To respect our new mission which is to “ transform agriculture, consumption and business for good”, we must lead by example in terms of agriculture.
Leading by example means everything like nothing at all. Do our winegrowers light themselves by candlelight and eat only grapes to stop polluting? Or is it rather our 2 co-founders Thomas and Fx who create the manure to regenerate the vines? No, setting an example means putting our values on the table, surrounding ourselves with partners who want to change habits, and always want to go further.
For this, we are supported by different companies that help us to go even further in our commitments: Biomède , EcoFarms and MiiMOSA .
So are you ready to board our tractor to better understand our commitment closer to the earth?
Oy for biodiversity!
This is the name of a great program that we set up 2 years ago.
The Oé Program for Biodiversity allows us to go further in our approach. In concrete terms, we raise awareness among our winegrowers by analyzing their soils and observing the existing biodiversity in their vines.
To finance this program, we donate 1% of our turnover to finance the analysis of the soils of the Oé winegrowers by the company Biomede.
We know that we don't have the same turnover as a large multinational, but you can fix that right away ;)
Biomede for healthy soil
Let's make it simple, to have good wine, you need good grapes and to obtain such good grapes, the soil is more than important.
Unfortunately, 50 years ago winegrowers spread copper without counting, and this, up to 50 kg per hectare and per year. That's a lot isn't it? This is why organic is often criticized because of this copper, which in large doses pollutes the soil, but remains authorized.
Today, the maximum authorized is 4 kg per hectare and per year, and on average , the Oé winegrowers are rather between 1.5 and 2 . Which is therefore between 20 and 25 times less than before, and that, we are proud of!
But if the vines were heavily treated with copper long ago, what remains in the ground today? How to guarantee that neither the soil nor the wine will be contaminated?
We must not forget that copper is an essential element in the soil to nourish plants. The soil must therefore understand the " bioavailable " dose, that is to say, consumed naturally by the plants without boosting them. Because we really like beautiful grapes, but if they have the same muscles as Lance Armstrong, we're less of a fan.
To give you figures, it is estimated that the soil must contain between 50 and 100 ppm (1 ppm = 1 part per million = 0.0001%) of copper for the soil to remain healthy and for the consumption by the vines compensates for the copper brought in during the year. And that's when… BIOMEDE comes in ! Tadaaaa.
Biomede is the pioneer in the extraction of heavy metals from agricultural soils by plants. This is called phytoextraction . It took several years of research at Biomede to design an ideal mixture of plants to extract heavy metals from soils.
This company has developed a great device that makes it easy to analyze soils.
It takes about 30 analyzes per hectare to have a sufficient density and for the overall diagnosis to be relevant.
Fx, our co-founder, lent himself to the game and went to Emmanuel, our Oé winemaker in the south of the Rhône Valley.
The instruction was simple: if the soil contains more than 200 ppm, hyper-accumulating plants should be sown between the rows of vines , ie plants that accumulate and assimilate more copper than other plants.
We will use them as plant cover, then we will cut them and reclaim them (either in the vines or for another use), and the copper dose in the soil will have decreased.
It is estimated that this makes it possible to reduce the copper dose by 50 ppm at each planting , therefore each year.
This is already the beginning of a regenerative viticulture , that is to say, which aims to take care not to degrade the soil and which, in addition, repairs the soil and restores all its fertility. Isn't that beautiful?
After multiple readings, Fx was proud to announce that the soil at Emmanuel, our Oé winemaker, contained between 100 and 150 ppm of copper. No need for hyper-accumulating plants. Yippee!!
EcoFarms for better performance
Once the soils have been analysed, we call on the company EcoFarms , which visits the winegrowers to audit their vineyard. EcoFarms analyzes in depth the economic, societal and environmental aspects in order to optimize the performance of vineyards. The company follows the winegrower for 4 months, respecting a method which makes it possible to effectively measure the initiatives of the winegrowers.
Here is an analysis of EcoFarms for Denis, Oé winegrowers, having his estate in the heart of the Rhône Valley. We can clearly see the three indices: economic, socio-territorial and agro-environmental. Denis ' balance sheet is positive with a sustainability index of 64% (compared to 37% for comparable farms), what a good winemaker this Denis is!
After this global analysis EcoFarms proposes various actions to be implemented to promote the development of biodiversity in the area.
At that time, we discuss the various proposals with our winegrowers, and we see what they want to put in place. Often they want to build a big amusement park within their vineyard, with loops and rides and we at Oé are fighting for them to build a big landing strip for all the planes. It was just to see if you were still following, more seriously, we are discussing how we could make their field even more attentive to biodiversity , to strive for a better world.
And to finance all this, we call on … MiiMOSA !
Hundreds of MiiMOSAAAs…
No, it's not a remix of Claude François' famous magnolias.
The MiiMOSA platform makes it possible to finance sustainable agriculture and food projects on the donation model with counterparties or interest-bearing loans.
Aware of the importance of agriculture in the world of tomorrow, this platform was created to facilitate the ecological transition of agricultural plots.
Thanks to our crowdfunding campaigns on MiiMOSA, we have been able to implement actions proposed by EcoFarms to develop biodiversity within the vines.
We launched 2 fundraising campaigns, the first at Franck and Véronique, Oé winegrowers in Pujols , who produce our delicious red Bordeaux.
Franck and Véronique aimed to develop a line of agroforestry and increase the number of hedgerows in their plot.
The goal is to find a balance between the vine, the fauna, the flora, the trees, the water on the plot.
The 2nd campaign we launched was for Pascal and Nicolas, Oé winegrowers who produce our very popular Bordeaux Blanc. On the program for this second crowdfunding campaign: hedges, nesting boxes, lots of biodiversity and little goats from the Pyrenees! Thanks to the campaign, Pascal and Nicolas have been able to take in goats, build them a sheepfold so that they can thrive in the great outdoors. It would almost make you want to be a goat!
There, you know everything we put in place to put agriculture at the service of good (and good!). If you doubt my second statement you can test for yourself .
See you soon to understand the rest of our mission…
