Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/66152
GRAPE GRO WING ing performance metrics—in part because the concept is quite new for agriculture. The manufacturing industry has been us- ing performance metrics for quite a while and has completed many case studies of how tracking things like fuel consumption in the trucking of products or energy consumption with a manufacturing process has led to re- designing processes and implementing prac- tices that resulted in significant savings. Other potential benefits of using perfor- mance metrics are to provide buyers with data that meets the ever-increasing need for transparency of information about how the crop is produced. We have already heard a great deal about the carbon foot- print of a vineyard or winery; it will not be long before people want to know about the water footprint and energy footprint, too. If data from performance metrics can be aggregated for a region or state, it can convey the collective dedication to achiev- ing measurable sustainable outcomes to regulators, the media and consumers. The California Sustainable Winegrow- ing Alliance (CSWA) was formed in 2002 to encourage sustainable practices in the vineyard and winery. Through its Sustain- able Winegrowing Program (SWP), CSWA has had amazing participation from the It is relatively easy to develop metrics and measure outcomes for water use. Metrics to measure practices in areas such as human resources and ecosystem management, however, are much more challenging. California wine community. To date, a total of 1,680 distinct winery and vineyard or- ganizations representing more than 65% of California's wine case production and near- ly 70% of the winegrape acreage have used CSWA's Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices self-assessment workbook to eval- uate the sustainability of their operations.1 CSWA's program has, until now, been focused on implementing practices. How- ever, it is embracing the next step in sus- tainable winegrowing, which is incorpo- rating some performance metrics into its grower outreach and education program. SpecTrellising_July10.qxp 5/13/10 9:25 AM Page 1 Metrics for California With financial support from the Natural Resource Conservation Service's Con- servation Innovation Grant program, CSWA has initiated a project to adapt an initial set of environmental performance metrics for the California wine industry to support individual and industry-wide performance tracking, goal setting and continuous improvement. The metrics are being chosen from those developed by the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops (SISC), a multi-stakeholder proj- ect with the goal of developing a com- mon set of performance metrics for use Wines & Vines sePTeMBeR 2011 63