Relating the management difficulty to the abandonment rate of traditional mountain vineyards

Abstract

Cultural landscapes and the associated land uses are highly dynamic and subject to continuous change over space and time. In recent times, European traditional agricultural practices such as winegrowing on steep slopes have come under pressure from various underlying factors such as e.g., the globalization of the wine market, the optimization of production processes, changes in customer preferences, increased pathogen pressure, climate change impacts, and urbanization pressure. At the local scale, specific workload and management difficulties play an important role in the decision of winegrowers to give up their activity. In this paper, we use the vineyard region of southern Switzerland as a case study to develop a specific and reproducible methodology for assessing and mapping the specific workload involved in maintaining single vineyard plots.We developed a management difficulty index which considers four parameters related to accessibility (oblique distance to the nearest road), mechanization difficulty (terrain slope), and unproductive additional workload (shape of the plot and portion of the vineyard edge bordering a forest). When analyzing the evolution of the areas planted with vines during the last 30 years we confirmed the assumed relationship between abandonment rates and management difficulty in zones designated for agriculture. In contrast, in zones designated for urban development this relationship is much less evident, since presumably the opportunity of converting the plots for more remunerative land use may act as the main driver for abandonment. In addition, plots which are easier to work are preferred for new vineyard establishment.Using the proposed management difficulty index as a criterion for public financial support to winegrowers managing highly demanding vineyard plots may represent an effective measure to counteract the loss of traditional vineyards in southern Alpine Switzerland.