Yi Li

speaker

85 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 19 Jan

Yi Li’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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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.

And this is what surprised me.

When we gave farmers drip irrigation kits, sometimes they said 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 cost 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.

So we changed our approach.

Instead of focusing on training, we simply started buying and distributing the farmers' produce and giving them a real income.

So it 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.

At Farmworks, more than 80 percent of our employees are under the age of 30.

We aren't an agriculture business made by young talent.

Over the years, we have grown into one of the largest vegetable wholesalers in Kenya.

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