It's starting to get crowded

Wines & Vines, May, 2000 by George Barnwell

I was in the audience (Santa Rosa) when Mark Green of the Conservation Action group lectured members of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association about our responsibility as farmers. He warned as the number of urban dwellers grew in Sonoma County, we would be under greater scrutiny and we'd better start behaving ourselves.

Behind his remarks, there was an implied threat that the growing hordes of urban dwellers would probably be a valuable asset, as they would add to the pressure on bad farming practices. It was as if he relished the vision of a pending invasion of urban dwellers providing leverage for his group to enact its bulging package of ambitious regulatory reforms. I recall thinking at the time it was rather odd for an environmentalist more or less to welcome many new residents as a way of protecting the county. It was an interesting intellectual twist--if we don't have enough urban dwellers, we will in the future.

Also, recently there was a front-page article about a vineyard being prepped without a county permit. As usual, the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat's story had half the details wrong, but the basic fact remains: a permit under the new vineyard ordinance was not obtained. The vineyard owner explained, according to the story, he was confused about the new law. This part I understand because unless somebody had a direct fax pipeline into the county counsel's office, it would have been difficult to keep current with the changes, as the ordinance was glued together and tinkered with in the past nine months.

The most fixating part of the article was that the perpetrator was an urban dweller, an advertising executive living in Sebastopol. This was no scheming or illiterate grape grower or agricultural tramp stripping the rhapsodic landscape of Sonoma County, but a bona fide urban dweller.

There have been two other well-publicized cases of environmental vandalism committed in Sonoma County in connection with vineyard development in the last three years. In all cases, as I remember them, they were performed with great artistry by clueless urban dwellers.

One case involved a real estate agent who eroded enough of a slope on a tributary of the Gualala River to cause discoloration and sediment damage to the stream. He was fined $50,000.

These types of incidents obviously have not been overlooked in the past. But oh, these urban dwellers and the reputation they have eroded of farmers!

But I thought the apogee of the legend of urban dwellers and the need of their presence to protect the environment was reached in another P-D article. It covered the feud somewhere in Sonoma County between a couple of prosperous urban dwellers who were squabbling over the priority rights to own the highest hill in the rural paradise of Sonoma with the most expensive home. Two urban dwellers with apparently solid financial statements had bought adjacent ridge tops and built homes to find they would be compelled to share the same view. They were located about a quarter of a mile apart.

For some reason, the total irony of this story amused me, and I admire the courage of the Press-Democrat to bring this unsavory and un-neighborly dispute to our attention. What other evils lurk in the secluded and not exclusive ridge-tops of Sonoma?

Nevertheless, urban dwellers as a group are imbibing more high-quality wines. The urban dwellers in Sonoma and their brethren elsewhere in the country are creating a growing national market for the classy wines of Sonoma and Napa counties. The growth of vineyard blocks here is inextricably linked with the growing thirst of urban dwellers, here, there and elsewhere. They are the driving force behind many of the transitions occurring in Sonoma County. Grape growers and farmers love urban dwellers--they buy our products! Urban dwellers will be pouring about 25,000 times more money for grapes than for any other comparable crop in Sonoma, including, for instance, organic berries. This will dictate the future of the agricultural map of the county.

Amidst the current brouhaha, it's important to know that less than 6% of the land of Sonoma County is occupied by vineyards, including expansion in the last year.

Our country, according to reports I have read, is increasing in population about one million internally and almost another one million by immigration annually. That's almost two million a year. All these people cannot be herded into East Palo Alto. Some will find their way here. Most of them will be members of the working middle class who historically have chosen and done the right thing over the years, ethically and morally, for America. Most of them, if not all, will be urban dwellers. Happily, the elitists and activists will remain a waspish and diverse minority of alarmists, opposed to most change; to be tolerated, of course. But the vast majority of urban dwellers endowed with common sense, will work with grape growers, farmers and other dedicated ruralists of integrity to successfully make Sonoma a better and more exciting place to live.