The "greenhouse-in-a-box" empowering farmers in India | Sathya Raghu Mokkapati

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

For smallholder farmers in India, agriculture has long been an unreliable source of income -- crops that flourish one season can fail the next, thanks to heat, pests and disease. But climate risk is now making the profession nearly impossible. TED Fellow Sathya Raghu Mokkapati is determined to change that with "greenhouse-in-a-box": a small, low-cost, easy-to-build structure aimed at helping farmers weather sizzling summers, increase monthly revenues and grow more food with less water.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu. One of the most exciting areas of innovation in the world right now is in agriculture. In farming, farming is at risk because of climate change, but also it's a way to address climate change. In his talk from the Countdown Summit in 2021,
0:26.1	Green Farming Innovator Satya Ragu shares the creative solutions being carried out to help grow crops sustainably and even use soil to bring down CO2.
0:34.5	When we look at poor smallholder farmers across the world,
0:39.6	and particularly in my country, India,
0:42.3	we often think that what they need is access to better tools, education,
0:50.6	government support, markets, and so on.
0:54.0	Yes, they need all that, but what they really need is
0:58.2	reliable and regular income to live with dignity. A dependable income, even if it is as small
1:07.1	as $100 a month, is essential for them to stay out of poverty.
1:13.6	Today, their incomes are in and out of poverty, which is extremely painful.
1:19.6	Growing up in South India, I could not overlook what poverty did to our farmers.
1:26.6	I was about 17-year-old
1:27.9	when one day I saw a farmer in my village
1:33.2	sitting next to a farm stream
1:34.8	and eating something from the ground.
1:37.3	Something did not seem right.
1:39.3	I walked up to him to see what was going on.
1:43.9	I was shocked to see him eat mud.
1:49.0	Mud.
1:50.0	Brown, soft, mud from the stream.
1:55.0	I was afraid he might die.
1:57.0	I yelled at him.
	...

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