What are the prospects for organic vineyards ? A bio-economic evaluation using mathematical programming
Résumé
Organic agriculture offers an attractive framework for sustainable farming in terms of the environment, socio-economic and institutional aspects (Capitaine et al., 2009). In spite of the advantages, farmers are more often than not reluctant to convert fully to organic vineyard for they consider that, over and above any technical constraint, farm subsidies do not sufficiently compensate for the uncertain yields and market prices for their products. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate, at short-term and long-term, using a bio-economic approach, the farmer strategies in terms of production system (conventional or organic farming) given uncertainties related to prices, yields and subsidies granted to organic agriculture.