Not all farm podcasts have to be downloaded onto a digital audio player. I just found a story from earlier this year on bbc.co.uk. In Peru, telecentres (local broadcasting outlets) are subscribing to farm podcasts to obtain the information so they can broadcast it. The organization behind it is Practical Action.

These telecentres, many of which are run on solar power, automatically download the programmes onto CDs to rebroadcast them on local radio stations. The charity has found it effective to distribute audio material to local people, who prefer listening in their own dialect to being sent the written word.

The podcasts are regionalized so that each area and telecentre broadcasts information pertinent to farmers in that area like, “In Chanta Alta, the podcasts concentrate on cattle-raising husbandry and on dairy production.”

This just gets better though. I keep running into communications people here in the U-S who wonder if our farmers are “savvy” enough to handle a podcast or digital audio player. I don’t want to write what I think farmers would say to that. Are farmers in other countries like Peru more savvy? These Practical Action folks are archiving the programs according to the story for use in the future when these farmers have iPods.

But read on, “”Our plans are to test out some of the technologies that would enable people to listen to the podcasts on a mobile phone or a PDA, in fact on any device that can play an MP3 file,” said Dr David Grimshaw, international team leader on the project.” Whoa. Hold on. Can it be? Where else are they planning on doing this? Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.