LIVE vineyard members are required to pay the following fees:

1. Application Fee:
   • $100 one-time fee for processing your application
2. Annual Dues:
   • $175 for vineyards up to 20 acres plus $2/acre over 20 with no cap
3. Inspection Fee:
   • $350

     This fee is billed only in the years your site is visited for an inspection by our 3rd party. LIVE requires vineyards to be inspected for the first two years of membership and then every third year thereafter on a random basis. The regional difference in cost is a result of travel time and distance from our inspectors' locations.

4. Late Enrollment Fee (see explanation):
   • $50

     This fee is only billed if you join outside of the open enrollment window (January 1 - July 1 of year to be considered). Our inspectors batch their visits and determine their fees based on enrollment numbers up to July 1. This fee covers late enrollment after their contracts are negotiated.

Your inspector may vary from year to year. LIVE contracts with a third-party agricultural inspector to perform site-visits and record collections. You will be contacted by your inspector in the weeks prior to your visit.

Currently, LIVE contracts with three inspection companies for vineyard audits: Agro-Ecology Northwest, Corridor AgLand Consulting, and Apple Leaf LLC.

Vineyard members are inspected on-site in years 1 and 2, and every third year thereafter on a random basis. If a vineyard receives a No-Pass determination, it will automatically be scheduled for a site-visit the following year.

In the event that you need to used a solution in the vineyard that is not allowed by the LIVE Yellow List of Approved Pesticides, we allow you to apply for a variant. You will be asked to submit a Request for LIVE Variant to your regional LIVE Technical Committee for approval. The committee will work with you to arrive at a sustainable solution. If the solution involves a chemical that is not allowed by LIVE, your vineyard will be taken out of certification for one year. You may then re-apply for certification the following year. You may only apply for a variant once in a three-year period.

The deadline for vineyard reporting in 2009 has been extended to December 10th. This change was made to reflect concerns by the membership that the previous deadline of November 30th fell too close to Thanksgiving and harvest. LIVE recognizes these time constraints and will proved an extra 10 days this year as a service to our members. As a result of this change, late reports will no longer be accepted and any members reporting after the December 10th deadline will be given an automatic NO PASS determination.

In January of 2009, the LIVE Vineyard Certification Technical Committee decided to create, based on climate, two distinct regions for its membership. These fall under one of two categories: LIVE Region I or LIVE Region II. Each region has its own unique set of forms, including pesticide list, and Green/Yellow List of Vine Protection Measures.

LIVE Region I describes cool-weather, maritime viticulutral climates. Currently, this includes Western Oregon (Willamette Valley), certain areas in Southern Oregon, and Western Washington.

LIVE Region II describes warm-weather, maritime viticultural climates. Currently, this includes certain areas in Southern Oregon, Central and Southern Washington, and Eastern Oregon and Washington (Walla Walla).

Each region has its own pest- and climate-related issues that require unique attention. If you are unsure what region you fall under, please contact the LIVE office.

Salmon-Safe is an organization dedicated to protection of fish habitat through watershed management. LIVE has partnered with this organization for a number of reasons. Salmon-Safe certification is included in year one at no cost with the first successful inspection of a member farm. We believe that this is a value-added reason for joining our program. Secondly, because LIVE is a "Whole-Farm" program, we see the need to partner with an organization that has rigorous standards for off-vineyard crops and properties. Salmon-Safe fits this function perfectly and we have been successfully offering joint inspections for a number of years. If you should have any questions about this program, you may contact Dan Kent at dan@salmonsafe.org.

Biodiversity consists of the practices designed to increase the diversity of genetic, species, and ecosystem elements to provide a natural resource for the vineyard to minimize pesticide usage.

1. Areas for ecological compensation are to cover at least 5% of the farm surface (excluding commercial forests). This includes areas such as hedges, non-farmable ground, field boundaries, streams and ditches, and other agricultural surfaces that receive no input of fertilizers or pesticides
2. The encouragement of flowering plants in the vineyard to provide habitat and food for beneficial predators and parasitoids

The IOBC defines 'direct plant protection' as "control" of problems rather than "prevention."

Priority must be given to natural, cultural, biological and highly specific methods of pest, disease and weed control, and the use of agrochemicals must be minimized. Plant protection products may only be used when justified. The most selective, least toxic, least persistent product or control procedure, which is as safe as possible to humans and the environment, must be selected.

Control measures should be used from the more selective to the less selective

1. Use of control measures that act exclusively on target organisms (pests, diseases, weeds)
   • Release of sterile insects
   • Repeated release of parasitic organisms
   • Encouragement of predators
   • Introduction of competitive plants
   • The use of selective chemicals (Pheromones)
2. The application of less selective control measures, to be used when the previous measures do not prevent economic damage
   • The use of semi-selective pesticides (i.e. BT, insect growth regulators, sterol synthesis inhibiting fungicides, etc.,)
   • The use of non-selective short persistence pesticides
     

Indirect plant protection is the use of methods that prevent the outbreak of disease and insect damage beyond an economic threshold. This is an attempt to establish and manage the vineyard in a way to prevent problems that would later need to be addressed by higher off-farm inputs. One example of a preventable problem would be the planting of late-ripening varieties prone to rot that would later need several Botrytis sprays to combat this disease. A second example of a problem that could be prevented would be the installation of a training system that caused too much shading and increased the incidents of disease requiring additional sprays.

1. Optimal use of natural resources
   • Planting of varieties and clones adapted to the local conditions
   • Appropriate yield expectations
   • Planting of resistant varieties and clones
   • Weed management appropriate to the level of competition to the crop
   • A mixture of varieties and crops
   • Appropriate timing of planting and vineyard operations
   • Appropriate training systems for the local area
   • Ecological compensations areas
2. Farming practices with impacts on the agro-ecosystem
   • Avoid the surplus input of nutrients including excess Nitrogen
   • Provide for the optimal crop and foliage ratio
   • Protect soil fertility through minimum tillage/cultivation
   • Manage weeds for plant competition and erosion control
   • Enhance biodiversity through habitat management
3. Protection and increase of antagonists (beneficial insects,fungi, plants, etc.).
   • Assessing the importance of individual antagonist species
   • Release of predatory species
   • Management of the habitat