Wildfire smoke over the years has taken a toll on California’s wine grape crop. To help with information sharing, a task force has been developed to help producers mitigate the damage.
It is called the West Coast Smoke Exposure Task Force. The goal was to give farmers and researchers a place to share information about fighting wildfire smoke damage. Wine industry leaders say the program can help everyone from farmers to winemakers.
“ARS, the Agricultural Research Service, and the university researchers from WSU, OSU, and the University of California at Davis have all worked together with the industry to identify what we know, what we don’t know, what we need to know, and what are those critical, mitigating components that we need to be able to know more about so that we can help growers, but also vintners that are impacted by smoke,” said Vicky Scharlau, former Executive Director of the Washington Wine Industry Foundation.
Between 2017 and 2021, NOAA shows wildfires caused more than $80 billion in damage nationwide. In California, more than 4 million acres of land were destroyed in 2020 alone.
