Environmental Impacts and Societal Costs: Evidence from Italian Grapevines

The grapevine production is an important sector in Italy, where it represents around 10 % of the total production value of the Italian agricultural sector in 2021, exerting a pressure on the environment. In this context, this research aims to assess different grapevines production systems in terms of environmental im-pacts societal costs and economic performances, determining the most effective scenario of grapevines production. Methods: In terms of environmental impacts assessment, we applied a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) approach in four different production systems according to the combination of wine typology and production method: Common-Organic (CO), Common-Conventional (CC), Quality-Organic (QO), Quality-Conventional (QC). In this line, we retrieved the data from the Italian Farm Accountancy Data network (FADN). Regarding the societal costs estimation per hectare for each production system, we used the Shadow Price (SP) Technique, converting the environmental impacts into monetary units. Results: The results reveal that CO and QO induce relatively low societal costs towards the four most relevant indicator categories: agricultural land occupation, global change, terrestrial acidification, and freshwater eutrophication. Further, the conventional farmers (CC and QC), presents a higher cost compared to the or-ganic vineyards farming (CO and QO), mainly due to higher yields per hectare. Interpretation: Our findings reveal that there are good opportunities to reduce ex-ternal environmental costs by adopting the organic cultivation system. The sensi-tive analysis and consequent comparison on societal costs, gross production and sum of marginal values starting from baseline, also revealed the most suitable goals to be reached on a national scale integrating public and private scopes. Conclusion: Assessing economic and societal performances is crucial for inform-ing policy decisions and fostering sustainable practices in vineyard farming. Sharing results with stakeholders can encourage farmers to achieve sustainability and cleaner production. Transitioning from conventional to organic grapevine, such as from low quality to higher quality production can enhance environmental sustainability Without compromising the economic goals of the businesses. Overall, viticulture farmers are urged to prioritize sustainable practices, consider-ing both environmental impacts and societal costs.