Mechanization Systems for Steep Slope Viticulture – Saving Workload to Achieve Competitiveness

The more than 2000 years old viticulture tradition in steep slopes along the river valleys in Germany has a great social, economic, ecological and cultural value. It is important to conserve this unique cultural landscape and keep the chances of an increasing tourism in those regions. But the traditional manual cultivation under extreme conditions in steep slope vineyards takes no cost-covering profits. An improvement of economic efficiency by an increasing degree of mechanization is absolutely necessary. Since 2004 the government puts more effort in the development of special-purpose machines for viticulture in steep slopes. Actually there are two main technical systems to increase the power of impact in steep slopes: Cable winch pulled mechanization systems (SMS) and crawler based mechanization systems (RMS). Practical experiments give a detailed comparison of capacity, practicality, efficiency and costs of the most common systems. As a result the positive and negative factors of each system will be demonstrated and finally the limits of applicability of the two systems will be shown.