Italy-Slovenia, vineyard alliance against the climate crisis

Increasingly hot summers and crops at the mercy of extreme events challenge growers in cross-border areas. In the face of the certainty of climate uncertainty, forces and data are being joined with the European AI-GRAPE project, created to introduce digitalisation into viticulture

“You can fool everyone, except nature.” Her father-in-law, a winemaker, has always told her this, and Anita Mavrič can’t disagree with him, especially since she too has dedicated herself full time to the health of the hills where her family’s grapes grow, near Dobrovo v Brdih, a small village in Slovenia just a stone’s throw from the border with Italy.

Half “over there”, half “over here”, in total they have eight hectares to observe carefully: “to see how the plants react to the climate and our actions”, explains Mavrič, “you can’t always do the same things, automatically: each time you have to understand how to ensure a good harvest”.

Listening to the land to continue production

Without the constraints of when she worked in a shipping office far from her vineyards and family, Mavrič now manages both together with her relatives, focusing on natural products and lots of manual labour. She does not recall any serious plant diseases, “they are always the same ones that cyclically recur” – but the climate has changed.

The high summer temperatures have pushed the harvest into winter and forced the family to stay indoors more during the hot months, but have allowed them to work until late in the season. “The climate crisis creates drought, but it is a problem we have always had to deal with, and we have always looked to nature to understand what to do: reality cannot be changed and every time we make do with less water”.

Mavrič’s approach is as conciliatory as the view she observes from her window as she tells how, over the years, the family business has structured itself to produce and sell its own wine. In order not to depend on anyone, nature aside, it has created a customer base between Italy and Slovenia, both private individuals and caterers, with the addition of the Austrians who contribute more and more to the budget.

And then there is the association Women of Wine of Slovenia: created as a joke ten years ago with two colleagues, it has now become a circle of over two hundred enthusiasts, structured and active, that from Slovenia crosses the border towards Italy with events, visits, initiatives and exchanges.

Cultivating vineyards and human values

“We could and should do more” says Mavrič, and she often repeats it also to Elena Roppa, the representative of the Women of Wine of Friuli with whom she has now established an ongoing exchange.

Daughter of an Istrian exile, Roppa says she is “proud to live in a region where minority communities enrich the territory and every day you can breathe the air of an increasingly larger and more united Europe”. The coordinates of her company are intertwined with the lines of the rows of vineyards in the cross-border area.

Roppa is here "due to a fascination" that struck her after her degree in philosophy and a master's degree in food and wine tourism. "I feel a strong attachment to the wine sector: agriculture, wine and food are cultural elements of our identity and are made of and bearers of human values", she adds. "After twenty years of career, I love to pass on what I have learned and donate this vision so that it becomes an integral part of the life of each of us".

A noble intent, in these times, that must coexist with other less "evocative" but more urgent challenges: excess production, changes in lifestyles and climate change.

Grapes at the mercy of extreme events

For the 2024 harvest in Italy, Coldiretti has estimated 41 million hectolitres and a +7% on 2023, but a -13% on the average of the previous five years, "due to the impact of extreme weather phenomena" that have hit the North in particular.

Roppa's words reveal the story of a year characterised by "torrid summer months, with almost no rainfall that have tired people and plants. The positive effect of stress, at least on plants, is only valid if it remains at an average level, not if it reaches excess", she explains. In fact, 2024 has seen “significant production losses, bunches with little juice and, above all, a greater onset of diseases due to extreme events that have weakened the plants in the short term”, she adds. Then, in more technical terms: “the phenological phases of the vine today are totally at the mercy of climate change, the reactions and memory of the plant itself are at stake”.

Cross-border collaborative intelligence

Precisely in this year that has proved to be particularly stressful and precisely in the cross-border area between Italy and Slovenia, a new two-year interregional project supported by the European Union cohesion funds got underway in April 2024. It is called AI-GRAPE and aims to reduce the use of pesticides by 20% and infestations of harmful insects by 10%, and to increase the yield of the vineyards by 15%.

To transform these good resolutions into results, the project combines technological innovation, environmental awareness and human collaboration. Operationally, this intertwining translates into the implementation of predictive AI models that can help growers defend their vineyards from diseases and pests.

Their performance will depend on data: it will therefore be essential to combine those from the Italian and Slovenian areas. Without the numbers of the other, each would find itself with a less effective tool in hand, useless in the face of more potentially stressful years.

By spring 2026, the goal is to obtain an AI-based Decision Support System, capable of integrating data from weather stations, microenvironmental sensors, drones, satellites and insect traps located on both sides of the border.

The Women of Wine, united, are ready to integrate this new tool into their already rich programming of cross-border activities. They doubt that AI will be able to fool nature – but it could help them avoid being targeted by the climate crisis.

This article is published in the context of the project "Cohesion4Climate" co-funded by the European Union. The EU is in no way responsible for the information or views expressed within the framework of the project; the sole responsibility for the content lies with OBCT.