In the Bordeaux region, Olivier Zébic, wine consultant, is experimenting with an unusual idea: replacing herbicides with dwarf pigs from New Zealand. The result is beyond his expectations.
It’s an experience that could change a lot of things in the profession. Wine consultant by trade, Olivier Zébic may have found the solution against the use of herbicides in the vines. In the summer of 2021, with the agreement of a Bordeaux winemaker, he replaced chemicals with dwarf pigs to weed his vines. This breed, calledtogetheris originally from New Zealand. On the verge of extinction in the 1980s, the “together» has the particularity of measuring only about forty centimeters.
A real weed vacuum cleaner
« At the very beginning, when I proposed the idea, it made people smile. In people’s imagination, a pig is big, it breaks and it turns everything upside down. Except that with miniature versions, we don’t have this problem! sums up the wine consultant. “ I didn’t come up with the idea, I developed it “, he adds. In recent years, a large number of winegrowers have been trying to become independent from herbicides. Yes but how ? “ Once the observation is made, what to do? In viticulture, we are constantly in a technical impasse asks Olivier Zébic. “ The tools destroy the vines, the soil and transport diseases. »
The little pig ticks all the boxes. “ Since it is small, it can go around the vines. The machine cannot do it. Because (or thanks) at its small size, the Kunekune cannot reach the bunches of grapes “, specifies the consultant. At the end of the harvest, the result is clear: no more weeds on the horizon! “ It cleans everything! No other animal, no machine can do what these pigs do “, he assures. And to continue: But the most incredible thing is that they eat the roots of weeds. »
Create a virtuous circle
For Olivier Zébic, the pig “togethermight even exceed expectations: “ We realized that the pigs ate the dead vine leaves. This is a great advantage because on these leaves there is a fungus that is harmful to the vines: mildew. It is transmitted from old to new vines each year when the good weather arrives. We will therefore place sensors in the vines in order to compare the results with/without pigs and we will draw conclusions. “. Olivier Zébic’s hypothesis is that these pigs are real natural means against mildew.
At the start of the experiment in the summer of 2021, the Bordeaux farm counted on a dozen pigs to weed the hundreds of hectares of the estate. Today there are about sixty heads. A great success, which arouses curiosity. The wine consultant claims to receive hundreds of requests regarding these miraculous pigs. But for the moment : “ We are still experimenting. We don’t sell pigs. There are a few Kunekune farms in France and we should continue on this path. “, he asks.
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If these pigs turn out to be very useful during the harvest at the end of the summer, what to do with them the rest of the year? Olivier Zébic reflects further on the subject: “ If we have to develop an activity on this, it will take a lot of pigs, that’s for sure! The main problem is that the winegrowers don’t have time to take care of the pigs all year round. “ We could perhaps exploit the pork meat hypothesizes Olivier Zébic. Today, the smiles that Olivier Zébic received at the start of his adventure have disappeared: the weeds have a lot to worry about.