We're continuing our global agriculture accelerator, the Positive Agriculture Outcomes (PAO) Fund, by giving grants to 14 business projects across 11 countries - including two in the UK - to address some of the most intractable challenges facing agriculture today.
“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.
“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 .”
ROB MEYERS, VICE PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE, PEPSICO
Launched in August 2021, the PAO Fund offers our 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 our business units, but all are focused on either testing a new regenerative technology or approach, helping farmers build climate resilience, or developing new sustainable “landscapes[1].” Across 2021 and 2022, the PAO Fund catalyzed our investments in over 20 different projects, estimated to total more than $27 million through 2026.
Our UK projects
Here in the UK, we've received funding from the PAO for two fantastic initiatives both designed to help our growers spread regenerative agriculture practices.
The first, is a project designed to improve on farm biodiversity and enhance wildlife habitats while maintaining a productive farm. The funding will help the team scale up progress already made in this space to help Quaker Oat growers in Scotland make their farms more biodiverse. The project will bring together farming and wildlife experts to create a science-based approach and recommendations which work both for the grower and for wildlife.
Elsewhere in the UK, the PAO Fund is supporting our Living Roots project, created to improve the soil health on fields where we grow potatoes used to make Walkers crisps. This long-term change in practice will encourage more growers to use cover crops in the bare winter fields destined to become potato fields in the spring. The use of cover crops will improve soil health and reduce the environmental impact of commercial cropping. Funding will be used to scale up the project, rolling the practices out across all suppliers, gathering valuable data on the benefits of a cover crop, which include reducing carbon emissions as well as increasing the amount of organic matter in soil.
Positive Agriculture, one pillar of the company’s pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) 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 7 million acres, improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in its agricultural supply chain, and sustainably source 100% of its key ingredients. For more information about PepsiCo’s Positive Agriculture agenda visit here.
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