Impacts of successive climatic events on a wine cooperative system

The analysis of impacts of climatic events on socioeconomic systems is based on the collection of post-event data. However, this method rarely describes the processes and the decisions that generated the impacts. Yet, counting on thorough descriptions of those processes and decisions, although very time-consuming, takes on its full meaning when several climatic phenomena follow one another on complex economic systems.

In the Mediterranean context, and moreover in the context of climate change, it is not uncommon for several climatic hazards to follow one another. For agricultural activities, whose harvests and thus added value are produced over several months, this implies that a production campaign can be affected by different events (e.g. frost, hail, drought, flooding, etc.), causing the strategy of the various actors involved to be readjusted.

We propose to address the problem of the analysis of the succession of two climatic events for the estimation of the impacts on a complex economic system through the case study of a wine cooperative located in the department of Aude in the South-West of France which was affected during the 2021 production campaign by a frost in March and a flood in September at the time of the harvest.

We are interested in three questions: (i) are there impacts resulting specifically from the succession of both climatic events?; (ii) are there impacts resulting from the organisational links between the winegrowers (individual level) and the wine-making cooperative (collective level)?; (iii) which indicators are relevant to highlight them?

In our case study, the cooperative winery brings together 128 winegrowers representing 1100 ha and has three vinification sites. 65 winegrowers out of the 128 were impacted by at least one of the events. To analyse the impacts of both events on the cooperative, we carried out a questionnaire-type survey among the affected winegrowers. We obtained 57 responses to the preliminary questionnaire and 33 exhaustive interviews. Three interviews were also conducted with the managers in charge of the winery during this campaign. After an initial analysis of the results, we presented and discussed these results with the representatives and some of the winegrowers surveyed.

The consolidation of the analyses is still in progress. However, this work already shows that there are cross-effects resulting from the succession of both events. For instance, our surveys enable us to discern the loss of quality or yield due to biophysical processes (e.g. frost, berries' rotting or bursting) from loss of quality due to organizational impacts at the winegrower level (e.g. inaccessibility of the plots at the time of harvesting due to flooding that aggravates the loss of quality). We also show that the succession of events generated specific impacts linked to collective readjustment decisions taken at the winery level. We will discuss the scope of this analysis and the interest of this approach to consider possible adaptations to be implemented.