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C-EENRG

Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance
 

C-EENRG and its partners Camnexus, UNISUL and UFSC have been awarded with a Cambridge University's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF). The project is called 'Technological Empowerment for family-farming agriculture in Santa Catarina' (BRIDGE-TESC).

In the state of Santa Catarina (SC), Brazil, agriculture is mainly based on family farming and faces relevant social challenges, such as lack of productive skills and infrastructure. In this context, the project BRIDGE-TESC gathers a multidisciplinary team of experts from Brazil and the UK in a pilot programme aiming to improve agricultural productivity in SC using enabling technologies. The proposal builds on the project BRIDGE, a successful ongoing collaboration funded by ESRC (UK) and FAPESC (Brazil) and led by the University of Cambridge and UNISUL. UFSC and Camnexus are also collaborators in BRIDGE.

The main objectives of the project are: 

  • Support the sustainable and low-cost production of food in a vulnerable community of Brazil, using a solar hydroponic greenhouse prototype developed in BRIDGE, which is replicable worldwide.
  • Improve the agricultural productivity of family farming in SC using a prototype ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) sensor network for agriculture. The data from key environmental variables obtained with this network will be used by our research team to improve agricultural practices in vulnerable communities of the region.
  • Improve the competitiveness of family farming in SC by closing the technology access gap and by fostering the implementation of local technology. The project will foster the development of specialised low-cost ICT technologies for improving agricultural productivity by engineering students of UNISUL and UFSC.

 

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