N95 Continued from Page 3
quire personal protective equipment. In addition, a bipartisan group of California representatives wrote last month to Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, asking for increased supplies of PPE, spe- cifically N95 respirators. On behalf of California, the members of Congress said “the combination of the COVID-19pandemicandthe2020wildfire season warrants our request for the task force to work with relevant state and fed- eral agencies to ensure America’s farmers and farmworkers have priority access to the protective gear they need to do their essential work, including N95 or equiva- lent facial masks.” Arsenault saidCFBFwill continue toad- vocate for additional pandemic relief for California agriculture. “We arenot lettingour foot off the gas in our efforts to help our farmers and ranch- ers,” she said. Although the next COVID-19 federal stimulus package is not expected to have anagricultural component, Arsenault said she hopes it will include provisions to ad- dress the PPE shortage in agriculture. Arsenault saidFarmBureauwaspleased that the U.S. Department of Agriculture included additional commodities in its Coronavirus Food Assistance Program, whichprovides direct financial assistance tofarmersandrancherswhosufferedprice
declines of 5%or greater for their crops or commodities in the first quarter of the fiscal year, or who absorbed losses due to pandemic-related supply chain disrup- tions and faced significant newmarketing costs as a result. Applications for theprogramcloseSept. 11; informationmay be found at farmers. gov/cfap. Onwildfire policy, Arsenault said Farm Bureausupports thebipartisanEmergency Wildfire and Public Safety Act, a bill that wouldimplementwildfire-mitigationproj- ects and ensure healthier forests. “Many California forests, like for- ests across the western United States, are unhealthy and at significant risk of high-severity wildfire, insect and dis- ease epidemics, and other threats,”
CFBF President Jamie Johansson said. “Increasing the pace and scale of forest management activities, including me- chanical thinning and controlled burn- ing, reduces the threat of catastrophic fire, protects lives and communities, and safeguards and enhances California’s es- sential water resources.” Johansson said the legislation would expedite forest management, accelerate post-fire restoration and reforestation, and remove hazardous fuel load fromna- tional forests. CFBF also has been in discussions with USDAregardingwildfire relief anddisaster payment programs. (Christine Souza is an assistant edi- tor of Ag Alert. She may be contacted at csouza@cfbf.com.)
the California Department of Food and Agriculture to acquire about 1.5 million respirators that were released to county agricultural commissioners from state supplies. But inmid-May, as the wildfires began, “there were people who couldn’t get respirators when they needed them,” he said. Mont erey Count y Farm Bureau ExecutiveDirectorNormGroot said in the early days of the pandemic, there were no masksof anykindavailable for thecounty’s agricultural workforce. “We had to rely on donations in the first weeks to get us through, as commercial supplies were unattainable,” Groot said. “Recently, we distributed 175,000 N95 masks during smoke-event weeks here; most of those came fromthe state.” Cal/OSHA is testing alternative KN95 respirators, which are certified in China but not in theU.S., Little said. Inthemeantime, hesaid, “Weareasking the governor’s office to allow alternatives to N95 respirators until such time as the supply chain is resolved.”
Vineyard project aims to find carriers of red blotch disease
Ag Alert: 4.75" X 6.38" At the federal level, Sara Arsenault, CFBFdirector of federal policy, saidFarm Bureau is advocating formore supplies of PPE for agriculture.
As part of a nationwide project to study red blotch disease in grapevines, researchers collected insects from vine- yards in the Sierra foothills to determine if they might be spreading the disease. Caused by a virus, red blotch creates red veins and blotches on grape leaves. It also causes grapes to be smaller, ripen more slowly and develop fewer sugars and less color. Lynn Wunderlich, a University of CaliforniaCooperativeExtension farmad- visor based in Placerville, says red blotch “continues tovextheresearchcommunity.” In a blog posting, Wunderlich said “tremendous progress” has been made in understanding the disease, but re- searchers have not confirmed what may be carrying the virus or spreading it within vineyards. Greenhouse studies have indicated the red blotch virusmay be carried by an insect called the three-cornered alfalfa treehopper, butWunderlich said that has not yet been confirmed outside a green- house setting. So she and other researchers placed yellow sticky traps in vineyards and used a modified leafblower called a D-Vac to collect and vacuum insects from foot-
hill vineyards, in an effort to determine whether any of the insects might be car- rying the red blotch virus. “These collections are critical keys to unravel the mystery of crop-threatening disease,” Wunderlich said. UC Davis announced late last year it had received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to examine the spread of red blotch disease, identify potential carriers and assess the disease’s economic impact on grape production and wine quality. Researchers from UC Berkeley andOregon StateUniversity are also participating in the project. Wunderlich said this is the time of year when symptoms of red blotch be- gin to arise. “The characteristic red ‘blotches’ on the leaves for which the disease is named begin to show in summer and become more visible as harvest nears and the season progresses,” she said. “While dis- eased vineyards turn red, healthy vines remain green, then gold, in fall.” The disease affects both white and red grape varieties, Wunderlich said, although on the leaves of white grapes, the blotches are yellow and more diffi- cult to see.
Arsenault said legislation is being dis- cussed to help farmers comply and ac-
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16 Ag Alert September 9, 2020
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