PepsiCo Europe and Yara collaborate to reduce carbon emissions in crop production.

PepsiCo Europe and Yara have announced a long-term partnership in Europe with the goal of providing farmers with crop nutrition programs to help decarbonize the food value chain.

Through this partnership, participating PepsiCo Europe farmers will receive top-notch crop nutrition products, expert advice, and precision farming digital tools. This will enable them to enhance nutrient use efficiency (NUE), increase yields, and reduce the carbon footprint of their crops. Yara, the leading crop nutrition company in Europe, will supply PepsiCo with the necessary products and services.

Yara is committed to delivering up to 165,000 tons of fertilizer annually to PepsiCo, meeting about 25% of their crop fertilizer needs in Europe by 2030. A majority of these fertilizers will be Yara Climate Choice fertilizers, which are produced using low-carbon footprint methods like renewable ammonia or low-carbon ammonia via carbon capture and storage (CCS). The partnership aims to transition to using Yara Climate Choice fertilizers exclusively by 2030 as production scales up and technologies advance.

This collaboration emphasizes both companies’ dedication to creating a more sustainable food system in alignment with the European Union’s climate objectives. Additionally, the partnership will support farmers through transition costs to ensure their livelihoods are not negatively impacted.

Archana Jagannathan, Chief Sustainability Officer at PepsiCo Europe, stated, “This partnership with Yara aligns with our end-to-end transformation known as PepsiCo Positive (pep+), and will play a crucial role as we move towards a net-zero food system. Targeting Scope 3 emissions is a central focus of our pep+ agenda, and by providing our farmers with lower carbon footprint fertilizers, we can make significant progress towards achieving net zero by 2040.”

Similarly, Yara’s mission to responsibly feed the world and protect the planet is highlighted through this collaboration. Mónica Andrés Enríquez, Executive Vice President for Europe at Yara, commented, “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 make this vision a reality.”

The partnership will encompass approximately 1,000 farms across the European Union and the UK, covering around 128,000 hectares. Initially focusing on potatoes, a key crop for PepsiCo, the efforts will eventually expand to other crops such as oats and corn.

Fertilizers present a significant opportunity to reduce emissions, as fertilizer production and in-field emissions account for half of PepsiCo’s average potato carbon footprint in Europe.

Furthermore, this partnership will promote sustainable nutrient management practices among PepsiCo farmer groups, including thorough data capture and monitoring using tools like PepsiCo’s CropTrak and ML Analytics, alongside Yara’s digital solutions offering.