Transparency: The Synthetic Illusion of Sustainability

The California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance defines “sustainable winegrowing and winemaking” as a holistic approach that conserves natural resources, protects the environment, enhances wine quality, enriches lives, and safeguards family farms. But if synthetic materials are part of that equation, it’s not holistic. Knowing what synthetic materials do to our air quality, soils, water, in our foods, how can this enrich life on earth and safeguards the family farm for generations?

Over fifty years ago, my father taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten: “Sht in, sht out.” That principle still holds. He wasn’t talking about our compost pile either. You can’t build life on a foundation of chemicals. And yet that’s what’s happening across modern agriculture—and not just on the farm. Now we see the same misinformation being repeated by AI systems, websites, and news outlets. Why? Because the greenwashing has gone digital.

Try searching “sustainable farming” online and see what you get. It sounds great: healthy food, healthy planet, happy families. But much of that language is filtered through a lens shaped by agribusiness lobbying, PR firms, and marketing budgets. In 2023 alone, Big Ag spent $178 million lobbying for favorable policy—pushing “sustainable” initiatives while continuing to apply synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and growth regulators. This is not saving the planet. This is saving the bottom line.

And it’s working. Most consumers are misled into thinking that the word “sustainable” guarantees something chemical-free, safe and farming correctly when it rarely does. The result? Confusion, manipulation, and more poison in our soil, water, and food. It’s the same story Monsanto and others have told for decades—now it just has better packaging.

Let’s break this down. The word “holistic” comes from the Greek word “holos,” meaning all, whole, entire. A holistic farming system must look at everything: the soil, the crops, the animals, the people who farm, the environment, and the long-term impact of every decision that is made on every square inch of the farm. You don’t get to call something holistic when you're pouring synthetic nitrogen into the ground, spraying glyphosate and other herbicides under the vines, or applying insecticides & fungicides that leave harmful residues in the fruit. That is not holistic. That is toxic.

The truth is simple. There are only three farming methods that fully protect the soil, support biodiversity, and prohibit synthetic materials and Genetically Modified Organism (GMO):

    Certified Organic

    Biodynamic®

  Regenerative Organic®

Each of these methods requires third-party inspections, audits, and full accountability. No shortcuts. No self-scoring. No marketing spin. If you want to build soil health, protect water quality, and create wines or foods that support life, these are the only paths. Everything else is a version of chemical farming wrapped in green buzzwords.

I consider myself once a regenerative farmer, now a regenerative organic farmer. Only because the word regenerative was greenwashed back in January 2025. That means everything we done for the last 60 years is about renewal—restoring what has been damaged, rebuilding what’s been lost, and regenerating health from the soil up. Healthy soil isn’t just about better grapes. It means better water retention, more carbon sequestration, more microbial activity, more biodiversity. It means your farm is alive. When you apply herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, or growth regulators, you are not building life. You are destroying it. There is no way around that fact.

Most so-called “sustainable” farming associations and their systems still allow these synthetic materials. They say they’re improving. But how can you improve something when the starting point is not factual? If you say you’re protecting the environment, but you’re still applying glyphosate or synthetic fungicides, what exactly are you protecting?

Just one example: glyphosate, the most commonly used herbicide in the world, was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” The U.S. EPA, in contrast, concluded in 2017 that it is “not likely to be carcinogenic.” That’s too close for comfort. Glyphosate alters gut bacteria, disrupts the microbiome, and may interfere with the endocrine system. And that’s just one of hundreds of synthetic materials currently in use.

This is why I created the word “syntheticides” to refer to all of them—herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, miticides, bactericides, avicides, and more. These syntheticides are allowed under so-called “sustainable” programs like Napa Green, Lodi Rules, or even self-proclaimed regenerative farms that never went through organic certification. No matter how pretty the label, if it allows syntheticides, it’s not sustainable.

Certified Organic is the only standard that prohibits these materials. It is the only one that guarantees no GMOs, no chemical fertilizers, no synthetic weedkillers or growth regulators. That’s why we’ve farmed that way since 1984—and why we became certified wine producers in 2007. That’s why we don’t use GMO, Mega Purple, grape concentrate, or synthetic additives in our winemaking. We don’t add sugar during processing. (BTW it’s against the law in CA). We don’t rely on artificial yeast strains unless they meet strict organic standards. Our wines are fermented dry, wild when possible, and with nothing added that compromises the integrity of the vineyard or your health.

Why does it matter? Adding any synthetic materials, mean synthetic residues in your food, in your wine, and eventually in your body. They leach into the water supply, poison microbes, destroy biodiversity, and leave soil compacted, lifeless, and restricts full  carbon storage. And once the soil dies, the farm dies. Scientists say that we have only 50 more harvest left on those chemical farms which is about 97% of all world farming. Life depends on you to help change this. How? Read up on this! purchase a few items that are textiles or food that have an organic certification on the label.

We are losing species, losing pollinators, losing microbial diversity at alarming rates. Even on a larger scale destroying our ocean life because of ag and residential run off. Synthetic farming methods have contributed directly to these losses. And yet, marketing tells us everything is improving. They call it “climate-smart,” “eco-friendly,” “natural,” or “sustainable.” But it’s the same chemical playbook—just dressed up for social media.

Real sustainability means taking responsibility. It means telling the truth. It means understanding that if your wine label says “made with organic grapes,” it is not an organic wine unless the entire winemaking process is also certified. It means rejecting greenwashing terms and looking for real certifications such as: Regenerative Organic Certified®, or Demeter Biodynamic®.

It means not settling for halfway.

At Neal Family Vineyards, we’ve never taken the shortcut. We farmorganically because we believe the land deserves better—and so do you. We believe that future generations should inherit vineyards and soils that are richer, more alive, and more abundant than the ones we started with. That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through intention, through responsibility, and through action not fake words.

This isn’t just about wine it’s all agriculture worldwide. It’s truly nurturing our soils for generations to come vs greedy big AG drug pushers that destroying our soils.  Then we talk about how we grow food, textiles, raise animals, and live on this earth. It’s about redefining what sustainability really means and holding that word accountable because it’s not ‘Holistic farming’. Because if you still allow synthetic materials, your farm isn’t sustainable. And neither is the future.

Let’s stop pretending that the illusion is enough.

Let’s farm—and live—with real transparency.