PROBLEMS OF VITICULTURE IN TELAVI MUNICIPALITY

Abstract

The article is prepared within the project financed by the Rustaveli Fund -“Traditional farming culture of the Georgian village and the perspectives of its development (historical and ethnographic research of Kakheti region).
The article deals with modern problems in the field of viticulture in Telavi Municipality. About 72% of Telavi residents are employed in agriculture and have small or medium family farms. According to the ethnographical material one of the main problems of winegrowers in Kakheti is selling the harvest, outdated agricultural machinery, food processing and storage (refrigeration) insufficient infrastructure, land fragmentation and its remoteness (vineyards are far from their houses by tens of kilometers). 50-60% of vineyards in Telavi are planted in the Soviet period. According to the official data the spacing in the old vineyards is rather big, it caused low per-hectare yield and low quality of grapes and so on.
Because of the above mentioned difficulties in the recent past, winegrowers either replaced the vineyards with the other crops or sold or abandoned them. Vineyard always was the main source of economic income for the residents in Kakheti. But from the 90s of the XXc. vineyards lost their function because of the events having developed in the villages of Georgia. The income became unstable. Constant changes of grape prices caused negative results and peas-ants decided to abandon vineyards. But subsidies allocated by the government in recent years had a result, winegrowers started to grow new vineyards. Ac-cording to the ethnographical and Telavi Municipality official statistics, in 2014 the vineyard area increased with 150 hectares in comparison with 2013.. Preference is given to industrial breeds- Rkatsitela and Saperavi. Kakhuri Mtsvne is planted relatively on a small area. Grape-growing micro-zones in Telavi district are in the villages: 'Tsinandali and Napareuli. In the opinion of experts in agriculture, the best way of solving the problems in viticulture is to unite the farmers through cooperatives, but ethnographic materials show that people, remembering old collective farms, show less confidence towards cooperatives. They try to deal with the problems themselves. The number of farmers who own great number of vineyards has greatly increased in Kakheti the last days. The idea of establishing “The Wine House” for Telavi residents gives them the chance to take their grapes there, press them and sell the wine themselves. As they say it will develop viticulture , along with the enactment of appropriate insurance.