The missing piece in climate action (it's not what you think) | Yi Li

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. When climate entrepreneur E. Lee co-founded Farmwork, she set out to build 1 ,000 climate-smart farms across Kenya, complete with dams, irrigation, and organic fertilizers. The science was sound, but reality proved more complicated. In her talk, she outlines what she discovered about the missing ingredient behind failed climate solutions and how it challenges a core assumption of the environmental movement.

0:473 ,000 farmers supported $6 million in direct income to farmers. 50 tons of food waste prevented every month. These numbers represent FarmWorks' impact over the last five years. But what if I tell you they are no longer the most important metrics to me anymore? Today, the number one metric that I care about as CEO of Farmworks is our profitability. Now, before you judge me and think, how did we let this capitalist on the stage? Hear me out. Five years ago, I co-founded Farmworks with a grand mission to build 1 ,000 climate-smart, highly productive farms across Kenya. We invested in water dams, net houses, drip irrigation, organic fertilizers.

1:42We had every red climate solution by the book. But then harvest time came, and I realized when walking into our grading shed, there were crates of tomatoes rotting away because we didn't have enough waters. Our storage room was bursting with onions. It looks almost funny, but I was standing there thinking, great, now what? At the end of the day, every farmer has to answer one question. Who is going to buy my produce and pay for all my hard work and investment? Without the financial outcomes, climate initiatives cannot sustain themselves. This lesson hit me particularly hard a few years ago during one of our investor visits.

2:25The investor asked our group of farmers, so how do you like working with Farmworks so far? One farmer said, yeah, we like them a lot so far, but you see, every two years, there is a new organization coming to us with a new project. They disappear after two years, so we'll see how long Farmworks can last. I felt my stomach drop in that moment. These farmers have gotten used to countless NGOs, donors, startups, rowing with grand climate visions, big promises, only to vanish when funding dries up. And without the financial sustainability, we too would be gone in just a few seasons. In that moment, finding financial sustainability for farmworks meant we had to sell all of our produce.

3:13So that's when I threw myself into Kenya's vegetable wholesale market. This is 5 a.m. at Marakiti, one of the largest wholesale markets in downtown Nairobi. It was chaotic. So many sellers fighting for the best spot to sell, the customers are fighting for the highest quality crate of tomatoes. And I'm Chinese, so I'm very much used to crowds and competition. But this was next level. I immediately knew I had to be part of this excitement. I started delivering tomatoes with our trucks to the markets. And on my first day, I got pushed down to the ground by a market vendor. Not exactly the welcome I was expecting.

3:55But over the years, I learned to be part of the market. I figured out how prices actually work, how weather can totally change supply and demand overnight, and made friends with market ladies, many of them who are now our customers, proudly selling produce from farmworks. With the market figured out, we were able to sell almost everything. In fact, we realized that our own farms could never be enough to meet the full demand. In the end, people are eating every day of the year, but no farmer can be harvesting 365 days of the year. So we decided to partner with more farmers, starting by training them with climate-smart techniques.

4:38And this is what surprised me. When we give farmers drip irrigation kits, sometimes they sit unused. When we showed them the more hygienic crop support structures, they were still using the same old method. It was hard to admit, but the reality is we were imposing solutions but not really solving problems. The drip irrigation kit saves water but costs fuel to operate. The more hygienic crop support structure might prevent disease but costs money to buy. We were providing knowledge but not really capital or guaranteed returns. And without enough financial incentives, the farmers cannot really afford to implement those good ideas.

5:21So we changed our approach. Instead of focusing on training, we simply started buying and distributing the farmers' produce and giving them a real income. What happened next shocked me even more, because with the income from us, the farmers actually started to invest in better practices, better equipments, investing in their own farms. So turns out the right economics was more powerful than the right knowledge. And you know what else? Supposedly, young people are not very interested in agriculture. That is not true. Young people in Kenya love agriculture, but what they love even more is to have a decent job and earn a decent income.

6:03At Farmworks, more than 80 % of our employees are under the age of 30. We are an agriculture business made by young talent. Over the years, we have grown into one of the largest vegetable wholesalers in Kenya. In 2024, we sold 100 million tomatoes. That might sound like a lot. Until you do the math, it's barely two tomato per person in Kenya. So we still have a lot of room to grow and a long way to go. And remember my original dream of building 1 ,000 farms? That is still being realized, but in a different way. Today, the farms are being built not by us, but by the farmers who know their own land and communities the best.

6:51With steady market offtake and consistent income from us, they are now able to invest in their own farms and reach out to us when they need help. Finding financial sustainability was not easy. For years, after finding our market, we were still bleeding money. I had to make difficult decisions of shutting down priced demonstration farms, halting new partnerships, even closing regions that were too far away for us to serve. Turns out it was really difficult to save money compared to spending it. But I knew the only way for us to survive and grow our impact is through finding financial sustainability.

7:31Today, we're a business with healthy margins and growth. More than 300 employees work for us, and more than 10 ,000 market vendors rely on us for their daily supplies. The hard lesson I learned from the years of being a social entrepreneur is that real sustainability, climate or otherwise, must come from economics first. I'm not talking about choosing profit over planet. But I have recognized that without the viable economics, our climate projects and initiatives might remain as expensive experiments, but not really scalable solutions. Think about it. When farmers earn an income, they can invest in better practices.

8:14When companies achieve profitability, we can protect and scale our impact. When communities prosper economically, they're able and can afford to care about their environment in the long term. So here is my message. The best thing we can do for our climate is to build economically viable solutions. Let there be economics first. Then, and only then, can we unlock real lasting climate impact. Thank you. Thank you.

8:50That was E. Lee at the TED Countdown Summit in Nairobi, Kenya in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.