Fertiliser company Yara and PepsiCo Europe have today (Tuesday, July 16) announced a long-term partnership which will involve farmers in five countries.
The agreement, which aims to “drive the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices”, will include around 1,000 farms, covering a total of around 128,000ha, in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland and the UK.
The participating farmers will be provided with crop nutrition products, advice and precision farming digital tools.
The project will initially focus on potatoes, a key crop for PepsiCo, and then expand to other crops such as oats and corn.
The partnership will support the 24 percentage point reduction target in production emissions and the 5 percentage point reduction target for in-field emission while maintaining crop quality and yields, Yara said.
Fertiliser
Under the agreement, Yara will deliver up to 165,000t of fertiliser per year to PepsiCo, covering around 25% of their crop fertiliser needs in Europe by 2030.
These fertilisers will be mostly Yara Climate Choice fertilisers, which include low-carbon footprint fertilisers produced from either renewable ammonia or low-carbon ammonia.
The mix will also include Yara’s standard nitrate-based mineral fertilisers produced using natural gas.
It is planned that the delivery will consist of entirely of low-carbon footprint fertiliser by 2030 as Yara increases production and technologies mature.
The partnership will also scale up sustainable nutrient management practices across the PepsiCo farmer groups.
This will include full season crop and soil data capture and monitoring using the latest technology.
Archana Jagannathan, chief sustainability officer at PepsiCo Europe, said that the partnership with Yara aligns with the company’s end-to-end transformation, known as PepsiCo Positive (pep+).
“Providing our farmers with fertilisers 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,” Jagannathan said.
Monica Andres Enríquez, executive vice-president for Europe at Yara, emphasised the importance of collaboration across the food chain when it comes to climate change efforts.
“Decarbonising food production will be critical to delivering on the Paris Agreement – and farmers will play a key role in helping us get there,” she said.
