VINOVERT is an innovative project for the wine sector in SUDOE region (wine and vineyard businesses in the Southwest European region) over the period 2016-2019, in order to guarantee the competitiveness of companies in the long term. The project focuses on news market requirement in terms of health and environment. Anticipate the new demand for sustainable viticulture offering guarantees of 'naturalness' and environmental responsibility is key.
The project will reach 3 main objectives :
- Understand the reality of consumer and citizen arbitrations on pesticide, naturalness, social responsibility issues;
- Develop concretely on the ground the viticulture ad oenology evolution possibilities, while evaluating the production (additional) costs and the productivity gains;
- Explain the behavioral locks which oppose to the demands of rupture and the possibilities of institutional and regulatory reorientations.
In the face of these new societal challenges, the vine and wine sector requires exploring the technical and economic feasibility of a significant reduction in the use of pesticides at the vineyard level, as well as the reduction of oenological inputs. Support for certifications and standardization adapted to regional specificities is also needed. It is also a matter of exploring ways of questioning production processes while ensuring at the same time concrete possibilities for implementation to producers, marketing companies and consumers.
Societal responsibility has thus become an essential element of competitiveness.
Solutions need to be adapted to different contexts and the different technical solutions will not always be economically viable. The supply-demand balance must also anticipate the reality of demand characteristics and contradictions, the difficulties of changing the actors behavior in the sector, as well as the institutional and regulatory constraints.
