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There is also a huge wildlife benefit to organic and biodynamic wine production, particularly with mammal and bird life. Figures quoted to us by our Friends at the CLVD (Organic wine distributors for Languedoc) show that non-organic/biodynamic wine production is one of the worst polluting crops in France.
Vines cover around 10% of the France, but account for 25% of the polluting chemicals because of the high volumes of pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers and other synthetic chemicals used to produce the high yields required by the producers.
This in turn has caused a mass evacuation of the land by many animals, but by birds and bats in particular.
Organic and biodynamic producers actively encourage birds and bats to live around their vines – we are told that a single bat can eat 1 kilo of insects in a year – and many build nesting boxes and bat roosts too.
Wildlife can flourish in the natural environments created by our producers. Indeed, some of them, like Alain and Béatrice at Chateau Ferran, make a feature out of this and run educational programmes with local schools to show them the wildlife management techniques that are being used.
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