List its advantages and disadvantages in different vineyard locations.
Labor
UNITED STATES:
- J-1
- H2A visas are only for seasonal employees (more rigorous application reviews)
- Employers must be able to prove that they have tried and failed to hire American laborers
- they must pay the workers’ travel expenses to the U.S.
- provide free housing
- cover the cost of transportation to and from the work site
- guarantee a full-time work schedule.
- In addition, H-2A guest laborers must receive an hourly wage, adjusted by state, that’s higher than the minimum wage.
- Per a 2018 report by the U.S. Dept of Agriculture, the number of Mexicans coming to US has declined steadily since 2007
OREGON:
Most farmers pay by the bucket, a good worker can earn $30/hour
CALIFORNIA:
In 2017, California approved a wage hike from a minimum of $10 per hour to $15 per hour by 2023
LEBANON:
Mechanization, processes that can be
Consider mechanization across the whole year:
- Grafting
- Grubbing up
- Tilling
- Pruning
- Leafing
- Hedging
- Harvest
- Punchdowns and pumpovers?
Labor examples
NAPA:
- Palmaz?
- Togni solves for labor scarcity by employing a small team year round, they label, ship, and repair fences when vineyard is dormant
- Pete Richmond and Silverado Vineyard Management solves for labor scarcity by paying more than anyone else. Used to be $17.25/hr, now is $18.50/hr for temporary labor (max 400). Goes out to hispanic neighborhoods, hands out cards, and recruits.
- Also has 100 - 120 full time people that start at $19.25/hr with medical, paid holidays, 401K, 10% of net profit.
- Starting in 2025, all farms in California must pay their employees overtime after 8 hours instead of 10 hours
BORDEAUX:
- ** uses labor from southern Spain and Portugal, but as the economy in those two countries is increasing, that is getting harder
- La Garde used to use college kids living in Bordeaux but 4-5 years ago the school year moved up and now everyone’s in class during harvest
WASHINGTON:
- H2A not popular in OR but it is moreso in WA because many vineyards have fruit trees so is easier to provide full time labor.
Mechanized harvest, pros and cons
Manual harvest:
- good quality
- necessary on slopes and marginal sites
- necessary for many late harvest wines
- difficult at night
- timing dependent on crew availability
Mechanical harvest:
- Mechanical harvesting, introduced in the 1960s, helped spread good, affordable wines around the world
- possible in darkness
- increased MOG
- potential for destemming in field
- potential for optical sort and destem in field
- precise timing
- not possible for most hillside sites
- not possible for head-trained vines
- not possible for delicate fruit like PN (Merlot issues)
- breaking the skin of delicate fruit can result in browning or bacterial growth
- can damage vines
- quality issue for whites because they sit on juice for 3-10 hours
- mechanical harvesting requires more sulfur
- mechanical harvesting increases carbon footprint
- mechanical harvesting key when lots of fruit ripe at same time
- machines are expensive!
OREGON:
Machine harvesting not popular because PN is delicate, because rot hides inside clusters, and because machines CANNOT HARVEST WHOLE CLUSTERS, which is important to many Oregon wineries.
Mechanization examples
NAPA:
Pete Richmond:
- Mechanical harvester leaves rachis on vine results in 7% less fruit (important for grower)
- Hand picking in Napa costs roughly $500/ton (incl picking and delivery)
- Machine harvest costs roughly $300/acre (if you hire someone)
- A nice European machine costs $500,000
- No one wants to machine harvest PN because it’s too delicate
- Manual leafing costs $500acre, machine leafing costs $250/acre, but machine is faster so better for wine quality
- All his hedging is machine
- Says that in the Central Coast some machine suckering is done, not great quality but not terrible – have to use a high wire trellising system.
Opus One:
- All of Opus is hand-picked at night. Tough on leadership.
School House:
- Can use bench grafts as need to establish rootstock in dry-farmed site.
SONOMA:
- After heatwave of 2017 ripened many things at once, labor was scarce. Houndstooth couldn’t get a crew to pick remote Anapolis PN fruit, so had to abandon contract.
MONTEREY:
- KJ has 3,000 acres of Chardonnay in Monterey, waits until temp drops to 75F in daytime, picks from 10pm - 3am
LODI:
- April 2019 debuted at Borden Hill Ranch, a mechanized variable shoot thinning. Gallo can set ideal yields (they aim for 6.5 tons/acre), and variability in vigor corrected for by NVDI data that is fed into machine’s computer via GPS. Training is cordon quadrilateral.
WASHINGTON:
- Ch Ste Michelle harvests all their Riesling mechanically so that they can do it at night and improve wine quality.
- up to 95% of Washington wine is machine harvested
FINGER LAKES:
- Tractor passes in the vineyard can nick vine trunks and result in crown gall
CHAMPAGNE
- Mechanical harvest is illegal
Specific machines
Pellenc:
- a new machine that destems and sorts and can add optical sorting
- a person drives it but there are cameras and it is self-guiding
- the retail price of a towed harvester, pulled behind a tractor, is approximately $200,000, while self-propelled machines sell in the $350,000 to $450,000 range.
- If you hire people to machine harvest, rates are still just $500 or $600 an acre.
New Holland 9060L Opti-Grape:
- destems and sorts in vineyard
- Density sort at Quintus by Haut-Brion
