The power of voice, the ability to represent one’s perceptions and knowledge, has constantly shaped the world around us. And we saw that unfolding when listening to the hundreds of farmer’s voices responding to queries.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India, with the Voice of Community, has created a repository of wisdom on agricultural innovations from the state of Tamil Nadu from more than 1500 farmers. The audio recordings of these farmers detail their experiences and expertise of having worked on the field and the various creative solutions they have implemented. These can be as simple as alternating elaborate drip irrigation systems with empty IV bottles, timed to slowly water the crops. There are also stories of individuals inspiring their villages and beyond to take up healthier agricultural practices to meet their requirements with the resources available. One of the favourite aspects of listening to farmers is the lack of middle persons. We are free to listen to the audio, which Apurva.ai translates to our preferred language and establish our own understandings for our queries.   

What is the Voice of Community?
A part of Apurva.ai’s product line, the VoC opens the door to include knowledge directly from the community through audio recordings. These sound files are ingested into Apurva.ai, adding on to the ever growing digital brain, providing answers from the unseen viewpoints of local practices and ideologies, which are mostly difficult to capture.

Why Voice?
Sound bytes are not only easy to record and procure the community's knowledge and experience, but they also bring a sense of authenticity to the knowledge curated. This builds a sense of trust and reliability for the query seekers. And most importantly, they shine light on localised solutions of global problems with local resources and expertise, which can be adopted and tweaked across regions, cultures and problems. 

How? 
Audio files offer the flexibility and ease to record knowledge from people across the vertical and horizontal axis. Aided with audio recording softwares, answers from interviews are taped and uploaded to the digital brain. Apurva.ai synthesises, analyses and reimagines with the amassed data. 

Farmers form a strong and knowledgeable community, where their expertise of working on the field are powerful data sets that can lead to further innovations in the sector. Alongside farmers, various actors like startups, self help groups, cooperatives and agripreneurs are a part of the agricultural sector, adding and contributing to the community’s knowledge source. 

Listen, and seek your answers. This is the vision behind Voice of Community. And the Voice of Community has enabled the experience and expertise of farmers to weigh in. The voice of farmers is not merely a statement emphasising a space where farmers’ views are represented for us anymore. The very definition of voice is being changed with Apurva.ai, where one can listen to the crackling audios answering queries, bringing forth the actual voice of farmers from the field. And that was and still is the aha moment as we explore topics of agriculture and innovations with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India. 

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