PepsiCo announces 2nd round of projects funded by its global agriculture accelerator

New Delhi

Global food and beverage major PepsiCo has announced the continuation of its global agriculture accelerator, the Positive Agriculture Outcomes (PAO) Fund, by granting funding to 14 business projects in India and 10 other countries to address some of the most intractable challenges facing agriculture today.

Projects from the PAO Fund’s inaugural investment are the focus of PepsiCo’s latest, four-part digital video series, “Growing Our Future”, the company said in a press note.

The series elaborates on how PepsiCo has partnered with farmers in Punjab to develop kilns that can turn their agricultural waste into fertilizer known as biochar, and also looks at how it is working with farmers in countries like Thailand, Greece and Brazil to help them adapt to climate change.

“We’re in a race to reach the world’s 1.5-degree target and, to do our part, PepsiCo has set a range of ambitious PepsiCo Positive goals, including expanding regenerative agriculture practices and building the resilience of those in our agricultural supply chain by preparing them for a changing climate,” said Rob Meyers, Vice President of Global Sustainable Agriculture.

“Reaching PepsiCo’s – and our planet’s – goals will require fresh thinking and innovation from our agriculture teams and partners all over the world, which is why the PAO Fund was created to make it a bit easier for good ideas to get off the ground.”

Launched in August 2021, the PAO Fund offers PepsiCo market teams co-investment to accelerate diverse and innovative Positive Agriculture projects. The investments are designed to “de-risk” promising initiatives while accelerating the development of innovative technologies and approaches that can help scale the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.

In 2022, the PAO Fund is making investments in projects that span a range of commodities, supply chains, time horizons and PepsiCo business units, but all are focused on either testing new regenerative technology or approach, helping farmers build climate resilience, or developing new sustainable “landscapes”.

In total, the PAO Fund is providing ongoing support to over 20 different projects around the world through grants totaling more than $7.4mn awarded in 2021 and 2022.

“With support from the PAO Fund, we’ve been able to generate much greater engagement and innovation both at the farm level and through closer collaboration with our global teams,” said Haseeb Malik, Senior Manager of Agriculture APAC, PepsiCo. “This work is not only helping to advance our Pep+ goals in the market, but it’s also meaningfully improving the lives of the farmers we’re working with.”

The series “Growing Our Future” looks at how PepsiCo is working with farmers in Thailand to help them adapt to climate change, how farmers in Greece are adopting more efficient irrigation systems to adapt to increased drought, and how PepsiCo is supporting research in Brazil to help potato farmers improve soil health.

For India, the series elaborates on how PepsiCo has partnered with farmers in Punjab to develop kilns that can turn their agricultural waste into fertilizer known as biochar.

In recent years, PepsiCo India’s Pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) agenda in the supply chain of potatoes has created awareness and impact in Punjab and West Bengal, helping farmers manage paddy crop residue by ploughing back into soils and conversion of paddy straw into "biochar " through the process of pyrolysis. PepsiCo India is also funding the infrastructure (retort kilns) to help growers in these states.

These initiatives have helped improve soil health and reduce practices such as stubble burning that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Positive Agriculture, one pillar of the company’s Pep+ agenda, is the company’s aim to source crops and ingredients in a way that accelerates regenerative agriculture and strengthens farming communities. It includes goals to, by 2030, spread the adoption of regenerative farming practices across 7mn acres, improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in its agricultural supply chain, and sustainably source 100 per cent of its key ingredients.