How PepsiCo, Mars and ADM Support Regenerative Agriculture
PepsiCo, Mars and ADM – three global leaders in food, drink and pet care – have joined forces to launch a regenerative agriculture programme in Poland, supporting 24 farmers in adopting sustainable practices across their crop rotations.
The initiative covers 5,454 hectares in total. Mars is assisting regenerative wheat across 3,359 hectares for pet care brands such as WHISKAS and PEDIGREE, while PepsiCo is advancing sustainable rapeseed cultivation across 2,160 hectares for some of its iconic brands like Lay's and Doritos.
Archana Jagannathan, Chief Sustainability Officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at PepsiCo, says: "Regenerative agriculture is a vital tool for enhancing soil health, strengthening farm resilience and reducing agricultural emissions, which can ultimately benefit farmers and their livelihoods.
"To drive meaningful impact at scale requires collaboration up and down the value chain. PepsiCo has been partnering with Polish farmers for more than 30 years, and this initiative with Mars, ADM and local farmers takes an integrated, systems-level approach that embeds regenerative practices across different crop rotations and supply chains.
"It also contributes to our global ambition to implement regenerative, restorative or protective practices over 10 million acres of land by 2030 and has the potential to generate learnings that can be lifted and scaled beyond a single country or region to help ensure the long-term resilience of the global food system."
Poland becomes testing ground for regenerative practices
Poland serves as a key regional benchmark for the trio's regenerative agriculture efforts.
By leveraging detailed data collection and rigorous impact measurement through the Cool Farm Tool (CFT), a sustainability calculator that helps farmers assess and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they can generate valuable insights that can inform future expansion in other markets.
In western Poland, this moves beyond single-crop sustainability efforts, instead focusing on a holistic approach which is farm-wide to strengthen soil health, improve water management and enhance long-term agricultural resilience.
This pre-competitive collaboration will help tackle the environmental impact of the agricultural supply chain. PepsiCo and Mars will help farmers to shift regenerative practices into a rotational agriculture system.
The approach will see farms systematically alternate different crops, such as cereals, legumes and cover crop blends, on the same land each season to help naturally replenish nutrients, break pest and disease cycles and improve soil structure.
Paul Gardner, Incorporated Lead Commercial VP & Chief Procurement Officer at Mars Pet Nutrition, adds: "Through this pre-competitive collaboration, Mars, PepsiCo and ADM are working together to help tackle the climate impacts of the agricultural supply chain.
"Working across shared crop rotations in this way, we can empower farmers to adopt more climate-smart practices over the long term and across multiple crop types and harvests that can help enhance soil health, reduce emissions and build farm resilience.
"This partnership model marks an important step toward a more sustainable food industry."
Technical support and financial incentives drive change
ADM, as an implementation partner, will play a key role by contributing both financial and technical resources to support the farmers transitioning to regenerative agriculture practices.
Katherine Pickus, Chief Sustainability Officer at ADM, says: "We are proud to support farmers through this partnership and enhance the resilience of the supply chain, which is crucial to the future of agriculture.
"This partnership with ADM, Mars and PepsiCo aims to harness insights and data from the project to drive the widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture practices across the wider Polish agricultural system.
"This initiative represents an exciting opportunity to help standardise and accelerate the implementation of regenerative farming methods, paving the way for a more resilient agricultural system."
Farmers are to be given the very latest in agricultural expertise, including hands-on training and guidance from technical specialists such as Biospheres.
These practices not only improve soil structure and water retention but also reduce reliance on synthetic inputs, helping farms adapt to climate-related stresses.
To speed up this programme and support carbon sequestration efforts, farmers will be given financial incentives depending on the specific practices they implement, such as adopting conservation tillage and cover cropping.
