Assessing the Carbon Footprint of Viticultural Production in Central European Conditions

Abstract

A number of factors will increasingly play a role in the sustainability of wine production in the coming period. The current situation suggests that the analysis of energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will play a particularly important role. The so-called carbon footprint, expressed in CO2 equivalents, is used to express the sum of GHG emissions. This study presents an analysis of vine cultivation in a particular Central European region, with the main focus on quantifying the inputs, yield, fuel consumption, and GHG emissions. The emphasis was placed on conventional, integrated, and ecological production systems of growing, evaluated with the help of the developed AGROTEKIS version 5 software. A total of 30 wine-grower entities in the Morava wine-growing region, the subregion Velké Pavlovice, in the Czech Republic weather climate, were included in the input data survey. By analyzing the aggregated values, the real savings in energy and curbing of CO2 emissions of vineyards could be observed, relating to individual work procedures with lower energy demand used in the vineyard treatment as well as the amounts and doses of agrochemicals used. The average values of the total impacts did not show any statistically significant differences between the conventional (971 ± 78 kg CO2eq·ha−1·year−1) and integrated production systems (930 ± 62 kg CO2eq·ha−1·year−1), whereas the values for the ecological production system were significantly higher (1479 ± 40 kg CO2eq·ha−1·year−1). The results show that growing vines under ecological production conditions generates a higher proportion of the carbon footprint than under conventional production conditions. Overall, the best results can be achieved in an integrated production system.