Survival of the fittest as vineyard sector shrinks

Australia’s vineyards sector lost the equivalent of one-and-a-half Barossa Valleys between the 2012 and 2015 harvests, according to new figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Lower profitability, due to higher water prices and lower fruit prices, drove down land values in big wine-producing regions like the Riverland and Riverina, forcing landowners to pull out vines and replace them with higher-yielding horticultural crops like almonds and stone fruit – or abandon growing altogether.