PepsiCo is attempting to harness the collective knowledge of its vast agricultural network as it looks to future-proof potato supplies against mounting pressure from water availability, extreme weather, input costs and changing growing conditions.
One of the single largest buyers of potatoes globally, the Lay’s and Doritos maker works with around 300,000 farmers across its agricultural supply chains.
PepsiCo does not itself grow the potatoes on which some of its biggest brands depend, making the ability of individual growers to adapt increasingly important.
It recently brought together more than 140 growers, suppliers, agronomists and agricultural experts from over 35 countries for its Global Agro University in Hannover, Germany.
For Rob Meyers, PepsiCo’s vice president of global agriculture procurement, the goal is not simply to introduce farmers to new technologies. It is about allowing growers and agronomists facing similar problems to compare experiences and understand what actually works on the ground.
“It’s a broad spectrum of challenges,” Meyers told AgNavigator.
Extreme weather, changing growing cycles and water availability are prominent concerns. European potato growers have suffered waves of drought, while farmers are also wrestling with labour shortages and higher fuel and input costs.
“There is no like one answer globally,” Meyers said. “Probably what’s more important are what the growers are experiencing in their own particular regions [and] what we try to understand and work with them to mitigate.”
A ‘laser focus’ on getting the fundamentals right
Meyers said the challenges facing farmers reinforces the importance of a “laser focus” on the fundamentals of potato production, from seed and planting through to harvesting, storage, transportation and processing.
“Doing the fundamentals well... the backdrop of all the challenges sort of just highlights the need to do the fundamentals really, really well,” he said.
Water is one area attracting particular attention.
Meyers said growers at Agro University showed strong interest in work PepsiCo teams have conducted around improving soils to increase their water-holding capacity and adopting more water-efficient irrigation technologies.
“All of those kinds of things were really... a laser focus for folks that were experiencing those kinds of pressures in the ground,” he said.
“There is no easy answer to some of these challenges. And so you kind of fall back on doing the fundamentals.”
PepsiCo is also attempting to make agricultural knowledge easier to access.
Its Frito-Lay Ag knowledge-sharing platform gives growers and PepsiCo agronomists access to information about areas including successful potato production and managing pest and disease pressures. PepsiCo has also incorporated AI technology to make that information more readily accessible.
But Meyers argues digital information cannot entirely replace conversations between farmers.
“There’s really no replacement for having growers, giving them the ability to interact with each other, giving our agronomists the ability to interact with other growers, not just from the same region, but also globally,” he said.
From China to the US: why seeing another farmer do it matters
PepsiCo is approaching knowledge transfer at several levels.
Alongside its global Agro University, it uses demonstration farms, study tours and smaller regional meetings where perhaps a dozen growers from similar areas can discuss local challenges.
In one recent example, PepsiCo brought growers and agronomists from China to the US to learn about bed planting.
The relatively simple technique involves creating wider beds in which potatoes are planted, potentially enabling increased seeding rates while improving land productivity, water efficiency and nutrient-use efficiency.
But Meyers said the interesting part is what happens beyond the technical description.
Bed planting isn’t suitable everywhere. Farmers may need the appropriate soil type and modifications to machinery, while a seemingly small change can have consequences for the agronomy of the entire farming system.
“It’s actually kind of easy to... send them some materials on, ‘here’s what bed planting is’,” Meyers said.
The harder questions concern how a farmer actually converts an existing production system to the new approach and what worked, and didn’t work, for farmers who have already attempted it.
“That’s where the conversations are really rich,” he said. “It requires a little bit of face-to-face to talk through that, what worked, what didn’t.”
Could climate change move the potato map?
Knowledge sharing is also being combined with a longer-term attempt to anticipate what farmers will face.
Asked whether climate change could eventually alter where PepsiCo sources potatoes, Meyers acknowledged there could be geographical consequences.
“Definitely climate change is going to impact how we grow,” he said. “It may make some regions... less viable than others, but we’re focused on how do we adapt and mitigate to address the challenges.”
PepsiCo’s Climate Resilience Platform is being used to give its agricultural teams foresight into potential changes.
“It gives us the ability to look out to the end of the decade and understand, in a particular region, what are the impacts of climate change,” Meyers said.
Higher temperatures are only one possible impact. Changing weather patterns and growing seasons potentially create different risks depending on the location.
Giving growers and agronomists that intelligence, Meyers added, should allow them to better understand how they might mitigate those risks.
Regenerative agriculture: outcomes rather than ticking boxes
The approach also underpins PepsiCo’s philosophy towards regenerative agriculture.
Rather than prescribing a universal set of practices, Meyers said the business increasingly focuses on the outcomes it wants farmers to achieve, including improved soil health, water-use efficiency, nutrient-use efficiency and, ultimately, a more resilient farming operation.
PepsiCo considered whether its regenerative agriculture programme should amount to a checklist or “recipe” of practices, he explained, but moved away from that model.
“You can follow a checklist and not get the outcomes,” Meyers said. “The most important thing are those outcomes of better soil health and... things that lead to a more resilient and efficient operation.”
His analogy is baking a cake without being given the recipe.
Farmers know the outcome they are aiming for, but the ingredients and method required can vary between farming systems.
“It’s kind of like if you’re baking a cake and you don’t have the recipe for the cake, but you know you want a cake. How do you make it?” he said.
That makes implementation harder than handing farmers a standard prescription, but it also makes interactions between farmers, agronomists and technical specialists more important. In practice, Meyers added, the distinction between regenerative agriculture and good agronomy can become increasingly blurred.
‘Maybe the second most valuable thing in agriculture after soil is trust’
There is another reason PepsiCo is betting heavily on farmer-to-farmer communication: trust.
Changing a cultivation method generally means changing part of an interconnected agricultural system, creating both practical and financial risk for the grower.
Farmers are consequently more likely to listen to someone who understands their circumstances, Meyers argued, particularly another farmer operating under comparable conditions who has already made the transition.
That ability to see how another grower navigated the same problem can push a technology or practice from theoretical possibility towards practical adoption.
“Maybe the second most valuable thing in agriculture after the soil is trust,” Meyers said.
PepsiCo therefore sees part of its role not necessarily as providing every answer itself, but as connecting the people most likely to have them.
“In addition to making knowledge available, it’s also just bringing people together, sometimes from very far away, so that they can interact and engage in a sort of problem-solving exercise,” Meyers said.
Who pays for resilience?
That knowledge, however, does not remove the financial challenge.
New irrigation equipment, machinery or changes to farming systems require investment, while changing established production methods can itself expose farmers to additional risk.
Meyers said PepsiCo stops short of buying equipment for growers but tries to ensure the economics of its commercial relationships enable farmers to invest.
That is particularly important for potatoes because PepsiCo has long-term relationships with growers, in some instances extending across multiple generations.
“We do need farmers to invest in their future and [need to] understand what those economics look like for them,” Meyers said.
The company therefore discusses farmers’ cost structures, future investment requirements and pricing as part of its commercial relationships.
But Meyers suggested the risk associated with adopting a new production system can sometimes be as significant as the headline capital cost itself.
That brings PepsiCo’s strategy back to knowledge exchange. If one farmer can see how another has successfully introduced a new irrigation system, planting method or agronomic practice, the perceived risk of making that investment potentially falls.
And amid the intensifying pressures on farmers, Meyers’ message is strikingly straightforward: get the fundamentals right, give growers better foresight, and get farmers talking to other farmers.
