Episode 36: Central Coast Wine and Water
“If a farmer is dealing with a challenging groundwater quality situation, they really need to be on a program to maintain the soil quality with respect to salinity. If they don’t do this, we will see impacts in the growth of crops—that’s a given.”
A conversation with Mark Battany (University of California Cooperative Extension Water Management and Biometeorology Advisor) about viticulture, water use, fog, salinity, and water use for frost protection in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. Released April 15, 2022.
guests on the show
Mark Battany
Mark Battany grew up in Colorado and graduated from Colorado State University with a B.S. in Agronomy and a minor in Spanish. He continued with graduate work at UC Davis with an M.S. in Hydrologic Sciences. He was an exchange scholar at a Spanish government research center in Cordoba, Spain studying runoff and erosion in hillside olive groves. He began working for UC Cooperative Extension in 2001, initially as a Viticulture Farm Advisor for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties; in 2018 his title changed to Water Management and Biometeorology Advisor. Learn more about Central Coast viticulture, water management, and biometeorology resources here and connect with Mark Battany here.
Transcript
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water Talk. In today's episode we are talking about the Central Coast wine region, grapes, groundwater, fog, and frost, with Mark Battany. Mark is the Cooperative Extension water management and biometeorology advisor for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. Mark has a bachelor's degree in agronomy and a master's in hydrologic sciences. He has international expertise in evapotranspiration, biometeorology, runoff, and erosion in hillside olive groves as well as vineyard systems. We're so excited to talk to Mark on Water Talk today. Faith, I don't know if you've had the chance to meet Mark before. But what are you excited to talk about?
Faith Kearns
I have met Mark, though I don't know him super well. I always think it's super interesting to talk to our Cooperative Extension county based advisors. Just as somebody who works on water at more of a statewide level and is more of a generalist, it's always really interesting to hear the perspective of what's happening at a much more local or regional level. I'm not as much of a wine drinker as you are, Mallika, so I'm not sure that I can ask as astute questions about the actual stuff that you've worked on, but I do always find it really grounding to have such a local perspective on things.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, and I mean that since we are bringing up in a public forum my wine drinking, I am just excited because we think a lot about California and wine and the different AVAs and the different varietals. One of the things that I am super interested in learning about is how wine grapes, wines, and water are intersecting in all of our key grape growing regions.
Faith and Sam are indulging me and letting me do a wine episode every season and kind of going through the state. I actually had the chance to meet with Mark and really travel around a lot of the Central Coast. It was one of those extension things, it's just a wonderful way to learn to really see the geography, see the hydrology, and think about some of the issues that are present.
And that really made me want to talk to him and do a podcast episode with him because he is just so knowledgeable about the groundwater issues, about salinity, and about some of the challenges facing that region. He has these really rich relationships with the different people and communities who are living there that only can come from someone who's been working in water for many, many years and in a community. So I’m really excited about Mark today.
Thank you for coming to Water Talk, Mark.
Mark Battany
Well thank you very much for having me. Much appreciated.
Mallika Nocco
So you have been a UC Cooperative Extension advisor for San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties for many years. How many years, I was wondering?
Mark Battany
Well, the time goes fast. I was hired in 2001. My original title was viticulture soils farm advisor for the same two counties. Later in time, a number of years after that, my title was modified to just be viticulture farm advisor to make that a little bit simpler. And then in 2018, I changed to my current title. And a part of that was my office, we all agreed to shift to more thematic approaches to our jobs rather than having a commodity specific approach.
You know, part of the reason was that the commodities themselves are doing a very good job of providing a lot of the information that they need specifically to their crops. But there was a big gap or a big shortcoming and having the types of information that I'm now working on, for example, with water and climate and weather conditions. So it really gave us the chance to kind of reinvent and refocus ourselves to address I think the most important issues that are affecting our region.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, fantastic. And that makes sense to me to just make it more about the thematic issues that are relevant for the people in the region. And speaking of the region, can you tell us a little bit about what grapes, or what crops, are grown in the Central Coast area, and also just how it might have changed over your time there?
Mark Battany
Wine grapes are an important crop in San Luis Obispo County. It's typically between wine grapes and strawberries which will have the highest crop value here in San Luis Obispo County. We also have a sizable vegetable crop industry and then there's an increasing number of orchards being planted. Pistachios right now are being planted, which is quite interesting for this area. I wouldn't say it’s a new crop, but we don't have a lot of acres of that yet, but it’s interesting to see that going in.
Santa Barbara County is much stronger in the strawberries and vegetable crops relative to San Luis Obispo County. Wine grapes are a much smaller proportion of their total crop value that they have. Santa Barbara County also has, I think, the largest cannabis industry in the state, or at least legal cannabis right now. So that's a very sizable industry that has seen a lot of investment in just the recent years in Santa Barbara County.
Mallika Nocco
Wow, that's fascinating. So in terms of the strawberries, are there many strawberry growers? Or is it more of like a few strawberry growers with a large acreage?
Mark Battany
There's a big mix. So you do definitely have large operations, both strawberries and wine grapes would fall into that category, you know, large corporate operations. But then there are also quite a few smaller operators who kind of fill in with their smaller acreages, and that is part of the challenge. Or, let's say, the need, in many ways, for a farm advisor. Oftentimes the larger corporate operations will have their own staff to answer a lot of their questions. It's often the smaller operations, it's really difficult for a person with a smaller farm to be an expert at everything. So that's really where farmer advisors have a special role, I think, in helping a lot of the smaller operators out.
Mallika Nocco
That makes sense to me even in my own interactions with growers who are contacting me, noticing kind of the difference in the larger operations where often I'm talking to someone who's a staff certified crop advisor, versus the smaller growers who are trying to work through all of these challenges for several different crops. Absolutely. So what types of wine grapes are produced and how would you describe the San Luis Obispo area?
Mark Battany
In just looking at San Luis Obispo County though, the main distinction that we have is we have a coastal region, which is a fairly cool growing region, where we have short season varieties, primarily Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. So that would be the most distinctive wines for that area. Now if you go inland a short ways, you know typically the Paso Robles area would be an example of this, you have a much warmer growing season much, much more temperature accumulation. So this is where the longer season varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon are going to predominate. Zinfandel or Merlot, other red varieties, typically, even though white varieties are also grown in that area. But that's the big distinction between the coastal and the inland areas.
Mallika Nocco
And the Paso Robles area, is that considered the Central Coast? Or is that call considered a different area?
Mark Battany
The Central Coast would be a broader designation of a larger region, say from up in Monterey County further south, even beyond Santa Barbara County. So that's a broad region. Then within that area, we have the smaller designated region like Paso Robles, but even Paso Robles is now divided up into smaller appellations. So it's a process that happens within the wine grape industry over time, as they learn that different regions within a local area have distinctive, let's say characteristics or traits, that can then be distinguished by designating these smaller viticultural areas over time.
Mallika Nocco
Fantastic. So we often hear that wine grapes are not a very water demanding crop. And I think that this is going to depend on the context a lot and where they're grown, what kind of sources they are. How do you think this works in the Central Coast area? Or might even differ across the area? What kind of water is used to grow wine grapes in the counties that you're working in?
Mark Battany
We should look a little bit at the history of farming within San Luis Obispo County, for example. So if you were here in the 60s and 70s, the main irrigated crop was probably alfalfa. And that was being grown, we actually had a dairy industry at that time, and even prior to that. Over time that transitioned. The alfalfa kind of disappeared. We moved on to crops like sugar beets in the area. And then the wine grapes have actually been a fairly recent arrival.
If you look at the water footprint, or the water requirement for those crops, alfalfa is gonna be over four feet of water per year, to grow a meaningful crop of alfalfa. Wine grapes are about one foot, or maybe a little bit more than that, depends on how it's grown. There's a lot of flexibility there. But let's say roughly one foot per year on average. So compared to basically any other crop that we can grow, wine grapes have the smallest water footprint, as far as water requirement to grow them. So in that sense, it's a really good crop for this area because we are in a water restricted region.
The question of where does our water come from? It's all pretty much groundwater, which ultimately is coming from the precipitation that we get in the region. So we are in essence a rainfall dependent system here. And in dry years like this It really puts a lot of pressure on us. But it poses a limit to how much water we have available to farmers.
Mallika Nocco
You also bring just a really wonderful expertise and this biometeorology perspective to your work. I've heard before that fog can be an important part of the climate and water cycle in wine grape production. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how the fog might impact the crops that are being grown in your counties? Because we normally don't think about fog on water talk, even though it's, you know, water?
Mark Battany
It's an interesting question. Where I tend to associate fog as providing a substantial part of the water budget would be in the coastal areas that are impacted by fog, especially in the summer. So you think about in order for fog to condense, and then be able to add to the moisture that's in the soil, you have to have enough humidity in the air, but then also have cool temperatures so that the dew point is reached. Then that dew forms.
If you go to Paso Robles in the summer in July, you're not going to have dew forming on the tissues. It's just too dry and temperatures are too warm to reach the dew point. So where that dew formation is going to be the biggest impact is going to be our coastal regions. A really good example is the coastal redwoods. A lot of their water is going to come from their capture of fog and the formation of dew. As far as farming benefits in those areas, any crop that's also within that coastal fringe is also going to benefit similarly from that.
Mallika Nocco
Wonderful. So getting back to the wine grapes in that coastal region, if it's going to take about a foot of water, or one and a half feet of water to grow, like how much of that do you think might come from fog?
Mark Battany
Well, that's a good question. And I don't know that anybody's ever measured that with respect to a farming system like that. Now, in our coastal regions, the irrigation requirements are probably quite a bit less than that one foot value, that was more for the Paso Robles area. Because our coastal areas tend to get a bit more rainfall and the summer conditions, the evapotranspiration rates, are much lower throughout the season there. So I would expect the irrigation requirements to be less. But if that's also offset by fog, providing a portion of their water requirements, that would be an interesting thing to try to quantify. I don't know if I'm ready yet to try to take on that project to try to measure that fog. But that poses some challenges as well.
Mallika Nocco
Yes, absolutely.
Faith Kearns
Mark, I'm curious in terms of the fog, I know that people are talking a lot about the Tule fog changing, in terms of drought and climate change, I'm just wondering if you all are seeing that kind of change on the central coast as well?
Mark Battany
In my experience here in San Luis Obispo, for the last little over 20 years, I have definitely noticed that we are getting less and less fog coming in, in the summer afternoons. So that seems to be a common observation in a lot of our coastal areas that we are not just getting the fog in the way we used to in the past. So how is that going to impact the coastal water budget? That will be a very interesting thing to try to quantify.
Mallika Nocco
It's tricky. I gotta say, I was thinking about it just in relation to another project that I have in the Central Valley if we can somehow quantify the fog. Even just trying to get sensors that are going to be measuring the fog and trying to understand you know, when it's condensing, like you mentioned, how much of that is going to be contributing? It's pretty tricky.
Mark Battany
Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Mallika Nocco
Similar to these other types of water that might be useful for agriculture or might be contributing to agriculture, especially in these wine grape regions, many folks might not be aware, unless you're working in ag, that irrigation can sometimes be used for frost protection in wine grapes, as well as in many tree crops. And I'm curious under what conditions, or different types of frost, is this irrigation needed and effective? And how much water are we talking about relative to the total amount of water used?
Mark Battany
I think it's kind of counterintuitive to a lot of people that if you sprinkle water on a crop that that would actually protect it from freezing. So I think that's an important thing to understand. One way to think of it, imagine you have an ice cube and you want to melt that ice cube, you have to add heat to it. So if you now have liquid water and you freeze that water heat is given off.
So that's what we're taking advantage of when we use sprinklers for frost protection, what it requires is that water be continually applied to the sensitive tissues that we're trying to protect such that freezing is continually happening. And that is what generates heat and protects the plant from actually freezing even though it will be encased in ice. So it looks kind of strange when you see it for the first time. It's very effective, but it requires a lot of water.
How much water? Well, let's say in a typical night, it might require about one inch of water be applied over a 10 hour period, for example. So if you have multiple frost nights in the year, let's say you have to apply that six nights out of a year in a challenging spring, that's half a foot of water that you're putting on. Now, a lot of that water is going to be retained within the soil. But at the same time, we're putting on water at a time of year when we normally would not want to for irrigation. And when we are sprinkling that water on in order to prevent erosion from happening, and from ending up with a waterlogged soil, we want a cover crop to grow and use up that water so that we can get back into the field.
So we are, in essence, when we're using the sprinkler frost protection, we're also inadvertently irrigating the cover crop, which is using up that water. So from a water efficiency standpoint, and we get a benefit from it, but it comes at a large cost of water. It's commonly used in many parts of California, but I think there's growing interest if we can find alternatives to using water in that way, then we would like to. It would be a benefit to the farmers, especially because many of them would rather use that water for a more beneficial purpose, like growing more crops, for example.
Mallika Nocco
Right, and I know you've been kind of working on developing some alternatives for frost protection that don't use as much water. And I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what these alternatives might look like?
Mark Battany
So my main focus has been addressing the question, can we replace sprinkler frost protection with wind machines. So wind machines function in a completely different manner, what they are taking advantage of is on certain frost nights, what we call a radiation frost. Under that condition, the air temperature above the ground at 30 or 35 feet is quite a bit warmer than the air temperature at the crop level. So if that condition exists, then the operation of a wind machine blows up warmer air down, mixes it with the air near the ground, and then you end up increasing the air temperature around the crop.
Now luckily, most of the frost that we have, are these radiation type frost events. Now what is the radiation frost? Well, the conditions are typically you have a very clear sky at night and no wind. Under that condition, the ground surface, the crop surface, gets very cold due to radiation heat loss. And that's when you have these conditions occurring, radiation frost condition. So what I do, I put out towers, 30 or 35 foot tall towers, that have a temperature sensor at the very top, and then another temperature sensor down at the crop level.
And by just measuring the temperature at these two heights during these frost events, I can then very easily determine whether or not a wind machine would provide a benefit under that condition. So it's an extremely simple approach to understanding, the technology that's involved is a pole, so it's not that we're actually doing something super innovative. But we are providing data, which then helps a farmer make a very fundamental decision, can they shift from using sprinklers, and then adopt wind machines? And they will do so with some idea of what the potential risks are with making that choice. I think it's proven itself to be a very useful bit of information to help farmers make the most informed decision possible.
Mallika Nocco
That's wonderful Mark. And I know you're kind of humble, but just traveling through the area with you, I've seen you know that you have many of these towers. How many of these towers do you have up? I know it's more than I would have expected.
Mark Battany
Yeah, well, I've been working on two different approaches to this. So one approach is that I use portable, low cost equipment that I take out to a site and we operate it, let's just say for one spraying, or one year. And that at times I've had you know over 60 of those scattered throughout the state. So a lot of these operating at one time, which you can do because the cost is very low. And that provides targeted data to a region. Whenever I did that, though, I would always have a farmer say, you know, can I see this data while it's happening? And I say, well, no, because the limitation here with this very low cost equipment is that the data is only stored on the towers, nobody can see the data until we remove these towers and process the data.
I've always wanted to have a way to have data like this live so that anybody could see it. Not only the interested farmer, but myself as well, and anybody else who's curious about it. So a number of years ago, actually, two years ago, I started putting up weather stations in San Luis Obispo County and I currently have 19 of them installed throughout the county, and each one then has a 30 foot tower to measure this temperature inversion condition.
I may not have used that phrase to describe what this is I'm measuring, but it's the temperature inversion. So what is that difference in temperature high above the ground, versus the temperature down at the crop level? So to me, this is really kind of, I'd like to say, a game changer. It allows us now to develop very detailed datasets for a region. And even if a farmer today does not have that question, you know, how can this data help me? But what if the person two or five years down the road who's managing that farm and might need that data? So building up this dataset is really going to provide us a very big advantage going forward.
Mallika Nocco
I will go ahead and say it sounds like a game changer to me. And I also appreciate just the building up for those of us who are not trained in biometeorology, who are listening to these concepts for the first time, to ease us into temperature inversion. Because it does sound kind of like an intimidating term for those who haven't heard it, but the way you explained it now, I feel like that's very clear and easy to understand. So thank you for that. As a follow up, I'm wondering when you see the inversion? So let's say that you have access to the data and you're watching it in real time. When do you turn on the wind machine?
Mark Battany
If this temperature inversion exists, let's say on a typical frost night, as soon as that wind machine is turned on, a warming effect will be generated right away. So what a farmer needs to know is, what is the temperature that would be a damaging temperature for their crop, for example. Let's just say 30 degrees might damage a crop, so the farmer needs to make sure that they turn on that wind machine prior to the temperature in their field reaching that level. So typically, farmers might turn the wind machine on, let's say, 33 or 34 degrees, just to give themselves a little bit of a buffer, that’s something that will come from their own experience.
Mallika Nocco
Very cool. And it sounds like it's just a very plausible alternative. But I got to ask, I do think right away, are we trading the use of water for the use of energy with this solution?
Mark Battany
Well, everything has a tradeoff. Energy use is one, you know, a lot of these wind machines are powered by propane, for example. That's the current popular mix, mostly in California. They're very expensive. These are not inexpensive things to invest in, you know, well over $30,000 typically for a wind machine. Noise can be a problem. These make a lot of noise. There's been some effort to develop blades or propellers, which will reduce that noise signature quite a bit, but most of the wind machines that we install are quite noisy. And that is kind of part of why they are effective, just the way they blow the air. That noise is a part of that. That is a common complaint from neighbors. So there are some restrictions like that are some issues that we run into. Even though we're trying to do a good thing and save water, be more efficient with that resource, we might inadvertently create problems in other ways.
The other issue is that the ability of a wind machine to protect a crop, it may not reach as low of a level of temperature protection as we might with sprinklers. Now that is one advantage of using water, even though to attain that low level of protection, as far as a low temperature protection, we need to put on a lot of water. That's kind of an open question for us, you know, to what level can we protect with wind machines in this region. So you know, if there is one benefit to climate change, if frost risk becomes a little bit less of a concern going forward, that could be an opening for us to be able to shift from sprinklers to wind machines, if the risk level is a little less worrisome.
There's a whole other relationship here which I want to discuss real quickly. And it has to do actually with labor. It’s a big challenge for farmers to find people to do a lot of field work. How does this relate to frost? Well, one of the time periods when frost can happen is in the fall prior to harvest. Now we are using harvesting machines to pick grapes, much more so than we did in the past, simply because labor is not available to do it by hand. If a vineyard gets hit with frost in the fall prior to harvest, a machine cannot distinguish between the grapes and the little bits of dried leaves that would come in, because they are all frosted. So the result of running a harvesting machine over a frosted vineyard creates a wine quality problem, because all those little bits of leaves give a very bad flavor to the wine, and there's really no way to separate that out.
Back when we harvested vineyards by hand, a hand crew did not include all those little bits of leaves. So that's one advantage of picking by hand. So as the industry is shifting more and more to picking by machine, these fall frosts are becoming more of a concern–they have a bigger economic impact on grape growers. So that is now creating an incentive to put out wind machines, because a grape grower also does not want to put out a lot of water prior to harvest, that if they were using sprinklers, for example, that would then create another problem: disease pressure and stimulating growth if they put out a bunch of water in the weeks prior to harvest. So it kind of creates an opening for using wind machines that is being driven by labor availability. So it's funny how all these things are connected in a way here.
Mallika Nocco
Yeah, it's very interesting. And I just really appreciate your general tone and discussion of tradeoffs. I feel like when those of us who are working on water issues in California, especially related to Ag, it's always about identifying these tradeoffs, right, we have to think about, oh, we've got this really promising solution. Well, what are all the tradeoffs associated with it? So I that is wonderful to think about.
I do want to ask a little bit about salinity issues in the Central Coast, thinking about you discussing how much of the agriculture for example, is groundwater based. And that immediately kind of leads me into thinking about salinity. But I am curious how salinity issues in the counties that you're working in are different from salinity issues in the Central Valley.
Mark Battany
And just to distinguish, you know, areas, let's say from the north coast of California, if you get up to Napa, and Sonoma vineyards in that area, unless they're dealing with sea water intrusion, are typically not having to worry about salinity. Why is that? Well, because they get so much more rainfall in a normal year that flushes out whatever salts might accumulate in the soil over time. And they're putting on much less water for irrigation, because they get so much more rainfall.
Now, if you look at an area down here, we get much less rainfall on average. So that requires us to put more water on as irrigation. And because we're using groundwater, you know, a lot of our groundwater in many parts of the world is not very good quality, it just has minerals dissolved into it. Now, depending on where you're at, that mineral content might be dominated by sodium, and chloride, and boron, all things which are really not very good for a soil and not very good for plants. They can either be toxic to the plants, or cause physical damage to the soil, especially sodium is very bad in that regard. So that's just a reality of our use of groundwater here, we often have to be very cognizant that we are by putting on the amounts of water that we are, we are putting on quite a bit of salt, these dissolved minerals in that water.
So a prudent farmer is going to be doing analysis of their water to understand what it is they're putting on, and then soil analysis over time to understand how their management is affecting that. And typically doing some management practices to help counteract the effect of this salt accumulation. And what are those practices? Well, one is to apply a leaching fraction of irrigation when rainfall is not naturally washing away or rinsing away the salts. So that requires them to run additional water into the field to flush out the salts, but also the sodium that we're putting on with a lot of our water that needs to be flushed away too.
How do we do that? We add an amendment called gypsum. Gypsum is calcium sulfate. So really, what we want that for is the calcium. So adding that calcium to soil helps push off the sodium to allow it to be leached below the root zone. So that combination of calcium plus a leaching fraction of water will help maintain the root zone in a much better state for the growing of crops.
And unfortunately, wine grapes are fairly sensitive to salinity. That is one of the limitations that we have with the crop. So if a farmer is dealing with a challenging groundwater quality situation, they really have to be on a program to maintain the soil quality with respect to salinity. If they don't, they will see impacts in the growth of that crop that's kind of guaranteed.
Mallika Nocco
Just kind of thinking about how it's really this long term commitment, right to managing salinity in your soil and thinking about all of these different management practices, it's really important. I was curious if sea water intrusion plays any sort of a role in the salinity issues?
Mark Battany
It does in areas up in the Salinas Valley. There are areas where sea water intrusion is a big concern. Also down in Ventura, there are some areas there along the coast where sea water intrusion is a big concern Where I'm primarily dealing with crops in my region that's not as much of a concern, for example, we don't get sea water intrusion coming into Paso Robles. That's just too far away. Those coastal production areas where that is more of a concern, where you have a groundwater basin, which essentially connects to seawater. And what that requires is that constant input of fresh water to keep the seawater pushed away from that base.
Mallika Nocco
It’s kind of interesting to think about, like where it's an issue, where it's not. It's still salinity, but oftentimes there's a different cause and when the cause is different the solutions are going to be different too.
So what are you most excited for in the future of agriculture in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. And also just what is concerning you the most? What keeps you awake at night?
Mark Battany
Well, let me start with the concerns. Clearly, our region, like much of southern California, let's say the southern half of the state, we're having to grapple with the water reality. We've had a lot of expansion of agriculture. Many crops have really grown, the industries have grown substantially and, yet, we can be overstepping water availability, which groundwater allows us to do because sometimes the ultimate effects of pumping too much water are not immediately visible. But now, as we grapple with that, that's going to require that all of these regions face that reality and just find whatever solution they can, that fits their local situation to bring this into balance. That may look different in different regions.
Now, there's a lot of talk about using excess water times of the year to recharge groundwater. That's going to work better in areas that have easy access to that water, but we're kind of far away from a lot of that water. So it's gonna be a little bit harder for us, for example, to implement that, even though changes in the conveyance systems that bring water to the region might enable that to happen a bit more. I'm very hopeful that we can find some very positive solutions to that.
The things that I'm very excited about. I mean, just in the time that I have been here, I've seen an amazing thing happened with the grape industry and how they've really turned this region into a recognized world class production area. The amount of tourism that that brings in, you know, the quality of that tourism is really pretty amazing for this area. So it's a strong economic driver, which raises a lot of other boats, as well. It brings a lot of employment and high quality jobs to the region. I think that in many regards, has to be recognized that that has really transformed the area quite a lot. Of course, there's people who don't like that development, for their own reasons. So you know, there's always two sides to every coin like that.
But I'm really quite excited that innovative attitudes that people have, and especially the willingness to experiment, this being seen as kind of a new region, especially with the wine grapes, that gives people the ability to try things out the just because the region has not yet created a single identity. In other regions that can sometimes be harder to do, because they've sort of formed a regional identity already around some variety, for example, where here we don't have that constraint. So I really am very eager to see how this evolves.
And that might lead itself to other crops. You know, there's people now experimenting with agave and things like that to make spirits and things, so who knows what our future may be. And that may be a way to help address some of our water challenges as well.
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much Mark. Climate is such a big part of what creates a unique wine grape and therefore unique wines. We've talked a bit about fog and frost. And so I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about other ways that climate change might be affecting Central Coast wine grapes and agriculture more generally.
Mark Battany
It's a great question. It's something that we're all becoming increasingly concerned about. The good thing here is, I think of all of the agricultural industries that I have worked with, the wine grape industry is the one that's, I think, most aware of climate change and impacts on their industry. That to me, right, there is a really positive thing that just the industry is not in denial, that this is something that could be impacting them that I think it's really important.
How these things might affect us well, there's, you know, this year being a very dry year, that is going to be our number one concern, if we don't have enough precipitation, or if over time, precipitation levels are diminished, that's really going to impact you know, our ability to have the acreages that we do have right now. So that to me is always going to be the number one factor, increasing temperatures, that simply we will, I think, adapt to that by changing varieties, we can change production practices, we can mitigate a lot of that quite well.
It will require farmers to use practices that maybe in the past they haven't. Shade materials, different crop protections to try to reduce temperatures, just changing the structure of our grape canopies to provide more shading, for example. We have a lot of room to modify how we grow the crop to help adapt to new conditions. So I'm pretty positive, I think we will come up with some good solutions there.
Faith Kearns
It reminds me of the saying that change is the only constant. It certainly seems that way in agriculture. So thanks so much for spending time with us today. We always like to ask our guests if there's anything more that you would like people to know about your work? Also how we can, us here today and our listeners, support the kind of work that you're doing?
Mark Battany
Well, no, thank you very much. Like many farmer advisors, we tend to be involved in a wide variety of topics. Because a lot of what we do, it's sort of to be ready to deal with whatever crises might arise within our industries. And sometimes that involves working on topics that we may not have a lot of expertise in, then our job is to then find people with expertise, and try to bring them down here to the region or get them involved in our issues here.
But as far as how people can support my activities, well, they can best do that by supporting the farming industries, which I serve. So drink some Central Coast wine, preferably from San Luis Obispo, or Santa Barbara County, I would say would be a fantastic way to support my program and, and if you say that I recommended those wines, whatever they may be, that would definitely put a feather in my head as well.