California pesticide use reports (PUR) for vineyards: what to report, by when, and the mistakes counties see

If you grow wine grapes in California and you apply a pesticide yourself, you report it to the county every month. Not only restricted materials: every registered pesticide used to produce the crop, which in a vineyard means sulfur, copper, oils and biologicals as much as synthetic fungicides. The report is short and the rules are stable, but a few details — Operator ID, Site IDs, undiluted amounts, applications made by a contractor — trip people up every season. This guide follows the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s own enforcement compendium (Volume 1, Chapter 4, revised February 2026).

Who files, and what is reported

• The operator of the property — whoever farms the vineyard — reports the pesticides they apply to the County Agricultural Commissioner (CAC) of the county where the work was done (3 CCR § 6626).
• All pesticides used in the production of an agricultural commodity are reportable, not only restricted materials. Sulfur dust, wettable sulfur, copper, oils and registered biological products all count.
• Fertilizers are not pesticides and are not reported. Neither are FIFRA 25(b) minimum-risk products.
• Applications made by a licensed pest control business are reported by the business, within seven days. Leave them off your own report — reporting them twice is a common error — but keep the copy the business sends you (it has 30 days) for two years.

When it is due

By the 10th day of the month after the month in which the application was completed. An application that ends at 1 a.m. on November 1 belongs to the November report. Property operators do not file a “no use” report for a month without applications; that obligation falls on pest control businesses.

What you need before the first spray

• An Operator Identification Number (OIN) from the CAC of each county you farm in. It is required to buy and use agricultural pesticides, it is an identification number rather than a licence, and the county issues it for up to 36 months.
• A Site ID for every field where you will apply, issued with the OIN. Any field, or part of a field, within a quarter mile of a school site needs its own Site ID.
• For a restricted material, a permit and a Notice of Intent filed with the commissioner before the application (3 CCR § 6434). The permit carries your OIN.

What goes on each line

The production-agriculture report asks, for each application:

• Date and time the application was completed.
• Name of the property operator and the OIN.
• Location: Site ID, county, and Section-Township-Range-Meridian.
• Crop or commodity treated — for a vineyard, wine grapes.
• Total acres treated and total acres planted at the site.
• Product name, EPA (or state) registration number, and the amount and units of the undiluted product used.
• Method of application: ground, air, fumigation or other (with a method code for applications within a quarter mile of a school).
• The pest control business name, if a business applied it.

The mistakes that send reports back

• Reporting the tank volume instead of the product. The report wants the undiluted product — 3 qt of fungicide, not 100 gal of spray.
• One line for a tank mix. Each product is its own line, with its own registration number and amount.
• A tank mix split across blocks with the whole amount on each block. Split the amount by treated acres so the blocks add up to what left the drum.
• Treated acres larger than planted acres, or planted acres that change month to month for the same site.
• Leaving off sulfur and organic products because they “don’t count”. They do.
• Repeating applications the custom applicator already reported.

Records versus the report

The monthly report is a subset of what you must keep. Pesticide use records stay with the operator for two years and must be shown to the commissioner on request (3 CCR § 6624). The federal Worker Protection Standard adds its own application information — start and end times, REI, the treated area — that must be displayed for workers and kept. Certified organic vineyards keep input records for five years (7 CFR § 205.103). One good spray record covers all of them; the monthly report is then a matter of filtering it by month.

How to submit

Counties accept the DPR form on paper and many also take electronic reports; the commissioner’s office enters or reviews every report in CalAgPermits, the system that passes the data on to DPR. Formats and online options differ from county to county, so ask yours which it accepts before the first deadline. The public side of all this is CalPIP, where DPR publishes the reported use.

Doing it from the spray log

In GrapeFlow, a California winery’s spray log has a California PUR tab. It builds the month’s rows from the applications already recorded — one per product and block, pesticides and biologicals only, the tank-mix amount split by treated acres, restricted materials flagged — lists what the county will ask that is still missing (Operator ID, Site IDs, Section-Township-Range), and downloads them as CSV. You still file the report with your county; GrapeFlow does not submit it.

Vineyard spray records in GrapeFlow →

This article summarises the rules as published by DPR in February 2026. It is not legal advice; your County Agricultural Commissioner has the last word on local procedures.