There is no such thing as sustainable farming. I write this as the arts educated husband of the PhD who wrote the Sustainable Australia Winegrowing system.
Moreover, the shiniest, happiest and newest term in viticulture, “regenerative farming,” is already being misused, abused and diminished by growers, winemakers and wine writers across the world. Terms like “practicing organic” (certified or not), “biodynamic practices” (certified or not) and “regenerative” (no one in Australian viticulture is certified as such) are now being recycled and conflated with “sustainable” (certified or not) to a greater extent than ever before both here and abroad. This careless use of language is either deliberate in order to mislead and / or dissemble or it is used unwittingly by those who genuinely don’t know the material difference(s) about any or all of the above terms regardless of their professional qualifications.
Sustainability is the strategic framework used to ensure the continued existence of civilisation understanding that human expectations and population are both increasing over time while recognising that much of our resource base is increasingly finite. Said another way, if resources were not limited, the discussion of sustainability would be moot. While most think sustainability is a destination or state of being we can get to, it isn’t. It is a dynamic concept that requires innovation to be realised. To quote viticultural sustainability expert, winemaker (and my wife), Dr. Irina Santiago-Brown, being sustainable “is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that continually recedes from us the closer we get to it.” Sustainability is the goal, not the means. You can be more or less sustainable, but never sustainable.
While the goal of making sure that civilisation is able to continue to exist applies to all of human endeavour, how we farm (which is in turn categorised by farming approaches or certified farming systems) is one of the biggest variables wine grape growers can manage to pursue the goal of sustainability.
Despite abundant but decreasing resources, the world will be unable to feed itself into the future absent meaningful changes to how we farm. Growing wine and other alcohol inputs is different to other agricultural pursuits in that does not provide food, clothing or shelter for man and is not benign in its externalities to the planet’s health or man’s. (There is no such thing as a little heresy.) Given this status in an increasingly resource constrained environment and including the effects of ongoing climate change, more extreme weather events and declining availability of water; grape growers and grape growing will be put on a riskier and more precarious perch than other agricultural pursuits over time.
Assuming a semi-rational world, to the extent that growing wine grapes and making wine (or other alcohol) diverts resources – land, labour, water, on farm inputs and capital – away from these other unfulfilled needs of a growing population is the extent to which wine grape growers will need to utilise their resources at a beneficial level of practice matching or exceeding that of the best of the alternative users of these resources. To the extent that wine grape growing does not do so will likely be the extent to which wine grape growers can expect to lose their social, ecological and economic licenses to operate in the future, in that order.
Environmental and sustainability schemes developed by industry are initially or eventually diluted to the point of meaninglessness regardless of sector in order to increase relevance or participation and because they are developed by industry players who simply don’t want change. This isn’t a criticism of any particular scheme but rather all industry developed schemes in all sectors.
With this in mind, industry governance – regardless of country – should be based on the highest standards developed by truly independent experts embracing all three dimensions of sustainability without industry interference or pressure. These descriptive and dynamic benchmarks need to be set in reference to competitive users of the same resources in a broadly regional context and be continually revised over time in light of evolving practices and resource limitations...
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