Transnational Comparison of Sustainability Assessment Programs for Viticulture and a Case-Study on Programs’ Engagement Processes

Abstract

This article documents and compares the most prominent sustainability assessment programs for individual organisations in viticulture worldwide. Certification and engagement processes for membership uptake; benefits; motives; inhibiting factors; and desirable reporting system features of viticultural sustainability programs, are all considered. Case-study results are derived from nine sustainability programs; 14 focus groups with 83 CEOs, Chief Viticulturists or Winemakers from wine grape production organizations from five countries (Australia, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States); 12 semi-structured interviews with managers either currently or formerly in charge of the sustainability programs; researcher observations; and analysis of documents. Programs were categorized by their distinct program assessment methods: process-based, best practice-based, indicator-based and criterion-based. We found that programs have been created to increase growers' sustainability, mainly through the direct and indirect education they receive and promote, and the economic benefit to their business caused by overall improvement of their operations. The main finding from this study is that the success of each of these programs is largely due to the people driving the programs OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2014, 6 2032 (program managers, innovative growers and/or early adopters) and the way these people communicate and engage with their stakeholders and peers.

Geodata collection and visualisation in orchards: interfacing science-grower data using a disease example (European canker in apple, Neonectria ditissima)

“…Grower feedback was crucial to adapting methods that would be embraced by the growers themselves (Padgitt et al 2001, Santiago-Brown 2014. At the orchard-wide spatial scale needed, growers need to be empowered to collect, visualise and understand the implications of these data.…”

What Does Sustainability Mean? Knowledge Gleaned From Applying Mixed Methods Research to Wine Grape Growing

“…Stage 1 concentrates on the development of a definition of sustainability and uses data from the first section of focus group sessions. To place this in the context of the overall study, Stage 2 produces a list of indicators to assess sustainability using data from the second section of focus group sessions (Santiago-Brown, Metcalfe, Jerram, & Collins, 2014a), and Stage 3 will describe the engagement process, the enabling and inhibiting factors for growers and other participants to become part of relevant viticulture sustainability assessment programs worldwide (Santiago-Brown, Metcalfe, Jerram, & Collins, 2014b).…”

Sostenibilidad de la producción vitivinícola del Valle de Guadalupe

“…Gilinsky et al (2015), identifican las regulaciones como factor importante para la adopción de prácticas sostenibles, y presentan evidencia de casos de estudio, en donde la producción sustentable de vino es un negocio exitoso. Otros estudios han demostrados que existen diferentes factores que motivan la adopción de prácticas sostenibles, siendo los principales de carácter interno (Santiago-Brown et al, 2014;Santini et al, 2013;Gabzdylova et al, 2009). Señalan que la comunicación entre productores, sobre todo los innovadores que comunican los beneficios obtenidos, se consideran como un factor a la hora de innovar con nuevas prácticas sostenibles.…”

“…Por otro lado, al igual que en el análisis descriptivo, se deduce que la falta de conocimiento es un factor que amenaza a la industria de forma trasversal en las tres dimensiones de la sostenibilidad. Aunado a esto, con base a lo encontrado por (Santiago-Brown et al, 2014;Santini et al, 2013;Gabzdylova et al, 2009), la falta de difusión de los beneficios de la practicas adoptadas pueden estar afectando la adopción de innovaciones de algunos vitivinicultores.…”

“…Según la literatura, son múltiples los factores que inciden en la adopción de prácticas sostenibles, dependiendo del entorno y del nivel de desarrollo de cada país o región (Mariani y Vastola, 2015). Para algunos los factores internos como la actitud empresarial, la comunicación y la preocupación por el medio ambiente, entre otros, cumplen un rol mayor que los factores externos (Santiago-Brown et al, 2014;Santini et al, 2013;Gabzdylova et al, 2009). Sin embargo, algunos estudios consideran a las regulaciones (factor externo), en conjunto con el trabajo de las instituciones, como factores determinantes en la adopción de prácticas sostenibles (Mariani y Vastola, 2015;Santini et al, 2013).…”