Pepsico Promotes the Improvement of Sustainable Agriculture

PepsiCo announced its new worldwide program called Positive Agriculture, with the purpose of implementing regenerative agricultural practices on 2.8 million ha, equivalent to its entire agrarian footprint. In Mexico, the company has partnered with Proforest to boost Agrovita, a three-year program to implement regenerative agricultural practices on 12,000 ha in the states of Tabasco and Chiapas. The program plans to benefit 920 banana, cocoa and oil palm producers and impact the lives of approximately 37,600 people, of which 50 percent of them are women. According to the company, the plan aligns with actions to improve their communities' food security.

Several analysts and experts have indicated the importance of developing programs to achieve green recovery solutions. The company aims to reduce at least 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, improve people's workflow in its agricultural supply chain and sustainably obtain key ingredients for production.

According to Minister of Agriculture (Sader), the national countryside was one of the few industries that developed during 2020, despite the pandemic. Víctor Villalobos, Minister of Agriculture, acknowledged challenges such as the lack of programs to target soils and recover them with good practices. In that sense, according to Villalobos, Mexico has the scientific and technological support to address and promote sustainable agriculture with the assistance of public and private partnerships. As recently reported by MBN, companies like Bimbo have joined the path to improve the Mexican agricultural fields by sustainably ensuring its farming field. The project aims to bring the producers closer to sustainable practices and enhance the improvement of technologies. The program has shown extraordinary results with two pilot projects: Bimbo Sustainable Wheat and Bimbo Sustainable Maize. In addition, the company has allied with strategic partners, such as Cargill. Bram Govaerts, global director of Strategic Development of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), indicates the great possibilities in the country to further develop productive pilot projects, mainly due to a vast network of nearly 500 thousand producers in the southern part of the country.

Regenerative agriculture promotes ecological practices to restore ecosystems, nourish and reactivate the soil and reduce the costs for fertilizers, insecticides and chemical fertilizers. It positively impacts the productivity of the yields and creates jobs and produces quality food to strengthen the communities' food sovereignty. "Any plan to address the urgent challenges facing the global food system must take into account agriculture, the source of food for billions of people and tackle the climate change and inequality," stated the president and CEO of PepsiCo Ramón Laguarta.