A failed crop can wipe out months of work for a small farmer. And as summers get hotter, rains become harder to predict, and water grows scarcer, even a carefully planned growing season can unravel in days.
For Sathya Raghu Mokkapati, the human cost of that uncertainty became clear when he was just 17. In his village, he once saw a farmer eating mud. When Sathya asked him why, the farmer replied, “My crops failed. My stomach doesn’t know my pockets are empty.”