LONG TERM GROWTH OF SPECIALIZED VINEYARDS: THE ANJOU VINEYARD

The wine grower is an owner occupier owning 60 acres of plantation. At the beginning of the planning period he had no debts and no loans to repay. As soon as the grapes are harvested he delivers them to the local cooperative which processes them and pays him by installments over year. The scope of this study has been limited to the behaviour of a traditional winegrower in his forties who intends to leave his vineyard to his heirs in favourable conditions - that is to say in a state that will enable him to correct any investment errors that may have been, since he will have enough financial reserves at the end of the planning period to do this. This is a traditional, conservative, extremely cautious approach that is often encountered in reality. This has led us to maximise under constraint the net financial results for the 25th year, which is the limit of the planning period. The financial result can be defined as the difference between the gross result of the vineyard and the fixed costs, which include the family's expenditure and the cost of all the equipment but do not include the cost of replantation. This leads us to define the first economic function F₁.

We are aware that other types of behaviour exist and that they are more widespread in the younger generation, who prefer the present and want to manage their businesses with a view to maximising the return of their investments. These winegrowers, often clever speculators, instinctively maximize the actualized flow of capital involved in their business every year bearing in mind the selling price of the vineyard to be added to it at the end of the planning period. This type of behaviour will be studied later with a new economic function F₂.

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