Overcoming isolation and illiteracy with voice notes
Many farmers live in places where news is hard to access. Yet knowing the price of crops or tomorrow’s weather can massively impact their profits.
Daily weather alerts notify farmers about the right times to spray their crops, so they know tomorrow’s rain won’t wash away expensive fertiliser.
Mergdata is partnering with Catholic Relief Services to rethink educational support for farmers by giving farmers access to current information directly through the Mergdata platform.
Most farmers who live remotely can still access mobile networks. With Mergdata’s Darli system, CRS can send pre-recorded messages in any local language, reaching multiple farmers at the same time.
Darli smashes through the illiteracy barrier by using voice, not text. This system has also helped to scale and streamline the training of extension agents, bypassing the need for expensive and inefficient face-to-face training.
Daily weather alerts notify farmers about the right times to spray their crops, so they know tomorrow’s rain won’t wash away expensive fertiliser. Mergdata also partnered with CRS to deliver more extensive financial training that farmers can build up on over time.
The project also had internal benefits for CRS. Through our platform, they were able to gather information about their reach and impact. Now, they can plan, finance and action new projects, helping more and more smallholder farmers get the information they need to grow.