Overall, our results suggest that organic vine dry land farming achieves a higher output than conventional dry land farming with a similar environmental impact. One of the advantages of the research method proposed in this study is that it enables the separation of purely technical issues from managerial performance and efficiency issues in the analysis of environmental effectiveness and efficiency. This separation is important when considering possible regulatory reform or a change of policy with respect to grants for organic agriculture.
One of the proposals for improving the environmental performance of organic farms is to tighten up environmental regulations. This proposal is related to the “conventionalization” hypothesis. However, under dry land conditions, the technical options for intensification and industrialization of organic agriculture are scant. And, in this paper we show that the environmentally-kinder nature of extensive vineyard cultivation under either production system, be it organic or conventional, may provide an argument against stricter organic standards for farmers working on the production of vine in arid land.