Efficient Environmentalism: VineBalance Promotes Sustainable Agriculture
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Doing the right thing is easier when it is the right thing for your bottom line.
A New York Farm Viability Institute-funded collaboration between grape growers and experts at Cornell University is giving those growers a valuable tool to help lower production costs and protect the environment.
And as a bonus, the grapes they grow are more marketable than ever.
VineBalance, a five-year-old Agricultural Environmental Management program coordinated by Cornell's grape specialists, has helped nearly 100 juice and wine grape growers reduce nitrogen applications by 40 percent. That translates into nearly half a million dollars in reduced fertilizer costs and helps make the state's grape industry more sustainable.
In agriculture today, sustainability means profitability.
"Sustainability is getting to be a key thing, and I think that question comes up more and more when consumers ask (about how the grapes are grown)," said Jim Bedient, president of the New York Wine Grape Growers Association
Bedient's group joined the NYFVI in funding the project, which also received grants from the Northeast Center for Risk Management Education and the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program.
Cornell Senior Extension Associate Tim Martinson is the project leader on VineBalance. He agreed with Bedient that sustainable practices give growers a leg up when marketing their products.
"There are marketing imperatives here that have also been big drivers of people seeking sustainable practices," Martinson said. "The Concord (grape) producers in western New York, a lot of them grow for the Welch's cooperative, and their product is sold in large retail national outlets. One of those is Walmart. One estimate I saw was Walmart probably sells a third of all the Welch's grape juice sold in the country.
"A major emphasis for (Walmart) is sustainability. They're asking suppliers to prove they're using sustainable production practices. Walmart is a huge player."
A large section of the Arkansas-based retail giant's Web site is devoted to its efforts to promote sustainability and reads, in part, "Our opportunity is to become a better company by looking at every facet of our business -- from the products we offer to the energy we use -- through the lens of sustainability."
The eastern region manager for the National Grape Cooperative, which markets under the Welch's label, said that marketing advantages are just one benefit of adopting sustainable practices.
"At this point, we’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, and our members will see benefits in the long term," Jay Hardenburg said. "If there is a marketing advantage, so much the better.
“Some of the longer term benefits include simply keeping the land more productive for the long term so (growers) will have the opportunity to be competitive in future years and maybe transfer the farm to a future generation.”
Scott Osborn, who grows grapes for wine at Fox Run Vineyards in Penn Yan, in New York's Finger Lakes region, said "sustainability" is more than a buzz word; it is a way of communicating his operation's commitment to the environment.
"It gave us a term that we could use, which is very important in terms of talking to the customer," Osborn said. "What I said before was that I live on the property, and I have to be careful because I don't want to kill myself. And if I chose to leave it to my children, I want to leave it in as good a condition as possible.
"Now I have a term that's not as longwinded as that."
'It's a business'
VineBalance is rooted in efforts to make vineyards more efficient that date back at least to the 1980s, Martinson said.
The movement received a major impetus in the 1990s when Soil and Water Conservation specialists in Yates County started looking at ways to protect Keuka Lake from possible runoff from nearby farms.
"People had done a lot of work on (contamination from) feedlots and things like that, but they didn't have anything that applied to grapes," Cornell's Martinson said. "I put together a series of four or five worksheets with Soil and Water Conservation people. A colleague from Long Island named Alice Wise got another grant from EPA (the US Environmental Protection Agency), and we put (the worksheets) together to make a workbook.
"The project really gathered steam when we received funding from the New York Farm Viability Institute."
The farmer-led nonprofit New York Farm Viability Institute awarded Vine Balance grants for grower outreach from 2006-2009.
The eventual fruit of Martinson's labor was a comprehensive tool for growers titled "The New York Guide to Sustainable Viticulture Practices Grower Self-assessment Workbook."
The 126-page workbook, which is available for purchase at www.nyaes.cornell.edu, helps growers examine all phases of their operations by asking them 167 questions.
"The questions cover every aspect of the farm -- from fertilization to pest management to pesticide management and storage," Martinson said. "Each question has four possible answers rated from the most sustainable to the least sustainable. ... Growers select the option that most closely relates to what they do and get a score from that."
After a grower examines what he or she already does, the workbook helps in developing an action plan to help him or her do it better. Growers can follow up with Cooperative Extension educators and Soil & Water conservationists.
"The workbook gives you a tool for ongoing self-evaluation," said Paul Bencal, who grows juice grapes in Ransomville, in western New York. "You can constantly look back to the workbook and see if you're progressing on the farm and, along with that, are you becoming more efficient? And if you're not becoming more efficient, why aren't you?
"Cutting costs is one thing, but cutting costs based on a sound decision is the key. This is going to help me as I look at my costs and everything as far as farm efficiency is concerned."
VineBalance already is paying dividends for growers statewide. So far, Cornell has worked with 111 grape growers on the project, and 85 of them -- representing 32,000 acres of production -- have completed environmental management plans.
In addition to helping preserve the environment, they have protected their bottom lines by reducing nitrogen fertilizer applications to the tune of a $455,000.
Other sustainable practices promoted by VineBalance may not lead directly to lowered production costs, but they help increase yield down the road.
"A lot of it is just focusing your business and making sure everything is operating properly," Osborn said. "Mulching, for instance, isn't going to save you money. It may cost you money, but mulching is going to give you a better product.
"As much as we like to think of the wine business as being so romantic, it's a business. You have to look at it that way, and we have to be sustainable."
Anything farmers can do to join the sustainability movement is going to help in the long run, Bencal said.
"The two things I look at are, No. 1 cost effectiveness but also the environmental impact," he said. "Our carbon footprint will be more (in the spotlight) as we go on."
National Grape’s Hardenburg said that environmental stewardship has been a long-standing concern for his cooperative’s growers.
“Our members have been implementing a lot of the practices even before the words ‘sustainable viticulture’ entered the lexicon,” Hardenburg said.
'The next step'
Growers that have embraced VineBalance are now exploring how their environmentally-friendly growing practices might be used to improve neighbor relations and attract customers.
The New York Wine and Grape Foundation and National Grape recently started an effort to create a certification and labeling process so that grape growers can identify their environmental practices on bottles of wine and juice.
Grower Peter Martini of Anthony Road Winery in Penn Yan is helping implement a two-year project, with grant funding from NYFVI, including hiring a coordinator and create a marketing campaign for sustainable wine and juice grapes in the state.
"One of the first things we want to do is get a logo licensed," Martini said. "Hopefully growers will be able to put that label on their product to differentiate themselves.
"We need to differentiate our product both for growers and wineries in a crowded marketplace. Sustainability is a buzz word, but it works, and hopefully will allow our product to be sold even in a difficult economic environment
. (We want to) make sure this program has some teeth and means something," Martini said.
At least 50 growers will be certified as sustainable by December 2011, Martini said.
But even without the label, the principles codified in "The New York Guide to Sustainable Viticulture Practices Grower Self-assessment Workbook" are important to the state's grape growers.
"I don't know much of anything I do now that I did the same way 30 years ago," Bencal said. "Profitability is up in terms of production per acre. But we have to keep that up, and if the price isn't going up, we have to do something to be more profitable.
"I found that workbook extremely eye-opening."
For more about the VineBalance program, click on www.vinebalance.com.
For more about the New York Farm Viability Institute, click on www.nyfvi.org
