To make matters worse, the sharpshooter is stirring up a nasty trade fight. Australia, where vineyards are free of both Pierce's disease and sharpshooters, is worried that the bug and its lethal cargo will stow away in a shipment of table grapes from California and, for the time being, has banned imports. America, which claims it can keep the grapes safe, may take the matter up with the World Trade Organization. A state task force has been at work on it for the past 18 months. Most of the money is being spent on research at California's numerous universities, where the sharpshooter, the bacterium and the plants that harbor it are being probed for weak links in the chain of transmission.
Pesticide works, but is unpopular anywhere near people.
Scientists at the University of California at Riverside, near the first irruption of the sharpshooter, have high hopes of defeating their enemy by dispersing a tiny stingerless wasp from Mexico that lays its eggs inside the eggs of sharpshooters. The greater hope is to breed immunity into vines by genetic engineering. That will take years, if it is possible at all. At the rate the sharpshooter is advancing northward, farmers might find themselves resorting to tall fences long before then. The senior thrower has helped the Wildcats win their first three Monticello Empire League track and field meets this year.