Extreme Weather Events and Agricultural Productivity: Do EU GI Policies Hinder Italian Farms’ Adaptation?

The increasing intensity of extreme weather events poses a major challenge to agriculture by undermining crops growth conditions. This is particularly critical for wine production, where the quality of wine strongly depends on crops’ life cycle. Such changes create significant difficulties for wine farms, especially those operating under Geographical Indication (GI), which, as a matter of fact, imposes restrictions on the farms’ productivity. Against this background, the existing literature has overlooked the extent to which the limits imposed by these policies affect farms’ adaptation capacities to extreme weather events. The objective of this study is to empirically analyse the effect of extreme weather events on farm-level productivity, focusing especially on PDO wine farms in Italy. Preliminary results, capturing the short-term effect, indicate the higher crop’s losses for PDO vineyards. These findings serve as a pivot point for further reflection on long-term impacts, measuring the adaptation capacity among PDO wine farms.