Biodiversity and Wine, a Nice Wedding: Saumur–Champigny in the Varinelles Domaine (Loire Valley, France)

Jean-Pierre Noblet, Yvon Pesqueux and Eric Simon

South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases, 2013, vol. 2, issue 1, 77-84

Abstract: Since 2004, the 130 winegrowers of the Saumur–Champigny appellation d’origine controlee have been committed to biodiversity. In a sector sometimes resistant to change, and indeed for the first time in France, winegrowers have chosen more ecological weed control methods and concentrated on creating and maintaining plant hedges within zones écologiques reservoirs (ecological conservation areas)(ZER) ( Jarno, 2011 ). The growers’ Syndicate, backed by a powerful regional cooperative, rallied all its members and urged them to commit to the process. Collective awareness has driven the majority of winegrowers to ‘go organic’ and with the ultimate benefit of being awarded an organic label. But going organic is costly in terms of time, labour and finances and inevitably increases production costs. However, despite the less favourable cost equation, their business model is nonetheless effective, and most producers manage to sell their entire product. The aim of this case study is to show how some wine producers, in the quest for quality, have ‘looked outside the box’ for new information (for example: sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, biodynamics), assimilated that information and applied it to their own operation and production for improved commercial results.

Keywords: Absorptive capacity; innovation; biodiversity; collective strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277977913480657 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sajbmc:v:2:y:2013:i:1:p:77-84

DOI: 10.1177/2277977913480657

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in South Asian Journal of Business and Management Cases
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().