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•Recovery with a mini-baler is the best alternative to field burning.•Financial viability is still weak.•Optimal preparation of residues will help cutting costs.•Energy conversion at the farm will increase value recovery.•The mini-baler makes it an ideal machine for developing countries.
The Authors tested a new mini-baler system designed for the recovery of pruning residues in vineyards inaccessible to conventional tractors. Under these conditions, growers manually take the residues to the field edge and burn them there. Such practice is expensive, and generates substantial emissions. Use of the new mini-baler system would substitute burning, with significant advantages on air quality and landscape amenity. The system works well, but productivity is low (mean 0.38t per scheduled machine hour) and baling cost still too high (mean 80€t−1). Productivity can be increased and cost decreased through a better preparation of the residues before collection. Farm use of the baled product may dramatically increase value recovery and is facilitated by the availability of newly designed boilers. The versatility and the small purchase cost of the mini-baler makes it an ideal machine for those cases where labour cost is low and investment capacity is limited.