Local context / Issue:

How to help agroecological farmers to develop a strong agroecological system and how to guide the conventional system farmers to do the transition to organic and agroecological system?

Showcase Outlook

The roots of the wine culture in Catalonia go deep. Here, vineyards have shaped the physical but also the social landscape of the country for more than 2.000 years. Its influence reaches till today’s cultural heritage and far beyond. In economics, for instance, the wine sector has a turnover of more than 3 bilion euros, representing 1,2% of the national GPD. In Catalonia, tradition and money weigh too much. And in the wine sector, both are heavy to carry.
This is the crossroad where COVIDES stands. It is the biggest wine co-op of the 72 that exist in the country. Founded in 1963, it has more than 700 members managing nearly 2.000 hectares in the heart of the Penedès Wine Appellation. However, the huge change experienced by the wine sector in recent years, the threat of climate change, the ageing of winegrowers and the lack of generational succession constrain its present and its future. From its productive capacity to, for instance, the adoption of new digital tools.
Because, as seen in the PATH2DEA workshops, while water scarcity, adaptation to drought, the decrease in wine consumption among young adults, and bureaucracy remain their main concerns, concepts like sustainability, digitalisation, and agroecology have started to gain more and more relevance in their priorities. This does not mean they were not sensitive to these issues — on the contrary, given their current needs and thanks to the initiative of the technicians from COVIDES and the Catalan Federation of Cooperatives (FCAC), farmers receive advice, training, and mentoring on the best tools suited to their needs. In fact, their short-term outlook and the pressure to make a living from farming, to survive in an increasingly uncertain context, make them aware of the importance of adopting new technologies and digital tools as the most appropriate way to manage and understand modern viticulture.
Several farmers who participated in these workshops expressed the importance of ensuring that their real, day-to-day needs are taken into account by researchers and other sector stakeholders, as they feel there is currently a disconnect between the academic and research worlds and the challenges they face daily. Nevertheless, during the workshops, COVIDES farmers and technicians highlighted the usefulness of digital tools and technologies in optimizing their resources, facilitating decision-making, managing information, and reducing the increasing uncertainty they face in their daily work.
Although they value projects like PATH2DEA, as well as other regional, national, and European initiatives in which they have participated or are still involved, some of them believe that research and academia often fail to integrate the business perspective — specifically, the perspective and needs of small and medium-sized winegrowers leading family-run businesses with very concrete challenges.
From their point of view, in the area of digitalisation, there is a lack of scientific and innovation projects that address the needs of small producers, who do not have sufficient resources to invest in advanced technologies or costly long-term management tools.
Living in a world of tangible things, mainly focused on producing tons of grapes, makes them very aware of their daily needs and sometimes creates difficulties in having a broader view of the value chain. Fortunately, the cooperative model enables producers to be active participants in the value chain and adapt to market demands. The Covides cooperative is made up of producers who, from the outset, have opted for vertical integration and are part of the wine value chain not only as grape producers but also in winemaking, marketing, commercialization and distribution. Moreover, they participate in the wine cluster (INNOVI), which, as well as FCAC, promotes local products to consumers and works on evaluating and adapting the entire chain to new consumption patterns. In this way, the cooperative model plays a key role in the regional, national, and European food system.
Projects like PATH2DEA help highlight both the work done and the work still to be done in the field of digitalisation in agroecological grape production and throughout the wine value chain developed by agri-food cooperatives like Covides. PATH2DEA contributes to narrowing the gap between the real needs of farmers and the implementation of technologies and digital tools in the agri-food sector in general, and in agroecological production in particular, thereby driving the sector forward and keeping it alive and rooted in the territory.