Evaluation of Conservation Biological Control Innovation in Winegrowing

Conservation biological control (CBC) aims to improve conditions for natural enemies in agricultural landscapes and has the goal of reducing pest species below threshold level to thus avoid the need for synthetic chemicals. The CBC approach has been introduced in several counties, including New Zealand. Agricultural R&D is widely studied, however agricultural innovations and their adoption is less studied. A CBC practice introduced in Waipara vineyards is described in this paper and an evaluation of the uptake and economic sustainability of this innovation is provided. Results indicate that there are ongoing costs involved with maintaining the innovation and that adoption of the innovation is highly variable across winegrowing properties.