the world of organic agriculture - Organic Eprints

7 Crop Information and Statistics
Challenges and opportunities ahead
Despite the positive development and the achieved market importance, quite a few challenges
remain.
Viticulture is “by nature” basically a monoculture, and thus in extraordinary need of adopted
and tailored solutions. Especially in the context of disease and pest management, increased
research efforts are needed. On top of the list is the need to achieve a reduction or better even a
replacement of copper as a fungicide, as copper has quite some toxic impact on soil organisms.
Another challenge is the governmental regulations hindering grape growers to plant interspecific
varieties and market wine derived from these grapes.
Labeling wine as organic is especially difficult in the USA, as the law requires organic wines to be
free of sulphates! Consequently, most organic wines are not labeled as ”organic wine,” but as wine
“made with organically grown grapes.”
A question open for debate seems to be whether there is a need to compensate lower yields and
potentially higher (labor) inputs through subsidies. In the case of wine, lower yields are closely
related to higher quality. If better quality is appreciated by a corresponding demand and thus
with higher prices, this allow organic wine growers to make a living from wine growing, not
depending on subsidies.
For the grape and wine production in so-called developing countries with viticulture, there is an
interesting potential to increase the premium price if criteria for fair trade are met. Successful
examples combining organic and fair trade e.g. from South Africa give promising indications
about the synergy potential for organic wine.
We can conclude that the future perspectives for the organic grape, raisin and wine sector are
very good as the increase in awareness and the growing demand for high quality food matches
so well with the logic that the wines along with the meals are also of organic origin and thus of
best quality.
Literature
Willer, Helga and Meier, Urs, Eds. (2000) Proceedings 6th International Congress on Organic Viticulture. Convention
Center Basel, 25 and 26 August 2000. SÖL-Sonderausgabe no. Nr. 77.FiBL, CH-Frick, Switzerland and
SOEL, DE-Bad Dürkheim, Germany. Available at http://orgprints.org/548/
Willer, Helga; Häseli, Andreas; Levite, Dominique und Tamm, Lucius (2002) Organic Viticulture in Europe. Presented
at The 7th international Congress on Organic Viticulture and Wine, organized by Canadian Organic
Growers and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), Victoria, Canada,
21.-22- August 2002; Published in Canadian Organic Growers (Eds) Proceedings of the 7th international
Congress on Organic Viticulture and Wine. August 20-21, Victoria, Canada. Canadian Organic Growers,
Victoria, Canada. Archived at http://orgprints.org/2586/
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