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Baseball fans are facing an onslaught of phony AI content on Facebook,  pushed by a clickbait network in Southeast Asia capitalizing on interest in the lead-up to the sport’s World Series, an AFP investigation has found.With names like “Dodgers Dynasty” and “Yankee Nation,” the pages mimic genuine fan accounts, but link to websites that are full of ads and phony AI-generated articles meant to draw clicks — and payouts for the site creators.”The goal of pages and operations like this is to earn money, and so whatever is going to work in terms of messaging, in terms of content, in terms of tactics they will do,” journalist Craig Silverman, who has investigated similar clickbait, told AFP.Experts warn that this strategy of pulling in users, sometimes with innocuous content, can be used to grow accounts that are later sold or rented to more nefarious disinformation campaigns.Lies meant to elicit rage — such as false claims US President Donald Trump plans to jack up prices for games featuring Major League Baseball’s sole Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays — have long been used to attract social media engagement. But seemingly innocent posts are also drawing thousands of likes.One features an AI image of Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani surrounded by puppies, lauding him for purportedly building a $5 million dog sanctuary. Another post praises the Japanese standout for tipping a struggling waitress hundreds on a $60 check, an act of unverified generosity that was also ascribed to New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge and Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. “Scammers are learning to be better storytellers,” said Luke Arrigoni, founder of Loti, an AI tool used to protect the reputations of public figures. He said AI is allowing those creating false narratives to more easily make posts that appear genuine.- Under investigation -AFP presented Meta with a list of 32 Facebook pages pushing baseball-linked phony AI content and asked if the falsehoods run afoul of platform rules. The pages had attracted a combined 248,000 followers.A Meta spokesperson said: “We are investigating the pages and admins in question and will take action against any that violate our policies.” Page transparency data shows the accounts are managed from Southeast Asia — mostly Vietnam — despite listing US phone numbers and addresses. The numbers reached entities unaffiliated with the pages, including a motel and a California physician’s office. AFP also matched the addresses to a salon and restaurant.The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which studies disinformation, previously found clickbait networks were “generating substantial revenue for the people behind them, relative to average incomes in Vietnam.”- Lack of labels -While the Major League Baseball playoffs boosted engagement with these pages, the network also targets fans of American football, ice hockey and basketball.An individual page or claim on its own may not appear concerning. But Silverman, who focuses on digital deception for Indicator, a site he co-founded, said AI is enabling groups to scale rapidly.More divisive content, including false quotes attributed to athletes on LGBTQ issues or the assassination of US conservative activist Charlie Kirk, have also gained traction.And AFP found these tactics are not limited to English-language content. As part of Meta’s fact-checking program, AFP has debunked falsehoods on pages targeting tennis fans in Serbian and Formula One supporters of Max Verstappen in Dutch. In the United States, Meta replaced fact-checking labels with a Community Notes program intended to allow users to flag false content.AFP examined hundreds of claims published since the start of the baseball playoffs and did not find any carrying visible notes — even as some users posted page reviews warning about fake content.”They’re building a bigger and bigger foothold,” Silverman said of the phony accounts, warning that without moderation the networks will only continue to grow.

Every five years, the fading US town of Taft puts on a days-long “Oildorado” festival to celebrate its glory days at the center of California’s black gold rush.Thousands flock to its parade of cowboys on horseback, antique cars and floats featuring oil pumps — a hat tip to the Wild West of yore.This year, nine months into Donald Trump’s second term, the tone has shifted from reminiscence to renaissance.Shrugging off climate change concerns, the US president has embraced fossil fuels with a stated goal of “unleashing American energy” and removing “impediments” to domestic energy production.Some of Taft’s 7,000 residents are anticipating a comeback for the petroleum industry in California, which has pledged to abandon oil drilling by 2045 to meet its climate goals. “I’m 100 percent satisfied with President Trump,” Buddy Binkley told AFP, a minority view in a heavily Democratic state. “And as for the state of California, I think he’s putting a nice pressure on them to hopefully turn around their prejudice against oil.”The 64-year-old retired maintenance supervisor with oil company Chevron sported a red cap with the words “Make Oil Great Again,” a play on Trump’s MAGA motto and a slogan featured on several parade floats. “The oil industry in California is suffering due to political reasons,” Binkley said. But with Trump in power, “I think it may go back the way it was.”- ‘Great hopes’ -Located about 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of Los Angeles, Taft was founded in 1910 atop California’s most extensive oil field. Today, Kern County — where Taft is located — contributes more than 70 percent of California’s total oil production. Its rural landscape is dotted with thousands of oil pumps.A giant wooden oil derrick serves as a central landmark in Taft, which finances its schools, fire department and police force with oil revenues.   Festival-goers can compete for the title of best welder, crane operator or backhoe loader — or be crowned the “Oildorado Queen.”Despite its pageantry and pride, the town is in decline.California oil production has been waning since the 1980s and has more recently been pinched by the push for cleaner forms of energy. Some of the town’s residents have moved to Texas, where drilling is less regulated.Many in Taft are delighted that Trump has pulled out of the Paris climate accord and removed obstacles to drilling on federal lands while handing out billions in tax breaks for the oil industry.”I have great hopes,” said Dave Noerr, Taft’s mayor. “We have all the raw materials. We had the wrong direction, now we have leadership that is going to unleash the possibilities.”- ‘Stuck in the past’ -Trump’s administration has slashed federal funding for renewable energy and climate science, and he wants to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.  Like the president, Noerr is a skeptic of “quote, unquote, climate change.””We need to question the narrative, and we need to update those things with the existing science,” he said.Yet California is increasingly vulnerable to the extreme weather produced by climate change. Earlier this year, 31 people in the Los Angeles area died in fires spread by hurricane-force gusts of 160 km/h (100 miles per hour). “If everyone around the world behaved like the US, the world would be on pace for four degrees centigrade of global warming by 2100,” said Paasha Mahdavi, a political scientist specializing in environmental policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara.Agriculture remains the top employer in Kern County, and “would be dramatically affected by increased incidence of drought, and unprecedented heat waves that are already hitting the region,” he added.That worries Taylor Pritchett, a 31-year-old dog groomer in Taft who frets about air pollution in the area.”If I were to have a child, I wouldn’t want to raise them in Kern County,” she said. “I would like to go somewhere cleaner.”She believes that “we need to get away from fossil fuels.” But in Taft, she acknowledged, “we’re stuck in the past a little bit, you know, like, very unwilling to change.”

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was still in effect after the Israeli military carried out deadly strikes on Gaza over apparent truce violations by the Palestinian armed group. “Yeah, it is,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked if the ceasefire was still in place. He also suggested that Hamas leadership was not involved in any alleged breaches and instead blamed “some rebels within.””But either way, it’s going to be handled properly. It’s going to be handled toughly, but properly,” Trump added.Israel said it had resumed enforcing the Gaza ceasefire after it struck Hamas positions Sunday, having accused the group of targeting its troops in the most serious violence since the nine-day-old truce began.Gaza’s civil defense agency, which operates under Hamas authority, said at least 45 people had been killed across the territory in Israeli strikes. Israel’s military said it was looking into the reports of casualties.Trump expressed hope that the ceasefire he helped broker would hold. “We want to make sure that it’s going to be very peaceful with Hamas,” he said. “As you know, they’ve been quite rambunctious. They’ve been doing some shooting, and we think maybe the leadership isn’t involved in that.”Shortly before Trump’s comments, his vice president, JD Vance, downplayed the renewed violence in Gaza, telling reporters there would be “fits and starts” in the truce. “Hamas is going to fire on Israel. Israel is going to have to respond,” he said. “So we think that it has the best chance for a sustainable peace. But even if it does that, it’s going to have hills and valleys, and we’re going to have to monitor the situation.”The truce in the Palestinian territory, which took effect on October 10, halted more than two years of devastating war that has seen Israel kill tens of thousands and reduce much of Gaza to rubble, after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.The deal established the outline for hostage and prisoner exchanges, and was proposed alongside an ambitious roadmap for Gaza’s future. But it has quickly faced challenges to its implementation. Vance called on Gulf Arab countries to establish a “security infrastructure” in order to ensure that Hamas is disarmed, a key part of the peace deal.”The Gulf Arab states, our allies, don’t have the security infrastructure in place yet to confirm that Hamas is disarmed,” he said.Vance said that a member of the Trump administration was “certainly” going to visit Israel “in the next few days” to monitor the situation.He did not confirm who that would be, but said “it might be me.”

OpenAI is ordering hundreds of billions of dollars worth of chips in the artificial intelligence race, raising questions among investors about how the startup will finance these purchases.In less than a month, the San Francisco startup behind ChatGPT has committed to acquiring a staggering 26 gigawatts of sophisticated data processors from Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom — more than 10 million units that would consume power equivalent to 20 standard nuclear reactors.”They will need hundreds of billions of dollars to live up to their obligations,” said Gil Luria, managing director at D.A. Davidson, a financial consulting firm.The challenge is daunting: OpenAI doesn’t expect to be profitable until 2029 and is forecasting billions in losses this year, despite generating about $13 billion in revenue.OpenAI declined to comment on its financing strategy. However, in a CNBC interview, co-founder Greg Brockman acknowledged the difficulty of building sufficient computing infrastructure to handle the “avalanche of demand” for AI, noting that creative financing mechanisms will be necessary.- Creative financing -Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom all declined to discuss specific deals with OpenAI.Silicon Valley-based Nvidia has announced plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI over several years to build the world’s largest AI infrastructure. OpenAI would use those funds to buy chips from Nvidia in a game of “circular financing,” with Nvidia recouping its investment by taking a share in OpenAI, one of its biggest customers and the world’s hottest AI company.AMD has taken a different approach, offering OpenAI options to acquire equity in AMD — a transaction considered unusual in financial circles and a sign that it is AMD that is seeking to seize some of OpenAI’s limelight with investors.”It represents another unhealthy dynamic,” Luria said, suggesting the arrangement reveals AMD’s desperation to compete in a market dominated by Nvidia.- Crash or soar? -The stakes couldn’t be higher. OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman “has the power to crash the global economy for a decade or take us all to the promised land,” Bernstein Research senior analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to investors this month. “Right now, we don’t know which is in the cards.”Even selling stakes in OpenAI at its current $500 billion valuation won’t cover the startup’s chip commitments, according to Luria, meaning the company will need to borrow money. One possibility: using the chips themselves as collateral for loans.Meanwhile, deep-pocketed competitors like Google and Meta can fund their AI efforts from massive profits generated by their online advertising businesses — a luxury OpenAI doesn’t have.The unbridled spending has sparked concerns about a speculative bubble reminiscent of the late 1990s dot-com frenzy, which collapsed and wiped out massive investments.However, some experts see key differences. “There is very real demand today for AI in a way that seems a little different than the boom in the 1990s,” said Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business School professor of investment banking.CFRA analyst Angelo Zino pointed to OpenAI’s remarkable growth and more than 800 million ChatGPT users as evidence that a partnership approach to financing makes sense.Still, Lerner acknowledges the uncertainty: “It’s a real dilemma. How does one balance this future potential with the speculative nature” of its investments today?

“Black Phone 2,” a horror sequel starring Ethan Hawke, captured the top spot at the North American box office with $26.5 million as spooky season shifts into high gear in the run-up to Halloween, industry estimates showed Sunday.The film from Universal and low-budget horror specialists Blumhouse has excellent critical and audience scores, said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research.”This is an excellent opening for the second episode in a horror series,” Gross said.”Tron: Ares,” the latest installment in the Disney sci-fi franchise, followed up a disappointing debut with $11.1 million in its second week for second place in the United States and Canada, Exhibitor Relations reported.The action flick — which stars Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Evan Peters — tells of mankind’s first encounter with artificial intelligence in the real world. Experts and industry press said it cost $180 million to make.”Good Fortune,” comedian Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, opened in third place at $6.2 million. The Lionsgate film — a body-swap comedy — stars Seth Rogen, Keanu Reeves and Ansari. Paul Thomas Anderson’s action thriller “One Battle After Another,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn, ended the Friday to Sunday period in fourth place with $4 million.DiCaprio stars as a washed-up far-left revolutionary who is dragged back into action to help his daughter, while Penn plays his ruthless military nemesis. And “Roofman,” starring Channing Tatum in the real-life tale of a former soldier-turned-thief who breaks out of prison and finds himself hiding out in a toy store, finished in fifth place with $3.7 million. Rounding out the top 10 are:”Truth & Treason” ($2.7 million)”Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie” ($1.7 million) “The Conjuring: Last Rites” ($1.6 million)”After the Hunt” ($1.56 million)”Soul on Fire” and “Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle” (tied at $1.3 million)

British police said Sunday they were probing claims that Prince Andrew asked an officer to dig up dirt for a smear campaign against his sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre.The development comes after Andrew on Friday renounced his royal title under pressure from King Charles III, following further revelations about his ties to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.London’s Metropolitan Police force said it was looking into allegations in the Mail on Sunday that Andrew tried to smear Giuffre, who accused the prince of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.Andrew, 65, has long denied the assault accusations, which have caused considerable embarrassment to the British monarchy and seen the prince virtually banished from royal life in recent years.The Mail on Sunday reported that Andrew passed on Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his state-funded police protection in 2011 and asked him to investigate.”We are aware of media reporting and are actively looking into the claims made,” a spokesperson for the Met said in a statement emailed to AFP.Andrew’s request came shortly before the publication of a now-infamous photo taken in London appearing to show the prince with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, the paper said.Andrew reportedly emailed the late queen Elizabeth II’s then-deputy press secretary and told him of his request to his bodyguard, which the officer is not said to have acted upon.The newspaper said it obtained the email from documents held by a US congressional committee.Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, says that she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions, including when she was under 18.Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided a trial in a civil lawsuit by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.The allegations have received renewed focus ahead of the publication next week of Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs.Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life in April. Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.Andrew has also given up membership of the prestigious Order of the Garter, the most senior knighthood in the British honours system, which dates to the 1300s.Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts has urged Charles to go further and strip Andrew of his right to be a prince.”I think there’s more that he could do,” Roberts said of the king on ITV News.

The founding bassist of American nu metal band Limp Bizkit, Sam Rivers, has died, the band announced on Saturday. He was 48.”Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” read a statement on Instagram attributed to band members Fred Durst, Wes Borland, John Otto and DJ Lethal.The statement did not specify a cause of death.”Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic… From the first note we ever played together, Sam brought a light and a rhythm that could never be replaced. His talent was effortless, his presence unforgettable, his heart enormous,” the band members wrote.Limp Bizkit was formed by Rivers and Durst in 1994 and went on to release its debut album “Three Dollar Bill, Y’all” in 1997.Building on their successful sophomore album, the band’s third outing “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart and sold more than a million copies in the first week of its 2000 release.Rivers left the band in 2015 because he had “liver disease from excessive drinking”, he reportedly said in a book by rock writer Jon Wiederhorn.Rivers rejoined Limp Bizkit in 2018 and featured in the band’s most recent release, the 2021 album “Still Sucks.”Band members lauded Rivers as a “true legend of legends” in their Saturday tribute.”We love you, Sam. We’ll carry you with us, always,” they wrote.”Rest easy, brother. Your music never ends.”DJ Lethal said in a comment that “we are in shock” and called for respect for the family’s privacy.

Huge crowds took to the streets in all 50 US states at “No Kings” protests on Saturday, venting anger over President Donald Trump’s hardline policies, while Republicans ridiculed them as “Hate America” rallies.Organizers said seven million people marched in protests spanning New York to Los Angeles, with demonstrations popping up in small cities across the US heartland and even near Trump’s home in Florida.”This is what democracy looks like!” chanted thousands in Washington near the US Capitol, where the federal government was shut down for a third week because of a legislative deadlock.Colorful signs called on people to “protect democracy,” while others demanded the country abolish the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency at the center of Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown.Demonstrators slammed what they called the Republican billionaire’s strong-arm tactics, including attacks on the media, political opponents and undocumented immigrants.”I never thought I would live to see the death of my country as a democracy,” 69-year-old retiree Colleen Hoffman told AFP as she marched down Broadway in New York.”We are in a crisis — the cruelty of this regime, the authoritarianism. I just feel like I cannot sit home and do nothing.”In Los Angeles, protesters floated a giant balloon of Trump in a diaper.Many flew flags, with at least one referencing pirate anime hit “One Piece”, brandishing the skull logo that has recently become a staple of anti-government protests from Peru to Madagascar.”Fight Ignorance not migrants,” read one sign at a protest in Houston, where nearly one-quarter of the population is made up of immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. While animated, the protests were largely peaceful. But in downtown Los Angeles, police fired nonlethal rounds and tear gas late Saturday to disperse crowds that included “No Kings” protesters, the Los Angeles Times reported.”After thousands of people gathered to express their constitutional 1st Amendment rights peacefully earlier in the day, nearly a hundred agitators marched over to Aliso and Alameda” where they used lasers and industrial-size flashing lights, the LAPD Central Division said on X.”A Dispersal Order was issued and the demonstrators were dispersed from the area,” it added, without specifying if any arrests were made.- Trump responds -It was not possible to independently verify the organizers’ attendance figures. In New York, authorities said more than 100,000 gathered at one of the largest protests, while in Washington, crowds were estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000 people.Trump’s response to Saturday’s events was typically aggressive, with the US president posting a series of AI-generated videos to his Truth Social platform depicting him as a king. In one, he is shown wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet that drops what appears to be feces on anti-Trump protesters. His surrogates were in fighting form, too, with House Speaker Mike Johnson deriding the rallies as being “Hate America” protests.”You’re going to bring together the Marxists, the Socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat Party,” he told reporters.Protesters treated that claim with ridicule.”Look around! If this is hate, then someone should go back to grade school,” said Paolo, 63, as the crowd chanted and sang around him in Washington.Others underlined the deep polarization tearing apart American politics.”Here’s the thing about what right-wingers say: I don’t give a crap. They hate us,” said Tony, a 34-year-old software engineer.- ‘Country of equals’ -Deirdre Schifeling of the American Civil Liberties Union said protesters wanted to convey that “we are a country of equals.””We are a country of laws that apply to everyone, of due process and of democracy. We will not be silenced,” she told reporters.Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the Indivisible Project, slammed the Trump administration’s efforts to send National Guard troops into Democratic-led US cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Portland and Memphis. “It is the classic authoritarian playbook: threaten, smear and lie, scare people into submission,” Greenberg said.Addressing the crowd outside the US Capitol, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders warned of the dangers democracy faced under Trump.”We have a president who wants more and more power in his own hands and in the hands of his fellow oligarchs,” he said.Isaac Harder, 16, said he feared for his generation’s future.”It’s a fascist trajectory. And I want to do anything I can to stop that.”

Escalating attempts to remove works featuring themes such as LGBTQ lifestyles and race relations from US bookshelves are facing growing resistance from publishers and rights groups, a major topic at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair.Spearheaded by right-wing conservative groups, there has been an explosion in efforts to get books that are viewed as overly progressive banned in US schools and public libraries in recent years.In 2020 just under 300 titles faced “challenges” — demands to restrict access to them or remove them entirely — across the United States, according to the American Library Association (ALA).That number began surging the following year, and reached over 9,000 in 2023, said the NGO, whose office for intellectual freedom has been tracking challenges since 1990.”It’s an ideological mission from people on the right,” Jon Yaged — CEO of Macmillan Publishers, whose books are among those that have been targeted in the United States — told AFP.”This is just the most recent instance of hate demonstrating itself in culture,” said Yaged this week at the Frankfurt event, the world’s biggest book fair, where the subject was hotly debated.It is part of what PEN International says is a growing global trend, with the literary freedom NGO reporting a “dramatic increase in book bans and censorship” in recent times, from Afghanistan to Russia.In the United States conservative groups and politicians pushing to get certain books removed reject accusations of censorship, insisting their aim is to limit access to inappropriate material.- Conservative education drive – US conservatives have for some years been pushing back against what they view as a progressive agenda in education, a drive that has won support from US President Donald Trump’s administration.According to the ALA, the most common reasons for challenging books in 2024 were claims of obscenity in books for minors, LGBTQ characters or themes and discussion of sensitive topics such as race.Among the most targeted titles were “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, a collection of essays about author George M. Johnson’s experiences growing up as a gay Black man in the United States.Others included “The Bluest Eye”, a Toni Morrison work featuring depictions of sexual abuse and racial themes, and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”, a coming of age novel featuring drug use and sex.Conservative activists and local politicians, particularly in Republican-led states, often pressure school boards for book bans, but efforts to get works removed are increasingly taking on different forms, according to PEN’s US branch.Legislatures in some states have passed laws seeking to restrict access to certain titles, elected politicians have issued lists of books containing “explicit” material and some school districts have issued “do not buy” lists, targeting particular works, according to the group.- Book-bans in Florida -PEN said the highest number of instances of access to school books being restricted last year was documented in Florida, where Republican governor Ron DeSantis has pushed conservative education policies that have also included banning classroom discussion of sexuality and gender identity.Those campaigning to limit access typically argue they are seeking to protect youngsters.Conservative group Moms for Liberty said recently that “challenging the placement of obscene materials in school libraries is not censorship or banning.”It is a reasonable demand to prevent children from being exposed to age-inappropriate materials,” the group said in a statement cited by an affiliate of CBS News.Macmillan and other major publishers including Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, alongside authors and advocacy groups, have lodged legal challenges against attempts to restrict access to books, and have had some successes.In some school districts, community members, from parents to authors and students, have also fought back against book bans.Authors sense a worsening climate for works depicting minority groups beyond the United States.”It is getting worse globally,” US author Lawrence Schimel, whose books featuring children with same-sex parents have run into problems in Russia and Hungary in recent years, told AFP.Schimel added however that he believed it was crucial for kids to be able to continue seeing such works: “It helps them to be accepting of other people’s diversity.”Despite the mounting challenges, Yaged of Macmillan Publishers sounded determined.”As long as there have been books, there have been people trying to ban books,” he said. “And they haven’t won as long as we keep up the fight.”

For more than a century, Lodi’s grape growers have supplied the old wineries that make this Californian city famous. But rocketing costs, falling demand and competition from imports mean some are now abandoning their vineyards.Randy Baranek, whose family has farmed these hillsides for generations, said thousands of acres (hectares) of vines — a quarter of Lodi’s production — have been removed in the last two years.”I’ve never seen anything like this,” he told AFP.Baranek said an acre of vines can produce between eight and ten tons of grapes, which can be sold for a maximum of $3,000.”Our costs are between $3,000 and $4,500 an acre to farm,” he said, as he picked his way through abandoned Chardonnay vines. “We’re twirling the toilet.”Even ripping out the vines is difficult, said Baranek, with California’s strict environmental rules making it expensive to convert a field, prompting some farmers to leave them to go wild.Such abandoned plots have become commonplace in Lodi, where around 130 varieties of grapes are grown, and which is known particularly for its Zinfandels.- Slowing demand -The decline in production has been consistent over the last few years, reaching its lowest point in two decades in 2024, when 2.9 million tons of grapes were harvested, said Stuart Spencer, executive director of the Lodi Winegrape Commission. This year, that figure is expected to fall by a further 400,000 tons.Spencer says a shift in the shape of the wine market in the United States is at the root of the changes.After three decades of growth, in which California, Oregon and Washington state forged a domestic consumer base previously enamored with the Old World wines of France, Italy and Spain, the last three years have been challenging.”The whole spectrum of those that contribute to the wine industry are struggling right now,” he said.On the consumer side, changing tastes and habits mean “people are just drinking less,” he said.The economy is also crimping demand, said Spencer.”The inflation we’ve seen over the last few years is really impacting the consumer’s wallet.”Vintners are reacting to this slowdown in demand by seeking out other suppliers.”One of the big changes we’ve seen here in California is our largest wineries, who are also the largest grape buyers, are choosing to import cheap, bulk wine instead of purchasing local grapes,” said Spencer.That price differential, he says, is the result of a skewed market.”European wine growers are heavily subsidized by the EU… So we are at a disadvantage. We are not playing on a fair, level playing field.”- Almonds -Some farmers are reluctantly giving up the grapes, at least on a portion of their land, opting instead for in-demand and lower-cost products like almonds.It is not a decision they take lightly, because replanting a vineyard can cost tens of thousands of dollars. It can also affect the wider community, with fewer workers needed for crops like almonds, whose harvest is largely automated.”There’s no other talk on the streets; we’re all very worried,” said one worker who has toiled in the area’s vineyards for ten years. “I don’t know what I would do without this.” Kevin Phillips is among those who have made the leap, converting one of his generations-old vineyards to an almond orchard.The area has good water supplies — key for thirsty almond trees — and the crop can cost just a quarter of what it does to farm grapes, he said.But one of the major attractions for a farmer is that demand is robust, and selling them is very straightforward.”With wine grapes, you’ve really got to go out there and you’ve got to talk to wineries, you’ve got to make connections, you’ve got to hope that things work, you’ve got to hope that all the stars line up,” he said.”Almonds, you don’t have to talk to anybody. There’s just a demand.”For Phillips, who said he made the difficult decision to rip out his vines after a few bottles of wine, the move is bittersweet.”It’s so much easier” to farm almonds, he said. “And I hate to say this, because I’m a wine guy.”