Sunday Pick - Tech Solutions - The affordable tech that will revolutionize farming with Samir Ibrahim and Josephine Waweru

周日精选 - 科技解决方案 - 与萨米尔·易卜拉欣和约瑟芬·瓦韦鲁探讨将彻底改变农业的平价科技

Happy Sunday, TED Talks Daily listeners. I'm Elise Hue. Today we have an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. TED Tech's host Sheryl Dorsey went to Kenya back in June to record a miniseries with TED Countdown Summit 2025 speakers about how technology can help to generate a greener and more equitable future. In today's kickoff episode, we start with a simple question: What do farmers in Kenya actually need? Sheryl spoke with Samir Ibrahim, the CEO of SunCulture, a company that's replacing diesel and petrol-powered water pumps with more affordable solar-powered ones to give farmers reliable access to water to irrigate their farms year-round. We'll also hear from coffee farmer Josephine Waweru, who joined Sheryl to discuss how the pump revolutionized her farm and what advice she has for young people. TED Tech is a show that features talks and conversations that explore the many ways in which technology impacts society. If you want to hear more insights like this, listen to TED Tech wherever you get your shows. Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com. Now onto the episode.

周日愉快，TED每日演讲的听众们。我是艾莉丝·休。今天，我们为您精选了TED音频集合的另一档播客节目。TED Tech的主持人雪莉·多尔西于六月前往肯尼亚，与TED 2025倒计时峰会的演讲者们录制了一个迷你系列，探讨技术如何帮助创造一个更绿色、更公平的未来。在今天这期开场节目中，我们从一个简单的问题开始：肯尼亚的农民究竟需要什么？雪莉采访了SunCulture的首席执行官萨米尔·易卜拉欣，该公司正用更实惠的太阳能水泵取代柴油和汽油水泵，为农民提供可靠的水源，实现全年农田灌溉。我们还将听到咖啡农约瑟芬·瓦韦鲁的分享，她与雪莉一起讨论了水泵如何彻底改变了她的农场，以及她对年轻人有何建议。TED Tech是一个通过演讲和对话探讨技术如何多方面影响社会的节目。如果您想听到更多此类见解，请在您收听播客的平台关注TED Tech。欲了解更多关于TED音频集合的信息，请访问 audiocollective.ted.com。现在开始本期节目。

Welcome to TED Tech, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Cheryl Dorsey. Today we're kicking off a special miniseries about climate solutions and the technology that can lead us into a greener, more equitable future. The climate crisis feels more urgent than ever, and I'm not the only person saying that. Many in the international climate community define this time we're living in as the deciding decade, our last chance to get it right for the future of our planet and humanity.

欢迎来到TED Tech，TED旗下的播客。我是主持人雪莉·多尔西。今天，我们开启一个关于气候解决方案及其技术的特别迷你系列，这些技术能引领我们走向一个更绿色、更公平的未来。气候危机感觉比以往任何时候都更加紧迫，而且并非只有我这么认为。国际气候界的许多人将我们生活的这个时代定义为"决定性的十年"，是我们为了地球和人类的未来而做出正确选择的最后机会。

As we consider possible pathways forward, I often ask myself: What bold ideas about climate can give us hope? What conversations aren't we having that we should? And where have we limited our thinking about what's possible for our planet and our future? I went to this year's TED Countdown climate summit in Nairobi, Kenya, looking for answers to some of those questions. My time at Countdown was an adventure in discovering what's possible.

在思考可能的前进道路时，我常常问自己：哪些关于气候的大胆想法能给我们希望？哪些我们应该进行却尚未展开的对话？我们在哪些地方限制了对地球和未来可能性的思考？我参加了今年在肯尼亚内罗毕举行的TED倒计时气候峰会，为其中一些问题寻找答案。我在倒计时峰会的时光是一场探索可能性的冒险。

I spoke with some of the world's leading minds who are actively shaping climate change solutions, the visionaries and doers confronting one of the greatest challenges of our time. And over the course of this four-part series, we're bringing those conversations to you. Today, you'll hear from two of these climate change makers. First, we'll speak with Samir Ibrahim, the CEO of a company called SunCulture. In the last decade, SunCulture has brought solar-powered water pump technology to rural farmers in Kenya and across sub-Saharan Africa. Today they serve over 60,000 farmers. And later on the show, we'll hear directly from one of them.

我与一些积极塑造气候变化解决方案的世界顶尖思想家、直面我们这个时代最大挑战之一的远见者和实干家进行了交谈。在这个四集系列节目中，我们将把这些对话带给您。今天，您将听到其中两位气候变化推动者的声音。首先，我们将与一家名为SunCulture公司的首席执行官萨米尔·易卜拉欣交谈。在过去十年中，SunCulture已将太阳能水泵技术带给肯尼亚及撒哈拉以南非洲的农村农民。如今，他们为超过6万名农民提供服务。稍后在本期节目中，我们将直接听取其中一位农民的心声。

Samir, you did not have to start this kind of company. Not at all. Let's just start there. I had to. Okay. Take me all the way back to why. You're in your early 20s, right? Yeah. And we're thinking of all the, like, social media networks that have emerged and all of this cool, like, Silicon Valley startup, food delivery kind of world. And you're like, actually I'm going to build solar pumps for farmers 8,000 miles away. So talk to me about how this even came together, and you've been working on this for a little over a decade now.

萨米尔，你本不必创办这样一家公司。完全不必。我们就从这里开始吧。我必须这样做。好的。带我回到最初的原因。你那时20岁出头，对吧？是的。想想当时涌现的所有社交媒体网络，以及所有那些很酷的，像是硅谷初创公司、外卖服务之类的世界。而你却想，实际上我要为8000英里外的农民制造太阳能水泵。那么跟我讲讲这一切是怎么开始的，你已经为此工作了十多年了。

Yeah, right. It all goes back to family for sure. So my family's from East Africa. I'm first generation not in East Africa. I was born in Canada. I grew up in the US, in Florida. And when you grow up in an immigrant household, money's always a conversation. Being told you have opportunities that your parents didn't have is always a conversation. And I grew up in the Somali Muslim community, and I did a lot of volunteer service. So you kind of put all these three things together, and you fast forward, and you had me wanting to figure out how to do, you know, classic 'do well by doing good'. Yeah. And I always knew I would do something in the region that my family came from because I almost felt it was a responsibility to honor my ancestors for busting their ass to make sure that I could grow up where I grew up. And I felt a deep responsibility for that. That then translated into like a broader responsibility for people that don't have opportunities. So while I didn't have to start a company like that, especially in New York at a time when all these other companies were starting, and there was a lot of opportunities to do other things, I also feel like I had to do this because I thought about it: who else would? Yeah. And it's a big problem that needs to be solved. And I'm going to do my part to do that.

是的，没错。这一切当然都要回归到家庭。我的家人来自东非。我是第一代不在东非出生的人。我出生在加拿大。我在美国佛罗里达州长大。在一个移民家庭中长大，金钱总是一个话题。被告知你拥有父母不曾有过的机会也总是一个话题。我在索马里穆斯林社区长大，并且做了很多志愿服务。所以，你把这三件事结合起来，快进到现在，就让我想要弄清楚如何实现那种经典的"行善致富"。是的。我一直知道我会在我家族所在的地区做些事情，因为我几乎觉得这是一种责任，为了纪念我的祖先，他们拼命工作才确保了我能在我长大的地方成长。我对此深感责任。这进而转化为对那些没有机会的人们更广泛的责任感。所以，虽然我并非必须创办这样一家公司，尤其是在纽约，当时所有其他类型的公司都在起步，也有很多机会去做其他事情，但我又觉得我必须做这件事，因为我想过：还有谁会做呢？是的。而且这是一个需要解决的大问题。我要尽我的一份力去做。

And so SunCulture is solving a very major issue that I think most of us, especially if we, you know, grew up in the western part of the world or like we did right in the States — access to water, access to ongoing electricity — that's not something that we have to think about. Yeah, right. But there still are millions of people who don't have those basic necessities, and it affects economic mobility and opportunity. How did you think about the design of this for it to work and to solve some of these major issues that we don't tend to think about?

因此，SunCulture正在解决一个非常重大的问题，我想我们大多数人，尤其是那些在西方世界长大，或者像我们一样在美国长大的人——获得水和持续的电力——这不是我们需要考虑的事情。是的，没错。但仍然有数百万人没有这些基本必需品，这影响了经济流动性和机会。你是如何考虑这个设计，让它能够运作并解决一些我们通常不会想到的重大问题的？

The fundamental principle that has driven everything we do at the company has been putting the farmer at the center of everything that we do. So we always say we build with our customers, for our customers. So we listen a lot. We spent the first few years in the field. And what we realized was farmers don't have access to the things that we have access to that enable us to maximize value from the land that we have. For example, access to irrigation, access to financing, access to the installation and training and agronomy support required to figure out what to do, etc., etc. So we didn't start with the idea of having a one-stop shop for smallholder farmers. It literally came from asking farmers what problems they needed solved and then asking that question again and again and again. And we continue to do that. We started offering things like health insurance recently. Wow. We started to bundle other agriculture inputs like seeds and shovels, etc. And it was an idea that we came up with. I wish I could show you this really elaborate, beautiful model and framework that we use. And I can say, you know, the inspiration came one night. It really is as simple as just asking our customers: "What do you need?"

推动我们在公司所做一切的基本原则，是将农民置于我们所有工作的中心。所以我们常说，我们与客户一起，为客户而建。因此我们大量倾听。我们在实地度过了最初的几年。我们意识到，农民无法获得我们所拥有的、能让我们从土地中最大化价值的东西。例如，获得灌溉、获得融资、获得所需的安装、培训和农艺支持来弄清楚该做什么等等。所以我们并非一开始就打算为小农户提供一个一站式商店。这完全来自于询问农民他们需要解决什么问题，然后一遍又一遍地提出这个问题。我们继续这样做。我们最近开始提供医疗保险等服务。哇。我们开始捆绑其他农业投入品，如种子、铲子等。这是我们想出的主意。我真希望能向你展示我们使用的那个非常详尽、漂亮的模型和框架。我可以说，灵感是在某个晚上产生的。这真的就像询问我们的客户"你需要什么？"一样简单。

I imagine that the technology has also changed from the launch of SunCulture up until now. How has it evolved over time? What have you all learned?

我想，从SunCulture成立到现在，技术也发生了变化。它是如何随着时间演进的？你们都学到了什么？

When we started the business, the cheapest way to put solar-powered irrigation together for a one-acre farm was $25,000. Wow. Our first pilot, we put it together for $5,000, and we said, "OK, there is a world in which we figure out how to make that cheaper over time. So let's not focus on the fact that it's still out of reach for the hundreds of millions of people in Africa, or the 2 billion people around the world who wake up every morning figuring out where water is. But let's figure out how to build the business model you mentioned, build the technology stack required to tell farmers access this technology, and then over time make it go cheaper and cheaper and cheaper." So we started with $5,000; now our cheapest system is around $400. And that came from a lot of engineering innovation, but also a lot of business model innovation. So figuring out that we could finance our customers so they pay us in monthly installments, figuring out that we can start a carbon business so we sell carbon credits and use those revenues to subsidize the cost of the system for the farmers. It was really thinking about: what are the other things we can bring in to make this more affordable for customers? Because at the end of the day, smallholder farmers are super price-sensitive. And a little bit of a reduction in price goes a really, really long way.

我们刚开始创业时，为一英亩农场安装太阳能灌溉系统最便宜的方式也要2.5万美元。哇。我们的第一个试点项目，我们以5000美元的成本组装了一套，我们说："好吧，存在着这样一个可能性：随着时间的推移，我们找到方法让它变得更便宜。所以，我们不要只关注它对于非洲数亿人口，或者全世界每天醒来都要找水的20亿人来说仍然遥不可及这个事实。而是要去想如何建立你提到的商业模式，建立所需的技术栈来让农民获得这项技术，然后随着时间的推移让它变得越来越便宜。"所以我们从5000美元起步；现在我们最便宜的系统大约400美元。这来自于大量的工程创新，但也有大量的商业模式创新。比如，我们发现可以为客户提供融资，让他们按月分期付款；我们发现可以开展碳业务，出售碳信用额度，并用这些收入来补贴农民购买系统的成本。这真的是在思考：我们还能引入哪些其他东西来让客户更负担得起？因为归根结底，小农户对价格极其敏感。一点点降价就能产生非常非常深远的影响。

Yeah. You have farmers as your customers, but I also imagine you are interfacing a lot with investors of all sorts, policymakers, in having this conversation of how even climate is impacting particularly rural areas and farming as a whole because of a changing climate overall. Are you seeing much more willingness to have deeper conversations on a changing climate and sort of what technologies are going to be needed to help mitigate and to ensure that people of the soil are able to grow the food that's needed to feed the world? What does that kind of look like for you?

是的。你的客户是农民，但我也想象你经常与各类投资者、政策制定者接触，参与讨论气候如何影响农村地区和整个农业，因为整体气候正在变化。你是否看到人们更愿意就气候变化以及需要哪些技术来帮助缓解和确保土地上的人们能够种植养活世界所需的粮食进行更深入的对话？这对你来说是什么样的？

Yeah. When we started, man, it was such an uphill battle. Everyone was like, "Wait, you're going to do what? This has never happened anywhere in the world, so that's a problem." I was a young Brown guy raising venture money in a nontraditional space in a nontraditional market as a 23 or 24-year-old. Everyone was like, "There's absolutely no way this is going to happen." And I can see why. You know, I think you probably would have been pretty crazy to invest in us in the early days. I told our early investors recently, "You guys are crazy, but I'm glad you were because this ended up working out." So there was a lot of deep education required over many years. Now, there's less education required for this to actually work. It's kind of accepted that productive agriculture equipment and the combination of renewable energy and agriculture is like a thing now. What's interesting and the big changes I've seen recently is how to fit what we do into a specific box that people care about. Now there's so much money available for this, but everyone has their own mandates. Some people care about jobs. Some people care about reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In the current political environment, people care more about national security and migration. And the thing with what we do is that it's really hard to put in a box because it touches so many important things. Food and smallholder farmers are at the core of the global economy. There's so many smallholder farmers that grow so much of the food that we eat. And they're the center point of a lot of political instability caused by forced migration. So they touch all these buzzwords. So what's really changed is figuring out how to make sure this complex ecosystem that we're building fits into a box that aligns with a particular investor at a particular time. I think that's been the big change.

是的。刚开始的时候，伙计，那真是一场艰苦的战斗。每个人都像是说："等等，你要做什么？这在世界任何地方都从未发生过，所以这是个问题。"我当时是个二十三四岁的棕色皮肤年轻人，在一个非传统的市场、非传统的领域筹集风险投资。每个人都说："这绝对不可能成功。"我能理解为什么。你知道，我想早期投资我们的人可能都挺疯狂的。我最近告诉我们的早期投资者："你们当时疯了，但我很高兴你们疯了，因为这最终成功了。"所以多年来需要进行大量的深度教育。现在，要让这件事真正运转起来，需要的教育少了。人们已经接受了高效的农业设备以及可再生能源与农业的结合现在已经成为一种趋势。有趣的是，我最近看到的重大变化是如何将我们所做的工作纳入人们关心的特定框架内。现在有很多资金可用于此，但每个人都有自己的关注点。有些人关心就业，有些人关心减少温室气体排放。在目前的政治环境下，人们更关心国家安全和移民问题。而我们工作的难点在于很难将其归入单一框架，因为它涉及太多重要领域。粮食和小农户是全球经济的核心。有如此多的小农户种植了我们消费的大量食物。他们也是许多因被迫移民导致的政治不稳定的中心点。所以他们触及所有这些热点话题。因此，真正的变化在于弄明白如何确保我们正在构建的这个复杂生态系统，能符合特定时期特定投资者所关注的框架。我认为这就是最大的变化。

Yeah. One of the conversations I was having with a few people here at the Countdown Summit was about: these are not your typical Silicon Valley unicorn, like big exit in maybe 10 years. There's a long, long game to play here, and the capital has to be friendly to that notion as well.

是的。我在倒计时峰会上与一些人进行的对话之一是关于：这些不是你典型的硅谷独角兽公司，可能10年后就通过大额退出。这里需要打一场非常非常漫长的比赛，资本也必须对这种理念持友好态度。

I think we need to show that you can make money by doing this. The only way we're going to get more money into businesses like SunCulture is to prove that we can help people make money. Incentives rule the world, and for better or worse, the return that someone can get for making an investment is one of the biggest incentives that rules the world. So I'm very much forcing: we're a for-profit business. We're going to make you a lot of money, and this is why you should be investing in our business. I'll give you an example of what we're doing right now that maybe helps answer this. So we have a lot of smallholder farmers who are making a lot of money for the first time. And just like you and I, when they make more money, they want to buy more stuff. So they're coming to us and saying, "Hey, I'm making money. Can I get some more things?" So on one side, we have these smallholder farmers that no one thought was bankable. We have high, industry-leading collection rates for our financing for them, and they're saying, "Hey, we want more things." So we have bankable customers here. And on the other side, we have all these other companies who want to sell things to farmers. So we're sort of becoming this marketplace. We're on one side; we have customers; on the other side, we have vendors. And I think that for us, we want that to scale across farmers all over the world. So how do we be the center of the ecosystem for people to get access to high-quality, bankable farmers? And how can we be the trusted partners for farmers around the world, using physical infrastructure — so sales, retail, after-sales, financing, and both physical and digital technology? And it starts with smallholder farmers and solar irrigation. It expands to other types of products and services, and then eventually it expands to other types of farmer segments and other geographies. So if I had it my way, I would never let this thing go because I think there's no silver bullet in development. But I believe that it is solving some of the biggest problems that we face today. And it has the opportunity to create generational wealth for my family and the families of people working with us. And I think that's important because if we can create generational wealth for people working with us and we can create outstanding returns for our investors, we can prove that a business that has roots as an ag tech or climate tech or smallholder farmer business in Africa can actually be one of the greatest businesses in the world.

我认为我们需要证明做这个是可以赚钱的。让更多资金流入像SunCulture这样的企业的唯一方法，就是证明我们能帮助人们赚钱。激励支配着世界，无论好坏，投资能获得的回报就是支配世界的最大激励因素之一。所以我非常强调：我们是一家营利性企业。我们会为你赚很多钱，这就是为什么你应该投资我们。我给你举一个我们现在正在做的例子，或许有助于回答这个问题。我们有很多小农户第一次赚了很多钱。就像你我一样，当他们赚了更多钱，就想买更多东西。所以他们来找我们说："嘿，我赚钱了。我能再买些东西吗？"所以一方面，我们这些过去没人认为有信贷价值的小农户，现在我们的融资还款率是行业领先的，他们还说："嘿，我们想要更多东西。"所以我们这里有了有信贷价值的客户。另一方面，我们有所有那些想把东西卖给农民的公司。所以我们某种程度上正在成为一个市场平台。我们在一边，我们有客户；在另一边，我们有供应商。我认为对我们来说，我们希望这能推广到全世界的农民。那么，我们如何才能成为生态系统的中心，让人们接触到高质量、有信贷价值的农民？我们如何才能成为全球农民值得信赖的合作伙伴，利用实体基础设施——销售、零售、售后、融资——以及物理和数字技术？这一切始于小农户和太阳能灌溉。然后扩展到其他类型的产品和服务，最终扩展到其他类型的农民群体和其他地区。所以，如果按我的想法，我永远不会放弃这件事，因为我认为发展没有灵丹妙药。但我相信它正在解决我们今天面临的一些最大问题。它有机会为我的家庭以及与我们共事的员工家庭创造世代财富。我认为这很重要，因为如果我们能为与我们共事的人创造世代财富，又能为我们的投资者创造卓越的回报，我们就能证明，一家根植于非洲农业科技、气候科技或小农业务的企业，实际上可以成为世界上最伟大的企业之一。

You know, obviously you've learned a lot over the last few years of building out this technology in this company, but what were some of the hurdles? I think the hurdles in general have been: How do you continue to iterate when you're learning to do something for the first time? And I know this is philosophical, but just bear with me for a second. We were the first to do what we did, both from commercializing solar irrigation and adding financing and adding services and adding a carbon business and adding software, etc. And because you're a company at first, there's nothing you can do to emulate someone else. I think the hardest part is figuring out how to not look at what other people are doing in a world where media is all-consuming and you're just seeing success stories and failure stories and you're trying to navigate: "Do I listen? Do I not listen?" and iterating. So for example, how do we get solar irrigation down from $5,000 to $500? A problem in itself. So there's technology innovation, there's manufacturing innovation, there's operational innovation, there's financing innovation. How do you continue to listen to your customers who are giving you feedback as they're experiencing something for the first time? And sometimes that feedback is conflicting because they're also learning at the same time. So I think the hardest skill set to develop internally was being able to change our mind with the new data that we got in. And it's less of a particular technology hurdle; it's more of a cultural and behavioral hurdle that we have to keep reinforcing that helps us continue to innovate. Otherwise, you get stuck. Our customers, they're growing. And if we don't continue to support them as we grow, we've failed because we made a promise to them that we're going to be with them forever. And they took the biggest bet of their lives on us. They spent the most money they have ever spent before investing in us. And if we leave them after a few growing seasons, we have failed. That cultural mindset I think is the hardest thing to scale, especially as you grow into new countries with new people, etc.

你知道，显然，在过去几年里，你在公司构建这项技术的过程中学到了很多，但遇到过哪些障碍呢？我认为总体上的障碍是：当你第一次学习做某事时，如何持续迭代？我知道这有点哲学意味，但请耐心听我说。我们是第一个做这些事的人，无论是商业化太阳能灌溉，还是增加融资、服务、碳业务和软件等等。因为你是一家初创公司，你无法模仿任何人。我认为最困难的部分是弄清楚如何不去看别人在做什么，尤其是在这个媒体无处不在、你只看到成功和失败故事的世界里，你试图找到方向："我要听吗？我不听吗？"并进行迭代。例如，我们如何将太阳能灌溉的成本从5000美元降到500美元？这本身就是一个问题。这涉及到技术创新、制造创新、运营创新和融资创新。你如何持续倾听那些首次体验你产品并给予反馈的客户？有时反馈是矛盾的，因为他们也在学习。所以我认为，在内部培养的最困难的技能是能够根据我们获得的新数据改变我们的想法。与其说这是特定的技术障碍，不如说是一种文化和行为障碍，我们必须不断加强，以帮助我们持续创新。否则，你就会停滞不前。我们的客户在成长。如果我们不能随着我们的成长而继续支持他们，我们就失败了，因为我们向他们承诺过会永远和他们在一起。他们把人生中最大的赌注押在了我们身上。他们在我们身上投入了他们有史以来最多的钱。如果我们在几个生长季节后就离开他们，我们就失败了。我认为，这种文化心态是最难扩展的，尤其是当你进入新的国家、面对新的人群时。

That was Samir Ibrahim, SunCulture's CEO and co-founder. Coming up, we're learning about SunCulture's tech in practice from Josephine Waweru, a Kenyan farmer who has used the solar pump to quite literally change her life. That's next after the break.

以上就是SunCulture首席执行官兼联合创始人萨米尔·易卜拉欣的分享。接下来，我们将从肯尼亚农民约瑟芬·瓦韦鲁那里了解SunCulture技术的实际应用，她使用太阳能水泵，实实在在地改变了自己的生活。广告之后，马上回来。

Welcome back, listeners. We're now going to hear from one of the farmers using SunCulture's solar pump technology, Josephine Waweru. She's a smallholder farmer from Sagana, Kenya, who first started out growing coffee like millions of rural farmers across the globe. Her greatest challenge was water until a solar-powered pump from SunCulture changed everything. In September 2019, Josephine installed the solar water pump on her three-acre farm. The pump works like this: using solar power, it pulls water from any water source — like the river Josephine gets hers from — then the water is pumped into a raised water storage tank during the day for later use. The pump's solar panels provide all its electricity; no batteries or inverters required. Since installing SunCulture's technology on her farm, Josephine no longer relies on costly diesel pumps and long, exhausting trips to the river, and she's able to avoid the challenges of unpredictable rainfall. She's saved over ten thousand Kenyan shillings a month, expanded into fish farming, and added potatoes, capsicum, and new coffee bushes to her crops. These aren't just marginal gains; they represent a shift from survival to growth.

欢迎回来，听众朋友们。现在，我们将听取使用SunCulture太阳能水泵技术的农民之一，约瑟芬·瓦韦鲁的分享。她是来自肯尼亚萨加纳的小农户，最初像全球数百万农村农民一样种植咖啡。她最大的挑战是水，直到SunCulture的太阳能水泵改变了一切。2019年9月，约瑟芬在她三英亩的农场安装了太阳能水泵。水泵的工作原理是这样的：利用太阳能，它从任何水源抽水——就像约瑟芬从河里取水一样——然后水在白天被抽到一个升高的储水罐中供以后使用。水泵的太阳能电池板提供所有电力；不需要电池或逆变器。自从在农场安装了SunCulture的技术后，约瑟芬不再依赖昂贵的柴油泵和漫长、疲惫的往返河边取水，也能够避免不可预测的降雨带来的挑战。她每月节省了超过一万肯尼亚先令，扩展了养鱼业，并在作物中增加了土豆、辣椒和新的咖啡树。这些不仅仅是边际收益；它们代表着从生存到发展的转变。

So Josephine, first of all, it's just such an honor to have you here. I'm glad to be here. How long have you been farming? The moment I started seeing me as a farmer was... it's a journey of four years, so it is a four years' growth.

那么，约瑟芬，首先，非常荣幸能邀请到你。我很高兴来到这里。你务农多久了？从我开始把自己视为农民的那一刻起……这是一段四年的旅程，所以是四年的成长。

What made you decide to start planting coffee? When my son was working outside the country as a coffee barista, he would come home for holiday for a month. And then when he comes home, he's just like his mother. He can't rest, either he's in school or he's training. When you want to become a good barista, you have to relate with coffee from tree to cup, so you have to see how coffee grows. And it got me thinking. I was like, "Okay, since this boy has become so passionate about coffee, and that is the path he wants to take, let me do something for him." So one day I called him and I said, "Why don't we do a few trees of coffee? And it would be easier for you because you will train at the same time. Everything is here. You don't have to move out of the farm." And he said that is a great idea. So we decided to plant the coffee. So I did like a thousand trees. Wow. In our partnership with him, and, um, I struggled so much with water.

是什么让你决定开始种植咖啡？当我儿子在国外做咖啡师时，他会回家度假一个月。当他回家时，他就像他妈妈一样。他停不下来，要么在学校，要么在训练。当你想成为一名好的咖啡师时，你必须了解咖啡从树到杯的整个过程，所以你必须看看咖啡是如何生长的。这让我思考。我想："好吧，既然这个男孩对咖啡变得如此热情，而且这就是他想走的道路，让我为他做点什么。" 所以有一天我打电话给他说："我们为什么不种几棵咖啡树呢？这对你来说会更容易，因为你可以同时接受训练。一切都在这里。你不必离开农场。"他说这是个好主意。所以我们决定种植咖啡。我种了大约一千棵树。哇。在与他的合作中，嗯，我在用水方面非常挣扎。

So what techniques were you using to grow your coffee before you started to use the solar pumps? I used to hire diesel pumps. It comes with a lot of cost, and at times you end up not even getting to the harvest, having a good harvest, because like, at times you hire someone, they say they're coming and then they don't come. And you know, a plant needs water when it needs water. And the diesel pumps were pumping water... Yeah, yeah... from the local water from, ah, from the river. There's a river. So I was getting the water all the way from the 400 meters from where my place is. And that was a little bit tough.

那么，在你开始使用太阳能水泵之前，你用什么技术种植咖啡？我以前租用柴油水泵。这成本很高，而且有时你甚至无法收获，获得好收成，因为有时你雇了人，他们说会来，然后却没来。你知道，植物需要水的时候就需要水。柴油水泵当时是从……是的，是的……从当地的河里抽水。有一条河。所以我得从离我家400米远的地方取水。那有点困难。

So you said you've really been farming for about four years. So at what point did you start using the solar pumps? Before I had the solar pump, with the solar pumps... my coffee was truly drying. I was at the point of losing the coffee, and I had like capsicum on the farm, I had cabbage, and they all needed water. I really cried so many times. You are speaking to the plant. I tell them, "My babies, don't worry, I will find something for you." At times I carry two jars and start watering, but how far can I go with that? Yeah. And I really needed a solution as soon as possible. And then I got the solar pump. And things really changed.

你说你真正务农大约四年了。那么你是什么时候开始使用太阳能水泵的？在我拥有太阳能水泵之前，没有太阳能水泵的时候……我的咖啡真的要干死了。我差点就失去那些咖啡树了，而且我农场里还有辣椒、卷心菜，它们都需要水。我真的哭了很多次。你跟植物说话。我告诉它们："我的宝贝们，别担心，我会为你们找到办法的。"有时我提着两个罐子开始浇水，但这能解决多大问题呢？是的。我真的迫切需要解决方案。然后我得到了太阳能水泵。事情真的改变了。

That's amazing. So a very big difference between using the diesel pump and then now the solar pump. And you've been using this now on your farm for a few years. Are you seeing that farmers are willing to adopt the technology, and especially since you've proven how well it works?

这太神奇了。所以使用柴油泵和现在使用太阳能泵之间差别很大。你在农场已经用了几年了。你是否看到农民们愿意采用这项技术，尤其是你已经证明了它的效果有多好？

It is so fun to be in my farm because every day there's a new idea growing. It's working so well. So we've added more coffee because we want to do coffee in large scale. And then we also do maize. Every farmer who comes to my farm and sees how I'm enjoying water... and I usually tell them, "I just need to power the sun and I'm good to go." And it is a climate-smart product. They are like, "Where can I get this?" In the first two months after my pump, I had like almost 20 people, farmers, who already adopted the same, the same product. And right now I think I have over 50 farmers who are using the same product and they're loving it. And it's become so easy because you don't have to think they're accelerating prices of the diesel every day.

在我的农场里真是太有趣了，因为每天都有新的想法在生长。它运行得非常好。所以我们增加了更多的咖啡，因为我们想大规模种植咖啡。然后我们也种玉米。每个来我农场看到我如何享受用水便利的农民……我通常会告诉他们："我只需要太阳的能量，我就可以开始了。"而且这是一种气候智能型产品。他们问："我在哪里可以买到这个？"在我安装水泵后的头两个月，就有差不多20个农民已经采用了同样的产品。现在我想有超过50个农民在使用同样的产品，他们都很喜欢。这变得如此简单，因为你不用再担心柴油价格每天都在上涨。

I think one of the powerful things I took away from your talk was that farming is business. It's an opportunity. And you've talked about expanding your coffee production, maize... So you're seeing this as a numbers game in a really fascinating way. When did you start to see that return on your investment and this risk that you took of this new technology?

我认为从你的谈话中得到的一个有力启示是：农业是生意，是机会。你谈到扩大咖啡生产、玉米种植……所以你以一种非常吸引人的方式将其视为数字游戏。你是什么时候开始看到这项新技术的投资回报和你所承担的风险带来的收益的？

When I could not even worry anymore about what I will serve on the table. I have something in my pocket so I can decide what project comes next. So we always have a plan of the things we want to do because we are building something and we think it's going to be big one day there at the farm. It's all about finding something to fall back to. We are so uncertain of what is going to happen to the world in the next year. So you have to make sure there's something that if your child comes back home, there is always something they could fall back to.

当我甚至不再担心餐桌上的食物时。我口袋里有了钱，所以我可以决定下一个项目是什么。所以我们总是对我们想做的事情有计划，因为我们正在建设一些东西，我们认为有一天它会在农场变得很大。这一切都是为了找到可以依靠的东西。我们对明年世界会发生什么非常不确定。所以你必须确保，如果你的孩子回家，总有一些东西可以依靠。

Yeah. What kind of conversations are you having with other farmers or even young people about this opportunity? Young people need to know you can't stick with just one skill. You learn as many skills as possible. That is the only way you get to survive in this world because things are changing. And I usually challenge them to look into the soil way because there is a lot of money in the soil. You just have to look. Yeah, there's a lot of money in the soil. Your 1,000 can grow into millions; your 10 shillings can grow into thousands.

是的。你与其他农民甚至年轻人就这个机会进行什么样的对话？年轻人需要知道你不能只固守一项技能。你要尽可能多地学习技能。这是你在这个世界上生存的唯一途径，因为事物在变化。我通常会激励他们关注土地，因为土壤里有很多钱。你只需要去发现。是的，土壤里有很多钱。你的1000（货币单位）可以增长到数百万；你的10先令可以增长到数千。

As a final question to you, what gives you hope? My hope lies in this generation and the generations to come. And I pray to God I'll be around to see this change that is going to come through if we just sit down and do the right thing and make sure that we create something in our young generation, that we go far. I'll be in a position to say that can be very possible, and that is what I'm looking forward to.

作为最后一个问题，什么给你希望？我的希望寄托在这一代和子孙后代身上。我向上帝祈祷，只要我们能坐下来做正确的事，确保在我们年轻一代中创造一些东西，让我们走得更远，我就能活着看到这一变化到来。我将有资格说这是非常可能的，而这正是我所期待的。

Josephine, thank you so much for taking the time and congratulations on all of your successes and just all of the work that you're doing. Thank you so much.

约瑟芬，非常感谢你抽出时间，祝贺你取得的所有成功以及你所做的一切工作。非常感谢。

That's Josephine Waweru, farmer from Sagana, Kenya.

以上就是来自肯尼亚萨加纳的农民约瑟芬·瓦韦鲁的分享。