Tommy Harwood Highlights Local Winemakers’ Fight Against Climate Change

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California entrepreneur and farming expert Tommy Harwood shines a spotlight on the fight of Napa Valley winemakers to tackle climate change across the board.

 

Devastating entire crops and responsible for increasingly common and nightmarish wildfires, few in the U.S. agricultural industry are as hard-hit as winemakers in California, and, in particular, those from Napa Valley. A local entrepreneur and farming expert, Tommy Harwood underlines the current and ongoing fight by the region’s vineyards and wineries to tackle the ever-worsening effects of climate change. 

 

“Wine producers in predominantly northernmost California and also elsewhere in the state are today wrestling with enormous difficulties caused by an ever-warming planet,” reveals Harwood, “including droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and more.”

 

While wine regions the world over are all dealing with climate change to some degree, few have seen the resulting devastation witnessed by winemakers in Napa Valley. “Extreme summer heat in recent years has been catastrophic,” explains Harwood, “costing many winemakers most or all of their crops in lots of cases.” 

 

Caused by unusually dry conditions and strong winds, wildfires are also threatening Napa Valley and the wider Northern California wine country like never before, according to the entrepreneur and farming expert. 

 

Largely the result of worsening climate change, few people and places, then, have more reason to fight than California and its winemakers. “While the industry alone can’t singlehandedly stop climate change, Northern California’s winemakers must declare a crisis and campaign to change the global behaviors responsible for an ever-warming planet,” suggests Harwood. 

 

Organizations such as the Napa Valley Vintners, an association of winemakers, are already promoting conservation, energy efficiency, and environmental action via third-party certification programs for wineries and vineyards, according to the expert. Campaigning and raising awareness, however, he says, surrounding global climate change and its causes and consequences remains similarly important. 

 

“Now is the time for action among local winemakers in the fight against climate change,” adds Tommy Harwood, wrapping up, “if they’re to tackle the issue across the board and prevent continued devastation as has been witnessed by wineries and vineyards in Napa Valley, in particular, in recent years.”

 

Entrepreneur and farming expert Tommy Harwood, a resident of Whitethorn, California, established Southern Humboldt Farm, Feed & Ag Supply, Inc. in 2007. Now known as Redway Feed, Garden & Pet Supply, the company supports the local economy and employs over 25 members of the small and tightly knit Redway community. The entrepreneur’s other ventures include Crop King and business management services firm Good Elements, Inc., among others.

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