Abstract:

Lately, the cost of electricity has been increasing sharply affecting our economy. Agriculture, like any other sector, is highly affected mainly because of the high volume of water required to irrigate the fields, especially in places where their supply is done using pumps and impulses of water under pressure. For this purpose, it is required a study in depth of the energy costs of agricultural farms to define the effect of the energy cost increase on the return of the cultivation as well as the margin of the cultivation to absorb such increase. The university cannot remain apart from this problem, so students from several subjects of different degrees has been selected to carry out an analysis of the said problem. In particular, Agronomy (Agronomical Engineering degree), Physical Fundamentals of Engineering (Electronics and Industrial Engineering degree), Water resources and hydraulic facilities (master's degree in Agricultural Engineering), and Financial Mathematics (double degree in Law and Business Administration). The aim of this work was to present a proposal for a citrus farm, located in Orihuela (SE of Spain) to reduce energy costs. This taks was presented to students of such subjects who were requested to present their proposals if they were interested in taking part. Once the proposals were selected, an online session was carried out between the involved teachers and students to show the aim of the research.

The problem was outlined jointly with the aim of designing a strategy allowing face the increase in energy costs. For this purpose, an iterative way was selected, so that the outputs of a group were the inputs of the other and vice versa. For instance, irrigation strategies were assessed by finance students in monetary terms and returned to agronomy students who changed the previous proposal according to the observations introduced. The new proposal may not be the better in agronomy terms, but considering the final return of the farm is optimal because is partially efficient in both aspects (monetary and agronomy), and so on. Several meetings were carried out allowing achieve an efficient strategy in the selected farm. Finally, new rates were proposed to reduce the cost as well as a new water impulsion system reducing energy expenses by 25%. Following requests made to farmers showed a high level of satisfaction with the proposals considering them fully practical.

From a teaching point of view, the interaction between students from different subjects and degrees has allowed to:
i) to promote learning approaches oriented to transfer knowledge from the classroom to the agricultural sector in aspects related to energy saving,
ii) to promote the design of mid-face-to-face learning experiences developing online audiovisual material in order to spread basic concepts of each area of knowledge,
iii) to develop online tools guided to the improvement of the tutorial using skills and tools to improve the creative process (Design Thinking) and finally,
iv) to promote the creation of interactive learning environments collaborating with other students from different degrees and campus.

Keywords:

Citrus, collaborative work, energy cost, multidisciplinary, university.