PepsiCo invests $216M into farmer partnerships for regenerative agriculture

Dive Brief:

• PepsiCo is investing $216 million into new regenerative agriculture projects that aim to deliver 3 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emission reduction and removal by 2030. The company said it will help farmers transition to more sustainable methods by establishing funding, education, peer networks and cost-sharing methods.
• The initiative establishes a partnership between PepsiCo and three farmer organizations serving areas across the United States: Soil and Water Outcomes Fund, Practical Farmers of Iowa and the IL Corn Growers Association.
• The projects, which span 3 million acres, help the soda and snacks giant get closer to its goal of spreading regenerative agriculture across 7 million acres of its supply chain by the end of this decade.

Dive Insight:

PepsiCo expects the new partnerships to result in over half a million acres of regenerative farmland by the end of this year.

“We intend to be shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers as they work to make soil healthier, sequester carbon, improve watershed health and biodiversity, and improve their livelihoods,” said Jim Andrew, PepsiCo’s chief sustainability officer, in a statement.

Along with lowering its emissions, the company believes regenerative agriculture will improve its soil ecosystems, increase crop yields and improve farmer livelihoods, according to its website.

The CPG giant has prioritized teaching its farmers the new agriculture methods — such as planting cover crops including cereal rye, which suppresses weeds — and set many of them up within a network of other farmers to help one another, the company’s vice president of sustainable agriculture Rob Meyers told Food Dive last fall.

Dan Huber, a farmer from Columbia, Iowa, enrolled in PepsiCo’s program, said in 2022 that he saw an economic benefit after adopting the practices.

Other CPG programs that encourage farmers to plant new crops without providing more support do not do enough to make real sustainable change, said Practical Farmers of Iowa executive director Sally Worley in a statement.

“When we plug farmers into our powerful network and connect them with a peer network, educational resources, funding and technical support, they’re able to build more resilient farms,” Worley said. “We’re excited to continue partnering with PepsiCo and look forward to working together to create a more diversified and resilient agriculture.”

The continued investments signal how PepsiCo — the largest food CPG company in North America, according to Statista sales data — sees a benefit in reaching its 2030 goal to scale sustainable farming methods across its supply chain. Last year, PepsiCo and agriculture giant ADM announced a partnership to scale projects for corn, soy and wheat farmers that could reach 2 million acres of farmland.