Enhancing ecosystem services in australasian vineyards for sustainability and profit

Abstract

Worldwide, vineyards occupy over eight million ha with most being intensively managed as monocultures. In Australasia, conventionally managed vineyards typically consist of row upon row of Vitis vinifera L. with a bare earth or mown rye grass (Lolium perenne L.) floor (Tompkins 2008). Though such management may maximize profit in the short term, there is an increasing awareness that this may not be so in the future as social, environmental and economic pressures for sustainable wine production develop (Boller 1992; Nicholls et al. 2001; Forbes et al. 2009). Commentators on the conventional agricultural model have predicted that intensive agricultural management is not sustainable in the long-term, not only because it relies on finite fossil fuel resources (Hubbert 1981), but also because some of its practices degrade the natural capital and its functions (Tilman et al. 2002; MEA 2005; Kassam et al. 2009).