Beetle Banks in the vineyard – DAKIS at the Future Foundation Remstal’s strategy dialogue in Baden-Württemberg

The wine industry in Germany faces major challenges: labour costs are rising and demand for quality wines is falling. At the same time, climate change is altering the growing conditions for established grape varieties. Vineyards that have been tended for generations are teetering on the brink of profitability; some are being grubbed up, whilst others lie fallow and are becoming overgrown.
One region affected by this upheaval is the Remstal in Baden-Württemberg. Here, the newly founded non-profit Zukunftsstiftung Remstal (ZR gGmbH) has set itself the goal of establishing sustainable landscape design concepts, for example through measures for biotope connectivity and water retention. Various forms of post-use are planned, such as extensive grazing by sheep, the cultivation of climate-resilient special crops, and the use of robotics and AI.
Following the initiation of the first measures, the ZR invited guests on 19 May 2026 to a site visit at the Kleinheppacher Kopf vineyard, followed by a strategic dialogue at the Remstalkellerei in Beutelsbach.
Invited by Johannes Schwegler (ZR Managing Director), Manfred Siglinger and Claus Hainbuch (ZR Shareholders’ Committee), the event was attended by, amongst others, representatives of the district administration’s lower nature conservation authority, the local council, winegrowers, a landscape and environmental planning office, as well as Prof. Braun and Benjamin Körkel-Wineberger from the Nürtingen University of Applied Sciences (HfWU), and Marvin Melzer (Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research, ZALF) and Alexander Maidl (Bavarian State Institute for Agriculture, LfL) from the DAKIS project.
The reason for DAKIS’s involvement was the keen interest in the topic of beetle banks, on which Marvin Melzer gave a presentation: “Beetle banks can be specifically created in the currently fallow vineyard areas of the Remstal”. The agri-environmental measure is intended to slow down surface runoff following heavy rainfall and retain water within the land. At the same time, beetle banks serve as an important habitat for beneficial insects and promote biodiversity. The measure is to be combined with other post-use concepts to create valuable habitats for people and nature from the former vineyard areas, in harmony with the remaining production areas and the tourism sector, which is important for the region.
The planning tool for Beetle Banks developed in the DAKIS project has been adapted to the conditions of viticulture for this purpose. In a planned collaboration with the Zukunftsstiftung Remstal and joint research projects with the HfWU Nürtingen, areas are now to be selected for the implementation of the first Beetle Banks and scientifically monitored through research projects. The groundwork for this has now been laid; the DAKIS project is eagerly looking forward to the upcoming work and to close collaboration.

The implementation of the Beetle Banks, which have so far been planned only in theory, under practical conditions is part of the second funding phase, ‘DAKIS 2’, and has been being carried out in particular by Alexander Maidl (LfL) since April 2026 as part of work package 2.3, ‘Implementation of use cases under real-world conditions’.

© Photos: ZALF