Viticulture et coopération vinicole dans le Sud-Est méditerranéen, le cas du Var

Abstract

The cooperative vineyard from the Var is the biggest vineyard at the east of the Rhône (44 OOO ha). The Var is the fourth department in France for the cooperative production with its 25 000 cooperators producing 2 OOO OOO hi among which about 400 OOO hi are VDQS or VAOC. A division into average cooperatives and prevailing small ones (av. — 20 000 hi) constituted above all by small winegrowers is a characteristic feature of this old cooperation (it celebrates its seventieth year of existence this very year) which has been able to equip itself with a plant on the whole considerable but too much dispersed. Serious problems about the management and development of these wine cooperatives arise due to their ocupation not only by part time cooperative winegrowers but also by urban people who, needless to say, have no interests incommom with the former ones. Confronted with a more and more powerful and concentrated trade, efforts in associating cooperatives together are not easily attempted. The wine cooperatives, the management of which is difficult, go on playing a protective and still conservative part of small production structures, thus creating among a lot of small winegrowers a mentality of wage workers.