The new model of rural development, based on the recognition of the economic, social and environmental function of the European agriculture, mainly headed to make strategies of intervention concerning about, from one side, the competitive ability of the agricultural and agro-industrial enterprises, and, from the other, the increasing of the economic, human, environmental and historical-cultural resources. In such context the multi-functional role of agriculture becomes central and the agricultural operators have to adapt themselves to items (the territories, the rural societies, the consumers, etc.) and to different prescriptions related to demands linked up with the productivity and/or the territory (defence of the ground, of the landscape, of the cultural traditions, of the rural development, of the environment, of the quality). The present research documents the results of a territorial social-economic investigation, developed with the aim of examining the productive and environmental potentialities of the terraced winegrowing present in the territory of the "Costa Viola" in the province of Reggio Calabria (Calabria, Italy). The study starts from an analysis of the territory and individualizes a sample of wine-growing farms in order to examine, through specific social economic investigations (developed through a questionnaire), the actual conditions of the grape cultivated terraces, the status of the "representative farmer" of the vineyards and the achieved economic results. The collected data concerned some social characteristics (age, degree of education, availability and/or propensity to innovation, to introduce new technologies, etc.).
