Context

Economic impact
Great reduction of the wine area in the Region of Murcia from 31,847 hectares in 2011 to 23,313 hectares in 2017 (-27% in 6 years), despite its great economic, environmental and social importance in the Region of Murcia.
This innovation project is in the direction of valuing the wines and vineyards of the Region of Murcia, its Monastrell variety, which distinguishes them and elevates them from the rest, traditional cultivation practices that generate high quality wines, and that if we don't achieve our goal we will lose forever.
- Social impact
The agricultural employment in the vineyard in the Region of Murcia is almost 1400 UTA / year, to which we must add indirect jobs generated by the acquisition of inputs for the crop. The processing and marketing sector generates more than 3,000 direct and indirect jobs, very centralized in the producing regions: highlands (Jumilla and Yecla) and Bullas. It is an essential sector for employment in these areas that are vulnerable to depopulation, classified as disadvantaged areas, and lacking elements for the rural population.
- Environmental impact.
Loss of cultivated land dedicated to the vineyard period 2010-2016 is 7,884 hectares, mainly of dry land, generates: desertification, increased fire danger, loss of biodiversity, pests (lobster, rabbits, etc.) and loss of soil due to erosion since proper maintenance of the soil is not carried out.
Saving water cultivation of 3.34 hm3, by applying RDC systems that in economic value represents € 1 million / year. Saving mineral fertilizers 4,192,600 kg / year, by applying sustainable cultivation techniques. Water and energy savings in the cellar, by application of life cycle and carbon footprint analytics

Additional comments

It is necessary to establish an objective protocol for the evaluation of grape quality in order to establish a fair price in favor of the quality of the wines obtained with them. The purpose is to establish sustainable production criteria and avoid fostering a biased productivist vision that leads to increasing production with lower quality and consuming more natural resources (water) and potentially polluting production factors (mineral fertilizers, phytosanitary).
A global vision of the productive systems needs to have methodologies of productive, social, economic and environmental evaluation for the election of proposals of good practices of sustainable cultivation.
Opportunities to seize
We attend a time when from both areas (Cooperative and private winemakers) objective criteria for grape differentiation by quality are demanded, as a way to reorder the sector in the future and obtain higher levels of quality, via product differentiation, leading to a greater economic recovery of the final product.

Additional information

Expected results:
1. Differentiation of the productive character.
2. The project will allow to propose a global and integral vision of a sustainable productive system applicable from the social, environmental and economic point of view. All this focused on the differentiation of quality as an improvement of competitiveness.
3. Identification of certain deficit irrigation strategies and other cultivation practices previously scientifically validated and that can be transferred to different cultivation areas;
4. Application of life cycle analysis as an environmental evaluation methodology of the different production systems and quantification of impacts on existing systems and on alternatives proposed under the prism of Good Practices and Sustainability in cultivation.
5. Establishment of an objective protocol that allows the evaluation of the quality of the grapes at the time of entry to the winery in order to establish a fair price in favor of the different qualities of wines obtained, thus allowing a differentiation from the moment of the beginning of the elaboration of the same.