Mitra

What it does

Mitra is a voice agent developed by Boomitra to assist farmers in improving their practices and increasing soil carbon levels, thereby reducing CO2 and combating climate change while also improving their yields and food security. Boomitra works with over 150,000 smallholder farmers globally, helping them generate carbon removal credits and boost their incomes.
Smallholder farmers, particularly in Africa, often face challenges like low literacy, limited smartphone access, and a lack of technical assistance, which hinders the adoption of digital apps to help them improve practices. However, research indicates that audio messages can effectively support smallholders on a large scale. Mitra, a GenAI voice agent, enhances this by providing personalized advice via phone calls, catering to each farmer's unique needs. It can also initiate calls to collect necessary data for generating and certifying carbon credits, using customized prompts based on Boomitra's existing data on the specific farmer.
The demo version of Mitra employs the browser's speech recognition to capture user input, accesses the Gemini API with the given input and custom initial prompts that contain information on the farmer, and uses Google text-to-speech to deliver audio. The demo video is in Swahili, an African language, with English subtitles available.
Initial feedback from farmers in Kenya is positive and they are excited to see how GenAI can help them improve their food security and fight climate change!