Off-grid production and processing units: renewable energy for sustainable agriculture in marginal areas for small-scale farms

At European level there is a growing attention to marginal rural areas carried out by the European Cohesion Policy. These areas have problems in terms of scarcity and economic inefficiency of productive activities, for the aging and loss of population and for the absence of basic services. At the same time this areas could be a flywheel for the recovery and strengthening of regional identities. At national level the Italian Department for Development and Economic Cohesion is developing indexes for mapping inland areas. In this framework at local level is strategic to strengthen the work of local autonomy in policy areas and processes able to make optimal use of the structural funds from EU for the development and re-establishment of these areas. In the agricultural sector the marginal areas are now a place where only the SMEs managed by the smallholder scale farmers continue to survive, doing subsistence agriculture that is crucial to the conservation and preservation of the land and the landscape, animal and plant biodiversity, methods and technologies for sustainable production and processing. In this context, 2014 was also proclaimed by the United Nations “International Year of Family Farming”. In the framework of the Europe 2020 strategy are also important the links between the aim of this study and the target “Climate change and energy sustainability”: greenhouse gas emissions must decrease by 20% (or even 30%, if the conditions are right) from 1990, 20% of energy from renewable, 20% increase in energy efficiency. The present work aims to experiment the adoption in agriculture of technology solutions able to satisfy the energy needs of SMEs in the marginal areas with high environmental and landscape value and to identify a compact modular system dedicated to family farming to reduce external inputs and waste. The specific objective is to find a winning solution for energy self-sufficiency and reducing emissions of the small scale family farms, useful for the sedentary, semi-sedentary and mobile production and processing units. The strategic objective is to identify replicable technical and economic solutions in different rural contexts in order to define the indications for their winning energy planning and for minimize external water use. Actually there are several trials on residential buildings that enable people and communities to live in comfort without any external supply of water and energy, but there are no applications in the agricultural sector. The research, starting from widely validated technologies, tries to assess their complementarity, scalability and applicability in the agricultural and livestock sector. This system will be designed in modules adaptable to different activities in rural areas. The set of technologies evaluated in this paper includes: the photovoltaic system, the electricity storage system through conventional AGM batteries or thanks to the adoption of hydrogen electrolysis process for fuel cell; the solar thermal system; the water depuration system, through phytodepuration treatment or boiling water using thermal and photovoltaic surpluses and the rain harvesting, storage and pumping water system.