Toward sustainability: Development of the Ningxia wine industry

Linhai Hao,Kailong Cao,Xueming Li,Jean-Marie Aurand

doi:10.1051/bioconf/20150501021

Abstract

Ningxia government's key responsibilities for the grape and wine sector are sustainable economic development and natural resource management. While emerging as an industry leader in China, Ningxia has experienced many challenges, the major ones are increasing labor costs and seasonal worker shortages, production cost control, and a market dominated by domestic giants and increased imports. Ningxia government made policies to encourage the development of boutique wineries, high quality wines and wine tourism. On natural resource protection, a strict annual irrigation quota has led to the quick adoption of drip irrigation. New vineyards have been designed with a focus on mechanization. Fertilization program will be fine-tuned using the analysis of the soil and the mineral elements in leaves. Various personnel training programs have been organized every year. In summary, the potential of Ningxia wine region has already been proven, and Ningxia government will continually provide its support for the sustainable grape and wine development of the region.

Highlights

Government support plays a key role in industry development in China
The wine grape growing started in 1982 [1], mainly as grape base of Chinese big brands, namely Greatwall, Changyu and Dynasty, a few wineries were established to ferment the grapes, and the produced bulk wines were transported to Shandong and Hebei provinces for blending and sold under the brands of the big wineries, most of the cases Ningxia as the wine production region was not indicated on the bottle labels [2]
International statistic methods will be gradually adopted by Ningxia wine industry, one example is that the winery production will be calculated and reported as tons of crushing, other than tons of produced wine

Summary

Introduction

Government support plays a key role in industry development in China. For the grape and wine sector, the Ningxia government’s key responsibilities are sustainable economic development and natural resource management. Urbanization and increased cultivation of economic crops promoted the price increase on farming land; there is a sharp increase on the labor cost, especially after 2008. All these economical and social factors determined the Chinese wine production moving from east coastal China to northwest China. Wine is selected as a key agriculture sector of Ningxia, this decision is based on 1) there is demand on Chinese wine; 2) wine grapes grow well along the east foothill of Helan Mountain in Ningxia, 3) wine grape can provide relatively higher economic value than other crops

Progress

Challenges and main responsibilities

Findings

Summary