The draught animal power is the only renewable energy totally selfproduced in the rural villages.

Masseria Coppola, a farm based in southern Italy, taking into account that this instrument can really improve the quality of life within the villages, has developed WEDAP, Water and Electricity from Draught Animal Power.

WEDAP is an initiative, of so called entrepreneurial social responsibility, whose aim is the promotion of the draught animal power for lifting water and generating electricity in remote rural villages.

In the described contest WEDAP has monitored most of the experiments performed in the world and most of the patents issued, in several countries, for the use of draught animal power for generating the electric current.

Furthermore WEDAP has realized several prototypes of equipment to test the most appropriate method to exploit this source of energy.

WEDAP has developed several prototypes of equipments capable to generate currents through the use of the draught animal power.

One of these prototypes is now under test in Grottaglie, TA, I.

Significant also has been a test run performed in Masseria Coppola, Crispiano, I, the May 18th, 1987, with a mule of Murgese breed.

Thanks to an agreement, between the Mechanization Unit of the Ente CRA, the Research Council of the Italian Ministry of Agriculture and the International Buffalo Federation, one of the prototypes realized by WEDAP has been tested in Monterotondo, Rome. The Unit has issued a report on the test run the July 14th , 2011. Following these tests several improvement have been realized and incorporated in the said equipment now tested in Grottaglie.

For this initiative, the Water Division of FAO has hosted Antonio Perrone, in Sirte in Libya in December 2008, on the occasion of the Ministerial Conference on Water and Energy for Agriculture in Africa.

The BCC Cooperative Credit Bank of Castelli Romani and the BCC Cooperative Credit Bank of San Marzano di San Giuseppe have partially funded the research performed by WEDAP.

In the occasion of the invitation to tender issued by ENAMA, the National Institute for Agricultural Mechanization, in 2013, WEC Srl and the Polytechnic of Bari presented the proposal Improvement of the animal welfare through the innovation of pumping systems that use animal traction as a primary source of energy. The proposal has been judged, as a whole, interesting and has achieved the highest score among those not funded by ENAMA due to the shortage of its available resources.

CETAMB, “CeTAmb LAB – Laboratorio di ricerca sulle tecnologie appropriate per la gestione dell’ambiente nei Paesi a risorse limitate”, a center of Brescia University directed by prof. Carlo Collivignarelli, on June18th, 2014 organized a Workshop The Draught Animal Power: a tool for development not so developed to discuss the work done till now by Antonio Perrone within the initiative here presented.

Antonio Perrone presented a speach on June19th, 2014 at the 15 days IBF TRAINING COURSE ON BUFFALO MANAGEMENT AND INDUSTRY organized by the International Buffalo Federation in Latina and attended by 27 professional from 12 countries of 3 continents

To witness its attention to the role of animal traction as a development tool, WEDAP has implemented a simple VIRTUAL MUSEUM of the cooperation of the working animals with the man.

In the farm Masseria Coppola, technologies, such as animal traction, kerosene lighting, the production of charcoal from wood and the production of lime, were used until the seventies.

In the sixties there was installed the first wind turbine of the province.

Most of the cultural elements of the initiative are derived from the collections of the Museum of Rural Eritage of Masseria Lupoli founded by Edmondo Perrone in the sixties.