COLUMN ONE : Sowing Big Seeds of Change : In a bold switch, some of the state’s major growers have gone organic. Dole, Gallo and others are jumping off ‘the chemical treadmill,’ relying instead on beneficial bugs and super-compost.

In these lush fields where man and nature go to great lengths to out-trick each other, the Pandol family reigned supreme by manipulating an ever-widening arsenal of petrochemicals. Their table grape empire was built on the trigger of a spray rig.

So when Pandol and Sons sold its chemical distribution business in 1988 and began slashing pesticide use on its 3,000 acres, the neighbors got to talking. At Perko’s coffee shop, some of the boys wondered if Jack Pandol Jr., the “college kid” who toyed with natural fertilizers, had sniffed one too many compost piles.

Even Pandol’s father and uncle, whom he had dragged along in this bold experiment to reduce pesticides, doubted his new approach.

“When we started seeing insect damage,” said Pandol Jr., who holds a plant science degree from UC Davis, “they suggested heavily that we nuke ‘em.”

Six summers later, the younger Pandol, now 39, is no longer the heretic in his family or around this farm belt. Pandol and Sons has reduced chemical use by 70% and replaced synthetic fertilizers with manure-based compost. Yields are every bit as high and Pandol Jr., crediting the eternal enigma of nature, swears the grape tastes better.

After nearly a half-century as strident devotees of chemical farming, some of the biggest names in California agriculture--Gallo, Dole, Paramount--have joined the Pandols in a quiet turn to a more earth-friendly method of growing crops.

Touted for years by a small culture of alternative farmers, “sustainable agriculture” is a response to the complications of heavy pesticide use: resistant bugs, increasing government regulation and environmental damage.

State environmental regulators say the embrace of sustainable methods by such heavyweights is the most important development taking place in California agriculture. If the big names can wean themselves off pesticides, the thinking goes, other farmers will follow suit.

“I think it has the potential for big change,” said Ron Oshima, assistant director of the state Department of Pesticide Regulation. “If the Pandol family can reduce pesticides successfully, it’s harder to refute that sustainable farming can and does work.”

In some ways, sustainable agriculture is a throwback to the methods of Old World farmers who had only sulfur dust and chicken manure as weapons. It relies on a deceptively simple notion: Healthy soil high in organic matter produces a healthy plant that can ward off pests and disease.

To combat the pests that do get through, sustainable farmers also breed an environment in which the insects’ predators can flourish. Between the rows of crops they plant ground cover, such as clover or legumes, which attract spiders and lacewings. When insecticides are needed, less-harsh compounds are used that kill only the bad bugs.

Some California growers, such as cotton giant J.G. Boswell, are still experimenting on a small scale, unsure about this new approach. Others, such as food and vegetable giant Dole, are so committed to sustainable techniques that they have built insectaries to hatch the beneficial bugs that devour the pests.

At Gallo Vineyards, the famous wine family got tired of farming on a “chemical treadmill.” “One chemical would work for a year or two and the pest would develop a resistance and we’d (have to) try a new one,” said Greg Coleman, Julio Gallo’s grandson, who runs the family’s 2,800-acre vineyard in Madera County.

Coleman said he has not had to spray a single pesticide in four years. Other than sulfur, a natural product, the Madera ranch is chemical-free. This is cleaner than even most organic growers, who use a bevy of natural insecticides. Gallo Winery is encouraging some of its 1,500 growers statewide to move in the same direction.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that it works,” said Coleman, 34. “A lot of farmers have trouble believing it because the concepts are so simple.”

The issue of pesticide use gained new urgency this summer with the release of a National Academy of Sciences report saying that chemical residues on produce may pose a threat to children. The Clinton Administration has promised that it will encourage farmers to cut use of the harsher pesticide compounds.

So far, the transformation of the agri-giants has been a quiet revolution. Always a reticent lot, big growers worry that by highlighting their success with sustainable methods, they will undermine farmers who may not have the expertise or the profit margins to risk something new.

They also fear that advertising the blemishes of conventional farming may strengthen the hand of environmental groups who, growers complain, naively believe that all harsh pesticides should be banned.

“The environmentalists have to realize that chemicals remain a very important tool,” said Rachel Neal, a pest control adviser for SunWorld, one of the country’s largest fruit and vegetable growers, which uses beneficial insects to reduce pesticide use.

“Sometimes the good bugs need help and that’s when we come in with a selective pesticide at a low rate. It slows the bad bugs down and allows our beneficials to catch up.”

Environmental groups generally applaud the changing practices of big growers. But, noting that pesticide use has doubled nationwide since the 1960s, they advocate banning many pesticides that the sustainable growers feel are needed as an insurance policy.

“I’m not unsympathetic that farmers need to have some tools on the shelf,” said Jennifer Curtis of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But there are a number of chemicals that are too hazardous and need to be removed.

“We don’t want to leave farmers in the lurch. But we can’t trust that all of them will be as careful as Jack Pandol Jr.”

Next to damming the rivers, nothing has been more vital than petrochemicals in transforming this heartland from desert and marsh to the richest farmland in the world. The 13 San Joaquin Valley counties lead the nation with more than $7 billion in annual farm production.

A byproduct of the chemical weapons labs of World War II, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers proved the magic bullet to higher yields, higher profits for farmers and lower supermarket prices.

Another lure is that chemicals allow growers to farm by calendar--a herbicide this week followed by a miticide the next week. It is something predictable in the face of nature’s caprice. Often, the decision of when and what to spray is dictated by a pest control adviser employed by the chemical company. With this free advice and commissions based on sales, the system fosters pesticide use.

If chemical farming reduces variables and brings predictability, said Eric Wuhl, an independent pest control adviser, sustainable farming is an endless parade of questions. What does a drought year mean to pest populations? A wet year? A warm spring? A cool spring? Are you farming next to a cotton field or an almond orchard? Are you upwind or downwind?

“You have to be a much better farmer,” Wuhl said. “You have to anticipate Mother Nature and get personal with your ranch. Find out where your mites are hanging out. Your hoppers. The good spiders.

“It takes a lot more work to grow clean, attractive fruit without chemicals. And a lot of growers don’t want to work that hard.”

But, in recent years, Wuhl said, big farmers have discovered that chemicals are not as friendly as they used to believe. Government regulation has heaped a pile of paperwork onto the farmer. Spraying a harsh compound can mean a four-week delay before a farmer can re-enter a field.

At the same time, the list of approved chemicals gets shorter and more expensive to buy because of bans and the higher costs to chemical companies to register compounds.

Farmers recognize, too, that some panaceas of yesterday have turned into the debacles of today. Take DBCP, which had UC researchers and chemical salesmen singing its praises in the 1960s and ‘70s for destroying nematodes, a microscopic root-eating worm in vineyards and orchards. Years after DBCP was banned in 1977 as a carcinogen, it continues to contaminate a huge swath of ground water up and down this valley.

Every farmer also has a story of a hopper or mite that has grown resistant to petrochemicals. The number of these super-bugs has tripled (from 137 to 447) since Rachel Carson warned of such a potential in her 1962 book, “The Silent Spring.”

All this, farmers and environmentalists agree, has created an atmosphere in which some of the most hard-shelled conventional growers have begun to embrace principles once espoused by hippies, dreamers and wet-behind-the-ears back-yard farmers.

“The big guys looked over the fence and saw the little guys doing it,” said Richard Reed, program director of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers Foundation, which promotes sustainable agriculture. “Credit the little guy with guts. He’s the one who had the most to lose.”

The table grape, promoted as nature’s candy, is arguably the most manipulated of fruits. Grapes are sprayed with fungicides, miticides and insecticides, and doused up to five times with a synthetic growth enhancer called “gibb.” Like a bodybuilder’s steroids, gibb gives the grape its impressive size. It also helps make it waterlogged and fleshy and boring to the palate, critics say.

“Farmers and the size of their table grapes--there’s a lot of pride involved,” said Darin Moon, a soil fertility expert. “Because the consumer demands big, clean berries, table grapes are probably the hardest crop to transition to sustainable.”

At Pandol and Sons, it was the twin scares of 1987--Alar residue on apples and cyanide residue on Chilean grapes--that spurred innovation. “I realized then that it was just a matter of time before we would lose our chemicals,” Jack Pandol Jr. said.

With his library of plant science and integrated pest management books in tow, he asked his father and uncle to endorse a program to cut pesticide use by 50% in five years, calling it the “bold goal.”

The two elders, raised on their father’s motto--”Don’t go to school all the time”--were not enthusiastic. But it took the younger Pandol just three years to cut pesticide use 70%. “There were times when I guessed wrong and we had some big failures,” he said. “But by the second year, we were producing a beautiful grape with very little chemical. It had a longer shelf life and just tasted more flavorful.”

Before Pandol sprays a pesticide, he walks the fields, 16-power lens in hand, assessing the population of bad and good bugs. On 40 acres east of the packing plant, he cooks 10,000 tons of compost in various blends. His wife complains that he smells of turkey dung.

Once a year, he makes the office staff drive to the pile of manure and organic matter and stick their hands in its 140-degree heat.

“Smell it,” he says, lifting a handful of the black humus to his nose. “It doesn’t smell like manure at all. It smells like good rich garden soil.”

Pandol says he is still learning after six seasons of sustainable farming. This season, he tried to cut back on one soil supplement and got mites. It took three heavy chemical applications to wipe out the infestation.

“I probably backed off the sustainable methods a little too much and paid the price,” he said. “But that’s the way you learn.”

In the citrus belt just northeast of Pandol’s ranch, where the flatlands give way to foothills, more insecticides are sprayed per acre than on any other crop. Nearly 2 million pounds of insecticide were doused on California citrus in 1990, according to a UC report. For 25 years, Jim Gorden has tried to promote sustainable farming among orange growers. There were few takers until now. “I couldn’t get anyone to listen,” he said. “Then these chemicals started to fail. And the guys who used them the most were having some of the biggest problems.”

Today, Gorden is a pest control adviser to Paramount, the largest citrus grower in California. The Visalia-based Paramount has switched nearly one-third of its 10,000 acres to sustainable farming. On some groves, Gorden said, he has not sprayed for thrips or red scale--citrus pests immune to many chemicals--for three years.

On 280 acres of certified organic oranges, Paramount has eliminated herbicides, planted cover crops as habitat for beneficial insects, released up to 150,000 predatory wasps per acre, and replaced commercial nitrogen fertilizers (which pollute ground water) with home-grown compost.

The company recently built a high-pressure washing machine that blasts red scale off the fruit, rather than using chemicals. “This is not an experiment,” said Franco Bernardi, Paramount’s vice president of farming. “This is a change in mind-set.”

On the orange groves of Dole Food Co., the new guiding principle is “treat only when absolutely necessary.” The change, however, is not a money-saver. Dole has tripled its pest management staff.

“What you save in pesticide costs, you spend in intensive field monitoring,” said Philip Pierre, a Dole executive based in Fresno. “You don’t start out doing this to save money but to be better stewards of the land. And the amazing thing is that we’ve improved our quality and volume.”

Of all the changes taking place here, it is the shift at Gallo Winery, long known for its accent on tradition, that is most talked about.

Greg Coleman said his grandfather, Julio, who died in a car accident last spring, got a big kick out of growing his vegetable garden without chemicals. His grandfather blamed herbicides for killing soil fertility.

In 1988, when the family bought the 2,800-acre ranch in Madera County, Coleman got to try the sustainable farming practices he calls the future of California wine production. He began by cutting pesticides on 40 acres. When a mite infestation hit and associates implored him to spray, Coleman dug in. “It’s not a bug problem,” he told them. “It’s a weak vine problem.”

Over the next two years, using cover crops and heavy compost applications, he built up the soil and vines. From one season to the next, the mites vanished. Quietly, he expanded the program to all 2,800 acres. Neighbor farmers, not seeing the telltale tracks of spray rigs, thought Coleman had flipped out.

“They thought I had gone to the fringe, and maybe I had,” Coleman said. “I kept saying that nature has a way of balancing itself. Give nature time.

“Each year, the further we get away from pesticides, the easier and cheaper it gets. Each year, nature kicks in a little more.”