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 reached about 8,000 farmers, and the model is now being taken up well beyond Kheyti itself: four state governments have partnered on it and committed to adding another 5,000 farmers to the program in the next year, and the work is influencing national policy on climate-smart agriculture. That has changed how Kheyti sees its own role, from being a direct implementer to building the field, so that the model can scale through governments and partners rather than through one organisation. This talk will explore what sustainable agriculture offers as a climate solution, and why changing the narrative on smallholder farmers is the precondition for getting there.

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 named the 2026 grand prize winner of the Lipman Family Prize at Wharton. In September 2026, TIME named Kaushik and Kheyti to its inaugural Trailblazers: Designing and Making the Future list.