'Greenhouse in a Box'
For farmers, especially small ones, incomes are unpredictable and unviable. When Sathya Raghu V Mokkapati and his friends were working on open cultivation of organic vegetables and go-to market opportunities to maximize farmer incomes, they realized something similar.
“While working with nearly 250 farmers, we noticed that farmers suffered despite decent market due to multiple reasons, like excess heat resulting in crops dying, increase in pest problems, decrease in water resources etc. I discussed this with my friend from Acumen fellowship, Kaushik. After a careful analysis, we could find the roots for all these problems is climate change,” says Mokkapati.
One of the main issues according to Mokkapati and his team was open cultivation. After speaking with over 150 farmers, and understanding every problem they were facing through open cultivation, they came to the conclusion that a protective solution was required to not let heat or insects hit crops directly.
After six months of comprehensive research, Kheyti was founded in December 2016. Kheyti’s solution for a sustainable income for small farmers is its ‘Greenhouse-in-a-Box’ (GIB), a low-cost modular greenhouse integrated with end-to-end support.
Dominic Chavez/World Bank