About the event
What if climate adaptation wasn’t just a policy challenge but a product farmers could actually buy, use, and benefit from?
In this conversation, Kaushik Kappagantulu (Co-founder, Kheyti) joins Tarah Foster (Terra.do’s Learning for Action Course Director) to explore how a deceptively simple innovation - Greenhouse-in-a-Box - is helping smallholder farmers turn climate vulnerability into opportunity.
Built to cost roughly 90% less than conventional greenhouses, Kheyti’s solution is designed specifically for the realities of smallholder agriculture: limited capital, unpredictable weather, and high risk. By protecting crops from climate shocks while enabling farmers to grow higher-value produce, the greenhouse is helping thousands of farmers stabilize incomes and improve productivity in a changing climate.
Drawing from his experience building Kheyti from early prototypes to growing adoption across rural communities, Kaushik will reflect on what it takes to design technology that farmers actually use. The conversation will unpack the role of product design, farmer trust, and local ecosystems in turning climate innovation from a promising idea into a scalable solution.
Expect a candid discussion on building for affordability and adoption, navigating the complexities of scaling in rural economies, and why climate resilience may ultimately depend as much on practical engineering and business models as it does on policy.
For anyone interested in climate innovation, rural development, or building solutions that reach those most affected by climate change, this session offers an inside look at how thoughtful product design can unlock resilience, prosperity, and dignity for millions of farmers.
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"Smallholder Farmers as Climate Change Leaders" - LFA Keynote with Kaushik Kappagantulu
Food systems play a complex role in climate change. 1. They are the cause of about 30% of emissions. 2. They are also very vulnerable to weather events caused due to climate change and 3. Farming can also be a solution to sequester carbon at scale. There are many solutions that can combine these realities into a net positive outcome - sustainable farming that is resistant to climate change, increases farm income AND sequesters carbon. None of these solutions have scaled significantly so far.
When we look at smallholder farmers (who constitute 80% of farmers in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa), markets have only looked at them as "beneficiaries" and not as a part of the solution. By putting smallholder farmers first and thinking of them as innovators, Kheyti has proven that high tech sustainable agriculture can be democratised. Kheyti's Greenhouse-in-a-Box has grown from just over 1,300 installations in 2023 to nearly 6,000 by 2025, with farmers' median income from the greenhouses more than doubling over that same period - proof that this model doesn't just work, it scales. This talk will explore the solutions sustainable agriculture offers to climate change and how changing the narrative on smallholder farmers is key to achieving those solutions.
About the speaker
Kaushik has spent over 15 years improving livelihoods in rural India. He is the Cofounder and CEO of Kheyti, an organisation helping smallholder farmers through its "Greenhouse-in-a-Box", a low-cost greenhouse bundled with services that increases farmers' incomes, protects those incomes from climate risk and helps farmers grow more sustainably.
Before launching Kheyti, Kaushik was a leadership team member of B-ABLE, a social enterprise that provides high quality training and placement services to rural school dropouts. He is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and has an MBA from Columbia Business School. Kaushik is a winner of the prestigious EarthShot Prize and the Elevate Prize, and Kheyti was just named the 2026 grand prize winner of the Lipman Family Prize at Wharton. He is an Acumen India Fellow and a DRK Foundation Entrepreneur.
Sep 30, 2026
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