A mechanical clamp uproots vines on April 18, 2024 in Saint-Martin-de-Sescas, in Gironde (AFP/Archives/Philippe LOPEZ)
Methodically, the mechanical pliers uproot Renaud Jean’s vines. A destruction “complicated to live with” for this wine grower, but “the least bad calculation” thanks to a subsidized uprooting plan to save Bordeaux from overproduction, and soon extended to other regions.
Vines, stakes, wires, the rows disappear under the shaking of the machine, returning these three hectares of hillside to a fallow state. The wood piled up on the plot will be burned, the scrap metal recycled.
In Saint-Martin-de-Sescas (Gironde), in Entre-deux-Mers, the clay-loam soil is fertile, the southern exposure is excellent, the vines flourish.
A mechanical pliers uproots vines on April 18, 2024 in Saint-Martin-de-Sescas, in Gironde (AFP/Philippe LOPEZ)
But faced with the overproduction which is undermining Bordeaux, the leading AOC vineyard in France with 103,000 hectares, 1,200 wine growers have resigned themselves to benefiting from the grubbing-up system co-financed by the State and the inter-profession to the tune of 57 million euros.
Some 8,000 hectares are affected by May 31, and up to 1,500 additional hectares will be affected next winter. Other wine growers are pulling out vines without subsidies, hoping to retain their right to plant if the market picks up, entrepreneurs in the sector have noted.
Tearing off, “it’s not a good calculation, but it’s the least bad: I had to choose between the plague and cholera”, tells AFP Renaud Jean, who removes more than half of his 37 hectares of vines.
– “Very complicated to live with” –
“We must stop bringing in grapes every year because there is no way out. Uprooting is a deadly policy, it is something very complicated to live with, but it will do good for those who remain”, hopes this 55-year-old winegrower and merchant.
A winegrower passes through his vines on April 9, 2024 in Saint-Martin-de-Sescas, in Gironde (AFP/Philippe LOPEZ)
For several years, the decline in wine consumption and export difficulties, particularly to China, have thrown Bordeaux into crisis. At the start of 2023, a third of the 5,000 Bordeaux winegrowers declared themselves in difficulty.
“We have been working for years to rebalance supply and demand,” Allan Sichel, president of the Bordeaux Interprofessional Wine Council (CIVB), told AFP.
“The grubbing-up plan aims to reduce the volume produced,” he underlines, even if the primary objective is health: to fight against flavescence ore, a disease which threatens abandoned vines.
The excavators are working at full capacity. The grubbing activity, usual for replanting plots, has “doubled or tripled” since January, observes Benjamin Banton, departmental president of Territorial Entrepreneurs, an organization of agricultural service providers.
A mechanical pliers uproots vines on April 18, 2024 in Saint-Martin-de-Sescas, in Gironde (AFP/Philippe LOPEZ)
The aid system, approved in November by the European Commission, offers 6,000 euros per hectare uprooted, on condition of renaturing the plot (fallow or forest) for 20 years or adopting another type of cultivation.
This premium “does not cover half the value of the vineyard”, calculates Renaud Jean, who bought this plot at the price of 13,000 euros per hectare ten years ago. In addition, uprooting costs him 1,500 euros per hectare, not including plowing to remove the roots.
“In the end, I really won’t have much left,” he notes. “It’s not a golden parachute,” but “the opportunity to move on.”
– A “heartbreak” –
The winegrower will leave the plots close to homes fallow and reforest those backed by forests. Finally, around ten hectares will be devoted to its diversification: growing alfalfa for animal feed, with the project of a photovoltaic dryer shared with other farmers.
Other French regions could also start uprooting vines. Subject to a European green light, a government fund of 150 million euros over two years is announced to restructure the vineyard, via permanent uprooting, or temporary to replant grape varieties more resistant to global warming or better adapted to request.
A mechanical pliers uproots vines on April 18, 2024 in Saint-Martin-de-Sescas, in Gironde (AFP/Archives/Philippe LOPEZ)
“Up to 100,000 hectares” could be affected, according to the Minister of Agriculture Marc Fesneau, on nearly 800,000 hectares of vines in 2020.
In the meantime, even if the Bordeaux region had already experienced uprooting in the 2000s, the destruction of old vines is “heartbreaking”, notes Benjamin Banton. “It’s our job, they’re our babies,” he confides.
“We tore away the entire property of a 70-year-old person,” points out Serge Maury, an entrepreneur specializing in vineyard work.
“It’s a lifetime, several generations who lived there, and it’s gone.”
© 2024 AFP
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