Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
find that the extra expense of these fertilizers compared with conventional fertil-
izers is not justified. The next section discusses some of these organic products in
more detail.
Organic Viticulture
What Does It Mean?
Organicviticultureaimstoproducequalitywinewithouttheuseofsynthetic
fertilizers or chemicals. To the maximum extent possible, an organic system must
operate as a closed system, with external inputs used only on an “as-needed” basis.
The broad term organic includes biodynamic (BD) and biological systems, but
BD viticulture has requirements additional to a simple organic system. hese
requirementsincludetimingvineyardoperationstocoincidewithphasesofthe
moon and using special preparations (numbers 500 to 507) that are not fertilizers
and are applied either to the soil (e.g., preparation 500, to stimulate soil biologi-
cal activity) or sprayed on the canopy (e.g., preparation 501, to attract the “light
forces” and aid photosynthesis and the vine's resistance to disease). In both cases,
these preparations must be applied at regular intervals during the growth season
because of the extremely low concentrations of the active ingredients. This is espe-
cially true of preparation 500 when applied to soil because of the pressure on the
“inoculum” to survive and multiply in competition with an overwhelming num-
ber of native soil microorganisms.
BD systems of farming have evolved from a series of lectures given by the
Austrian polymath Rudolph Steiner in 1924. Just as there is a range of viticul-
tural practices in conventional and organic winegrowing, there are different lev-
els of adoption of BD practices, depending on the strength of a winegrower's
belief in the philosophical concepts and “cosmic principles” espoused by Steiner
(Lachman,2007).heselevelshavebeensummarizedbyMaxAlleninAustralia,
a wine writer who is an enthusiastic proponent of BD winegrowing (see
www.
Traditionally strong in France, organic viticulture (including BDs) is expand-
ing worldwide and now accounts for approximately 5% of western European pro-
duction (Johnston, 2013). While certified organic production in Australia is only
about 0.5%, as indicated in chapter 1, Organic Winegrowers of New Zealand have
the aim of 20% of that country's production being organic by 2020. A vineyard
and its wine must be certified by an accrediting agency to be labeled organic. The
overarching global agency is the International Federation of Organic Agriculture
Movements (
www.ifoam.org
), including certifying agencies such as Ecocert
International (
www.ecocert.com)
, recognized in the European Union, and the
National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (
www.ams.usda.
