Multidisciplinary strategies for the sustainable development of community farms in remote areas

Abstract

This paper presents the research activities and findings of “Intelligent Infrastructure Design for Multifunctional Efficient Farm”, which is a multidisciplinary project aimed at mitigating poverty and malnutrition by upgrading farms located in isolated areas. Through improvements in living conditions and infrastructure, this project aims to increase farm productivity, create employment opportunities and promote the local distribution of zero-mile food. Specifically, farms should become multifunctional, energy autonomous, and environmentally sustainable. To achieve these goals, the project focuses on three key interventions: (1) the design of low-cost, low-environmental impact infrastructures to improve connectivity with surrounding cities, where roads and bridges are currently lacking; (2) the development of refrigerated cold rooms to enhance food preservation; and (3) the design of photovoltaic power plants for farm electrification. The methodologies and sizing procedures are based on simplified approaches implementable in free, open-source software; flexibility is ensured so that local technicians can replicate and adapt them to similar contexts by accounting for the needs of the local population, prioritizing the use of locally available materials. The authors considered a farm area of Mpangala village (in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) as a case study to assess the practicality of the developed procedures.