Sustainability Practices at New Jersey Wineries. Exploring the Roles played by Agricultural Tourism and Firm Size

Abstract

Using original survey data on 30 New Jersey winery-vineyards, this study tests whether there are more environmentally sustainable practices at operations that practice agritourism, and also at wineries that are relatively large. We take special care to deal statistically with this small sample. The number of sustainability practices in the sample is positively correlated with the quantity of output in bottles and with the amount of land planted in grapes. Agritourism has no discernible effect on conservation practices, in contrast to some prior studies on farms outside of this sector. It is argued that winery-vineyards are unique in ways that cause them to ignore agritourism and other forms of direct marketing as reasons to alter their production processes.