Launches New Online Series – "Growing Our Future" – Showcasing Game-Changing Regenerative Agriculture Initiatives
PURCHASE, N.Y., Oct. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- PepsiCo (NASDAQ: PEP) today announced the continuation of its global agriculture accelerator, the Positive Agriculture Outcomes (PAO) Fund, by granting 14 business projects across 11 countries funding 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," 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 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 PepsiCo investments in over 20 different projects, estimated to total more than $27 million through 2026.
"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 AMESA, 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."
Projects from the PAO Fund's inaugural investment are the focus of PepsiCo's latest, four-part digital video series, "Growing Our Future." The series 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, how PepsiCo has partnered with farmers in Punjab, India to develop kilns that can turn their agricultural waste into fertilizer, and how PepsiCo is supporting research in Brazil to help potato farmers improve soil health.
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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About PepsiCo
PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $79 billion in net revenue in 2021, driven by a complementary beverage and convenient foods portfolio that includes Lay's, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Quaker, and SodaStream. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including many iconic brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.
Guiding PepsiCo is our vision to Be the Global Leader in Beverages and Convenient Foods by Winning with PepsiCo Positive (pep+). pep+ is our strategic end-to-end transformation that puts sustainability and human capital at the center of how we will create value and growth by operating within planetary boundaries and inspiring positive change for planet and people. For more information, visit www.pepsico.com.
PepsiCo Cautionary Statement
Statements in this release that are "forward-looking statements" are based on currently available information, operating plans and projections about future events and trends. Terminology such as "aim," "anticipate," "believe," "drive," "estimate," "expect," "expressed confidence," "forecast," "future," "goal," "guidance," "intend," "may," "objective," "outlook," "plan," "position," "potential," "project," "seek," "should," "strategy," "target," "will" or similar statements or variations of such words and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such terms. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause PepsiCo's actual results to differ materially from those predicted in such forward looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: damage to PepsiCo's reputation or brand image; water scarcity; disruption of PepsiCo's manufacturing operations or supply chain, including increased commodity, packaging, transportation, labor and other input costs; climate change or measures to address climate change; and failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations.
For additional information on these and other factors that could cause PepsiCo's actual results to materially differ from those set forth herein, please see PepsiCo's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
[1] Sustainable landscapes are marked by collaboration between stakeholders within a designated region — often spanning multiple crops, sectors and land uses — to advance shared sustainability goals while reconciling and optimizing multiple social, economic and environmental objectives.
SOURCE PepsiCo, Inc.
