Organic & Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference 2019 Re-cap

Organic Conference

Last month’s Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference sold out two weeks early, and 350 audience members soaked up three days of inspiring stories, alarming warnings, exciting science and heartening opportunities. “I truly believe the tide has turned,” said Clive Dougall in introducing the event.

Organic Growth

The “tide is turning” for organics and biodynamics

SOPHIE PREECE

Gala Dinner

Jessica Jones

THE CONTENT of the fourth Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference was diverse and deep, ranging from soil microbiology and carbon sequestration to burgeoning food allergies and growing markets.

Clive Dougall, owner of Organic Wine Solutions and part of the Organic Winegrowers New Zealand (OWNZ) organising committee, said earlier conferences had focussed on speaking candidly about how to be organic, with practitioners sharing knowledge and experiences. “Now we have three days of speakers talking about the intricacies of the health of our soil, our environment and people, our pathways to the market and messaging and opportunities. That’s a really great indication of how far we have come.”

While organic and biodynamic wine by volume makes up about 6% of the total wine made in New Zealand, “it seems to make up 100% of the marketing material New Zealand Winegrowers pump out”, he told the audience when opening the conference. “That says a lot. That’s the image we want for New Zealand; that’s what we deserve; that’s what Kiwis want too. I truly believe the tide is turning.”

There was talk of vineyard pests, beneficial insects and dung beetles (see pg 15) at the sold out conference, along with long-term research comparing conventional, organic and biodynamic practices, and guidance from market experts on consumer demand, supplier transparency and short attention spans.

There were also practical and inspirational talks from vineyard and winery practitioners, outlining their route to organic success. They ranged from small New Zealand growers, knee deep in organics, to representatives from Emiliana Organic Vineyards, the largest biodynamic and organic winegrowers in the world, with 20 years of experience working at scale.

Clive described the Chilean company as a “utopia” when introducing the sustainability manager Sebastian Tramon, who talked to the audience about organics being “an opportunity, not a slogan”. Emiliana has 1,300 hectares of vineyard over six valleys in Chile, 283 employees, and exports to 60 countries. At one stage organics was niche, said Emiliana chief executive Cristian Rodriguez, but “it’s not niche any more”.

OWNZ marketing and events manager Stephanie McIntyre says demand for the conference exceeded expectation, with a Taste and Tunes evening event at 5Tapped sold out two months in advance, followed soon after by the International Wine Bunker tasting that wrapped up the event. The conference itself, which had increased capacity from 300 in 2017 to 350 this year, sold out two weeks before the speakers landed in Marlborough.

She says the audience was a good mix of conventional and organic, so it wasn’t simply a case of preaching to the (literally) converted. “For us ultimately, the goal is to encourage more people to convert. Even if it’s not to become certified, it’s about changing one process,” Stephanie says. After the 2017 event, OWNZ surveyed attendees and asked conventional growers if they would change at least one thing after attending the sessions, “and 82% of them said ‘yes’.

Dung and Dusted

SOPHIE PREECE

BURYING POO isn’t a job for everyone, but there are workers who literally live for it.

Dr Shaun Forgie told the Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference how a team of dung beetles could find manure on a vineyard and bury it deep in the soil, making the nutrients more available to plants while improving soil health.

The co-founder and director of production at Dung Beetle Innovations has introduced 11 different kinds of dung beetles into New Zealand, helping deal with issues of animal manure on farms through rapid burial and bioturbation. Unlike the roller dung beetles seen bowling elephant effluent in nature documentaries, the farm workers are tunnellers, and excavate under livestock manure, for example, creating galleries and back filling them with balls. Each ball has an egg inside, and with quick generation turnaround, dung beetle populations grow exponentially, Shaun told the audience.

The Bubas bison is one of the 7,000 different types of dung beetle, “which owe their existence to playing around in excrement of all shapes and sizes”, Shaun told the audience. The medium sized tunnelling beetle from Europe is a specialist in wintertime when the other beetles available in New Zealand are hibernating, which means it could be used in vineyards, which often use sheep and sometimes use cattle to graze blocks between harvest and bud burst. The beetle emerges around March and “prolifically” buries anything from cow manure to sheep manure, he said.

Dung beetles do occur naturally in New Zealand, but the 15 different species found here are small, flightless ball rollers, and confined to native forests and enclosed canopy environments, making them of little use in farm environments.

Dog Point Vineyards viticulturist Nigel Sowman is keen to try out a team of dung beetles to utilise the “gold” of organic matter left by cattle and sheep in the company’s vineyards and paddocks. They run a mob of steers through their Section 94 block every year and have 3,500 sheep amid the vines this winter, resulting in piles of poo both there and in the holding paddocks. Having dung beetles bury it down “will only be better for the soil,” he says. “Dung beetles could be amazing.”

Pesticides and Cancer

What is and isn’t known

MORE THAN half of all pesticides used in New Zealand have been classified as suspected carcinogens by at least one regulator, says a scientist focussed on occupational causes of cancer. Epidemiologist Dr Andrea ‘t Mannetje, an associate professor at Massey University’s Centre for Public Health Research, spoke at the Organic and Biodynamic Winegrowing Conference last month, on what is, and isn’t, known about the links between pesticides and cancer.

More than 1,000 chemical products are licenced for use in New Zealand, dominated by herbicides and fungicides. New Zealand pesticides do not include any known human carcinogens, and 4 % are classified by the New Zealand Environmental Protection Agency (NZ EPA) as a suspected human carcinogen.

However, the classification from other agencies paints “quite a different picture”, with 24% of New Zealand’s pesticides classified as suspected carcinogens bythe US EPA, and 8% by the EU regulator. Taken together, 30% of the pesticides used in New Zealand are classified as a suspected human carcinogen. If the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer are included, that number jumps to 51%, she said.

Cancer studies in New Zealand since the 1980s have shown an increased risk of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma for people working in agriculture, and pesticides are the most “plausible hypothesis” to explain that relationship, she said.

Pesticides affect “basically everyone” to differing degrees, Andrea told the audience, using a pyramid to show approved handlers at the top, followed by other users, then farm workers that spend time in the field after spraying. Next down were family members who can be exposed via the clothes and shoes of a pesticide user, with “lots of studies that show that pesticides can be found in the dust in houses”, she said. The general population sat at the bottom of the pyramid, exposed via food, spray drift or their own use of pesticides. Tests showed that people working directly with pesticides had much higher levels in their urine, but the general public was also exposed, she said. “The overall conclusion for me is that although no known human carcinogens are used as pesticides, which is of course good news, New Zealand’s high use of pesticides that are suspected carcinogens requires a greater awareness of the presence of potential carcinogens in the agricultural sector, and we really need to develop intervention strategies to reduce cancer risk.”