PepsiCo enters partnership to decarbonise crop production in Europe

Entering a long-term partnership, PepsiCo Europe and Yara have joined forces to decarbonise crop production through crop nutrition programmes for farmers.

In the new multi-country partnership, PepsiCo Europe farmers will receive crop nutrition products, advice, and precision farming digital tools. This initiative aims to enhance nutrient use efficiency (NUE), increase yields, and lower the carbon footprint of their crops. Yara, Europe’s leading crop nutrition company, will provide PepsiCo with these products and services.

As part of its support, Yara is set to deliver up to 165,000 tons of fertiliser per year to PepsiCo, covering around 25 percent of their crop fertiliser needs in Europe by 2030.

According to the companies, the fertilisers will be mostly Yara Climate Choice fertilisers, which include low-carbon footprint fertilisers produced from either renewable ammonia (Herøya, Norway) or low-carbon ammonia via carbon capture and storage (CCS), currently under construction in Yara Sluiskil.

The mix will feature Yara’s premium nitrate-based mineral fertilisers made with natural gas, resulting in a carbon footprint approximately 50 percent lower than most non-EU fertilisers due to catalyst technology. The partnership aims to gradually transition to Yara Climate Choice fertilisers as production expands and technologies advance, with the goal of using 165,000 tons per year of Yara Climate Choice fertilisers by 2030.

Commenting on the new partnership, Archana Jagannathan, Chief Sustainability Officer at PepsiCo Europe, shared: “This partnership with Yara aligns with our end-to-end transformation known as PepsiCo Positive (pep+) and will be critical as we transition towards the net-zero food system of the future. Targeting Scope 3 emissions is central to our pep+ agenda, but it can be one of the most challenging areas to directly influence.

“Providing our farmers with fertilizers that have a lower carbon footprint and supporting them to improve crop nutrition end-to-end will allow us to make a significant step towards our target of achieving net zero by 2040,”

Meanwhile, Mónica Andrés Enríquez, Executive Vice President for Europe at Yara, explained that she believes in order to grow a nature-positive food future and transform our food system “we need to collaborate across the food value chain.

“We’re excited to work with first movers like PepsiCo to help make this a reality. Decarbonising food production will be critical to delivering on the Paris Agreement – and farmers will play a key role in helping us get there.”

The partnership aims to promote regenerative agricultural practices across approximately 1,000 farms, covering around 128,000 hectares in the European Union and the UK. Initially focusing on potatoes, a crucial crop for PepsiCo, the efforts will later expand to include other crops such as oats and corn.

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In addition, PepsiCo has claimed that fertilizers are the “biggest opportunity to reduce emissions as fertiliser production and in-field emissions account for half of PepsiCo’s average potato carbon footprint in Europe”.

The partnership will enhance sustainable nutrient management practices among PepsiCo’s farmer groups by implementing full-season crop and soil data capture and monitoring through PepsiCo’s CropTrak and ML Analytics tools. This initiative will be supported by Yara’s digital solutions, including digital satellite imagery via the AtFarm platform and soil analysis through MegaLab.