When Pretorius became aware of the time and discipline it took for his uncle, Dr Friedrich Osterhoff – and thousands of agricultural advisers like him – to capture notes after every farm visit, he began searching for a simpler solution. The result was PropelMapper, a platform that turns voice notes into detailed farm-visit reports and insights stored in one central system.
Pretorius explains that Osterhoff previously built Ahrhoff GmbH, a company that provides nutrition solutions to pig and dairy farmers in Germany and has recently expanded into South Africa.
While building the company, Osterhoff typically saw three clients a day from Monday to Thursday, with each visit documented in a brown folder dedicated to that client. Fridays were reserved for farmers to phone him for advice.
“His notes were so detailed that he could give a farmer specific recommendations based on something he picked up five years earlier,” says Pretorius. “Clients often marvelled at how he remembered everything, but it’s simply because everything was meticulously documented.”
When his uncle coached the same practice across his team of sales agents, only a handful adopted it fully – and they outperformed the rest of the team in sales.
“It was this realisation that sparked the idea and inspired me to find a way to make the method more accessible and easier to use for the rest of the workforce,” Pretorius explains.
The solution
Most advisers, sales agents, and researchers already use voice notes to capture quick thoughts while at or between clients. Pretorius and PropelMapper co-founder Mark Donne therefore began exploring a tool that could not only store these recordings but automatically turn them into complete, structured reports.
“We focused on precision AI designed specifically for agricultural fieldwork, not general tools like ChatGPT,” says Pretorius. “Advisers can record while walking or driving, even offline, and the platform captures rich detail and context they would otherwise lose. Automatic GPS-based spatial mapping ensures each observation is linked to the correct field and farm.”
The solution generates a summary of each visit and its outcomes, which advisers can review and refine before sharing with clients. It also provides an audio briefing to advisers before each visit, reminding them of the previous visit’s outcomes and key issues to watch for.
The solution tackles two issues: the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, which shows that up to 70% of information fades within a day if not reinforced, and the reality that advisers see multiple clients daily, causing insights from earlier visits to be pushed aside by later ones.
“The longer the gap between seeing and writing, the more critical detail disappears. By turning a two-minute voice note into a full report immediately, we preserve the texture and insight of the visit. The reports read like, ‘I was there with the farmer,’ instead of a rushed memory hours later,” Pretorius explains.
Benefits
Older advisers, who often carry decades of practical knowledge, benefit as the system helps them retain and transfer their expertise, while younger advisers benefit from faster learning and better preparation for follow-up visits.
Management, in turn, gains clearer visibility of field activity, more consistent reporting across teams, and improved continuity when staff change or move on.
“Having the information and insights saved in a central system means the company retains valuable knowledge that might otherwise be lost if an employee retired. This is especially important for long-term projects. For instance, in forestry, trees planted today might outlive three to four CEOs from now,” says Pretorius.
Beyond preserving knowledge, PropelMapper automatically generates charts and graphs, and aggregates field observations across teams, helping identify regional trends, emerging issues, and opportunities.
“It gives management the ability to see patterns across hundreds of hectares or dozens of farms that would otherwise be invisible,” he says.
Response and impact
Since the solution was developed in September 2024, 10 companies have signed up for the platform, with more still in the trial phase. Clients include production consultants, researchers, and quality controllers. The company is also expanding into the US market.
“Feedback so far is that advisers save at least four hours a week on documentation, with captured information being more detailed and comprehensive compared with traditional notetaking,” says Pretorius.
Languages supported include English, Afrikaans, German, Spanish, and soon French.
“AI capabilities for voice-to-text have improved tremendously in the past few years. Meta’s open-source NLLB-200 (no language left behind) translation model supports 200 languages, including many low-resource languages. In principle, with enough high-quality language data, it should be possible to add more languages to PropelMapper relatively quickly,” says Pretorius.
In recognition of its impact on agricultural fieldwork and knowledge management, PropelMapper has won a US$20 000 (about R350 000) Llama Impact Grant.
“We will use this funding to integrate satellite monitoring and remote sensing capabilities with the platform. This will link observations captured through voice recordings to real-time crop data, enabling notifications and early intervention when issues arise. It’s particularly useful for extension officers who must see many clients each day and need to prioritise where to spend their time for maximum impact,” says Pretorius.
The biggest concern he has encountered with the platform so far is the worry that the solution might negatively impact relationships with clients.
“The platform, however, was designed to do the opposite, helping advisers be better informed before visits so they can give more accurate, useful advice. In turn, this strengthens trust and builds stronger, long-term relationships with clients.”
For more information, visit propelmapper.com, or email [email protected].
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