Joseph Brinkley - Director of Vineyards at Bonterra Organic Vineyards

06/19/18 • 33 min

Joseph’s contributions and expertise, including his extensive knowledge of Biodynamic preparations, contribute to ongoing excellence at Bonterra, purveyor of the nation’s leading wine from organically farmed grapes and a trio of acclaimed wines from Biodynamically farmed grapes. “Bonterra has been farming organically for more than thirty years and Biodynamically for more than twenty, and it’s an honor to steward this next chapter,” says Joseph. In addition to his work at Bonterra, Joseph sits on the Board of Directors of the Josephine Porter Institute. Joseph Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Organic, regenerative, biodynamic and sustainable farming Benefits of organic and regenerative farming vs conventional Climate change impacts on California vineyards 30 years of organic farming at Bonterra Vineyards Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Joseph's Final Five Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? Look outside wherever your focus may be. I got into wine through biodynamics. When I came to Napa to start 12, 13 years ago, I knew nothing about wine or vineyards, but it was what I knew out of composting and out of soil and biodynamics that really has helped me. So I think there's a lot for us to learn as we kind of expand our view and look at other systems and how they work, to kind of open the view up a little bit larger. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainable farming and organic farming? I was going to say the youth, but honestly the youth always has this energy and idealism, which is beautiful, but at the same time you see that in the older generations as well. We are all starting to come together with how we can make the world a better place and how we can do that, how we can reduce our negative impact and increase our positive impact, and how we can come together from different worlds and different areas of expertise. Because we all see that there's a really great need right now. What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read? Man or Matter. It is about the man as both material and spiritual being. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? I think for me, just having eyes to observe. Observing growth, observing life, observing how plants interact, how animals interact. There's so much to be read in the world of nature. If we take the time to really look and see. It was funny, I was walking through the vineyard the other day with my wife and I just looked up into the field and I pointed out like three or four things, and she looks at me and she's like, "How did you see that?" I was like, "Well, that's what I see, you know." But, there's a lot to learn out there if we just take a moment to look. Finally, where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work you're leading at Bonterra? I would start with the website bonterra.com.

Previous Episode

Dr. Michael Lizotte - Sustainability Officer at UNC Charlotte

Dr. Michael Lizotte is Sustainability Officer at UNC Charlotte since 2013. He previously filled that role at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, where he was professor of ecology and helped start an environmental studies program and an online MS in Sustainable Management. Dr. Lizotte has research administration experience with an oceanography institute and NASA. To study the ecology of algae, he made 12 trips to Antarctica and 1 to the Arctic. Lizotte Creek in Antarctica is named in his honor. Mike Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Incorporating light rail on campus and impacts on sustainability goals and performance How sustainability affects the products of higher education Raising sustainability issues that may not be popular with all stakeholders Using AASHE STARS to guide sustainability improvement Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Mike's Final Five Question Responses: What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? I think the best advice I can give people is that they have to learn that they can't do all of this on their own, but that almost everything you do is going to happen via some kind of partnership with other people. I don't know of any good examples where someone is really given the reigns of the organization or enough resources to actually be able to do that. It's kind of expected right now that we're going to conduct our work through persuasion and various other sort of leadership skills. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? Well, there is a tendency to get attracted by the piece that's sort of right in front of you, but I'm spending an awful lot of time looking at transportation. I think even in the decade or so that I have left before I might retire, I think things are going to change radically. They may just change because experimental systems need a place to be tested and the universities may be the places that are going to try this. So we may be the first ones that see some smaller scale autonomous vehicle use and test out what does it look like when you really do these radical changes to a community. What is one book you would recommend sustainability professionals read? That was an easy question. So the one that I'm always recommending to folks is Bob Willard's Sustainability Champion's Guidebook. It's just the nicest little book and I'm always going back and flipping through it and getting ideas. It is a series of models, so I'll admit I'm kind of drawn to it from that aspect, but I think he does a great job with summarizing a lot of ideas and creating a way that someone who is supposed to lead can configure out, "how am I going to get all these other people involved or how am I going to make these persuasive arguments." What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in the work that you do? One that's been wonderful for me is just the networks that were formed. Before I arrived here in North Carolina, in Charlotte, I belonged to one network of sustainability officers at universities across the southeast. Just having that monthly call is wonderful. An entirely separate network is one here in the city of Charlotte where some fairly large corporate headquarter sustainability officers are available along with other large organizations. So, I get to see things and solutions that aren't necessarily being talked about at the university. There's even a smaller effort here, which is sustainability leaders having to do with the hospitality industry. So, wherever you are, I would just say try to find those networks. For the most part they're not Internet based, but they are primarily networks of people who are still doing things face to face or via the telephone. And finally where can our listeners go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at UNC Charlotte. We hope to be getting a lot more attention through the UNC a main page, that's you www.uncc.edu. We have a new plan coming out and we're hoping that the initiatives get more attention from the university, but they're already fairly good at covering regular events and things like that that we do on campus.

Next Episode

PAC-12 Sustainability Conference and Sustainability in Sports

Today we have a special episode of Sustainable Nation. We're talking sustainability in sports and the . Consistent with its reputation as the conference of champions, the PAC-12 is the first collegiate sports conference to convene a high level symposium focused entirely on integrating sustainability into college athletics and across college campuses. All of the PAC-12 athletic departments have committed to measuring their environmental performance, developing strategies and goals to reduce their impact and monitoring their progress in engaging fans and communities in greener practices. The PAC-12 sustainability conference signals in elevated approach to enhancing sustainability efforts within collegiate athletics departments, designing new collective initiatives and sharing best practices to transform college sports into a platform for environmental progress. Today we're interviewing two members of the PAC-12 sustainability conference committee, Dave Newport and Jamie Zaninovich. Jamie Zaninovich - Jamie joined the PAC-12 Conference as Deputy Commissioner and Chief Operating Officer in July of 2014. He's responsible for all aspects of the PAC-12's administrative operations, including television administration, sports management, championships, football bowl relationships, PAC-12 global, compliance and officiating. During his first two years at the PAC-12, Jamie helped guide the conference through unprecedented governance changes, major increases in its international efforts, and continued high level success of its 23 sponsored sports. Dave Newport - Dave launched the first US college sports sustainability activation with corporate partnership for the Florida Gators when he was the University of Florida's director of sustainability in 2002. Later he became director of the and founded the nation's first comprehensive NCAA Division One sports sustainability program, . Dave is also secretary of the board of directors, former board secretary of the , an award winning publisher and editor and a former elected county commission board chairman. Jamie Zaninovich Jamie Zaninovich. Welcome to Sustainable Nation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, Josh. Looking forward to it. I gave the listeners some background on your professional life but tell us a little bit about your personal life and what led you to be doing the work you're doing today. College sports has been a passion of mine since my early days in Eugene, Oregon where I was a faculty brat, son of a faculty member who played basketball in college back in the day and used to take me to all the games at the old historic Matt Court and Autzen Stadium in Eugene as a kid. So that's really where my passion for collegiate athletics started, and I was not a good enough to be a collegiate student athlete, so of course, decided to be an administrator instead. That's how it works. I've spent the last 25 years working both on campus and in college athletic conferences starting at Stanford and then Princeton University, and now here at the PAC-12 for the past four years. Like I said, it's a passion of mine as is sustainability, so we're really excited that we're at least making some progress in putting those two things together here at the PAC-12. And now the PAC-12 Sustainability Conference coming up in July. Really the first sustainability focused conference put on by a collegiate sports conference, the PAC-12. Tell us a little bit about how that came about and what people can expect at this year's PAC-12 Sustainability Conference. It's really a reflection of our 12 schools who have taken a leadership position in sustainability, and sports sustainability more specifically, in the collegiate space. So when I came to the PAC-12 four years ago, Dave Newport is the sustainability director at Colorado, showed up on our doorstep and said, "Hey, I'm not sure if you knew this, but all 12 of our PAC-12 schools are members of the Green Sports Alliance. That's the only conference in the country that that's the case and you guys should really look at doing something in this space." So, we said, "Yeah, this is interesting." Myself and Gloria Nevarez, who formerly worked at the PAC-12, both have a passion for sustainability having grown up on the west coast. We sort of took Dave's lead. The PAC-12 at that point joined the Green Sports Alliance and started looking at what a plan could be for us to take a leadership position, really reflecting what our schools have already done. So we created an informal working group within our schools of sustainability officers and athletics department reps. They suggested having a first of its kind conference, so we did that last year in Sacramento at the LEED platinum Golden One Arena just ahead of the GSA annual conference, and that went very well. From there we started thinking about do we do this again and what could come next? So we'll have our second event this year in Boulder, July 12th. It's going to be a great group...