The importance of rural extension and advisory services to achieve a sustainable viticulture in a climate change scenario

Abstract

A healthy and dynamic agricultural sector is an important foundation of rural development, generating strong bonds to other economic sectors. The success of sustainable rural development depends on developing and implementing comprehensive strategies for dealing with climate change, drought, territorial desertification and natural disasters. Improving access to information, education, extension services and learning resources, will lead to a strong and more resilient rural community. Climate change and European Green Deal are some of the main challenges for the viticulture sector, yet these could be considered an opportunity to implemente new practices to achieve a more sustainable activity. The rural extension and advisory services play a huge role in supporting farmers to achieve all the demands. Through a face-to-face presence in the field, but also with the help of digitalization, precision farming, AI and data analyses, it’s possible to create methodologies enabling farmers to deal with the new demands. In Portugal, and in the Peninsula de Setubal’s region, the viticulture sector is characterized by farmers with more than 60 years old, small to medium areas and a low educational degree. This situation leads to more difficulties in the implementation of an effective consultancy. So, to have a higher impact, the solution was the creation of living-labs/ demo-farms. It’s considered crucial to enable farmers to see “in loco” the implementation of new technologies and practices. Topics like soil management through the implementation of cover crops but also look at the margins and ecological corridors, water management by understanding differences between varieties adapting it to farmers’ goals, biodiversity study by metagenomic and e-dna analysis and agronomic practices to mitigate sunburn are some of the activities that AVIPE has been working on.