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Spray Days
Over 900 people attended Spray Days workshops throughout the country
in 2019. This popular education event was also held in an online forum in May 2020, through a webinar and ‘question and answer’ session on preventing grapevine trunk disease. This session was a great reminder
of the ability of the team to deliver technical information in a simple
and applicable manner in a virtual format. Spray Days will once again be delivered to the regions during the second half of 2020.
Importance of independent certification
Independent certification is a key element of SWNZ’s international reputation, helping to protect the industry from potential accusations
of greenwashing. 792 audits were undertaken in the 2019 season, split between 642 full site audits and 150 desk-top audits. Moving forward the impact of Covid-19 will lead to major changes in the way audits will be conducted, with remote audits, virtual connections, and a focus on education coming to the fore.
Growing emphasis on the impact of climate change Over the past year the Board has taken several steps to highlight the importance of the risk posed by climate change to the New Zealand wine industry, including setting a challenging goal for the industry to become carbon neutral by 2050.
To commence our journey towards this goal we have engaged Toitu Envirocare to assess the industry’s current carbon production footprint, and to develop guidance around the key sources of emissions in the winery and on the vineyard. The results of this research will provide a benchmark on current industry performance and should be available by the end of the 2020 calendar year.
This work will complement the inclusion of specific climate change questions in the SWNZ scorecards and further work to promote best practice through the Sustainability Guardians programme. In addition, NZW has joined the Toitu Envirocare Carbon Reduced Certification Programme. This will help us to learn how we can manage the organisation’s impact
on climate change and pass these learnings on to members.
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