Water and Agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the greatest opportunities to address climate change, biodiversity loss and rising rural-urban inequality. Positive agriculture changes that are sustainable, resilient and inclusive have the potential to feed the world’s growing population while improving the global food system. These changes will require partnership and commitment among global leaders, and PepsiCo is rising to meet that challenge.

At its core, PepsiCo is an agricultural company. A steady, sustainable supply of crops is central to our business and we source crops across 60 countries and support over 100,000 agricultural jobs. So helping to meet the challenges of global agriculture is a key focus for us.

At PepsiCo, we’re doing more than just minimizing our own impact. We’re building on the progress we’ve made over many years and setting new goals designed to make a net positive impact in sustainable agriculture across our global value chain. In April 2021, we announced a new Positive Agriculture ambition, including a 2030 goal to spread regenerative farming practices across 7 million acres (approximately equal to our entire agricultural footprint). We estimate this effort will eliminate at least 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by the end of the decade. Additionally, by 2030, we aim to improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in our agricultural supply chain, and sustainably source 100% of our key ingredients.

Globally

Each year, PepsiCo sources more than 1 billion tons of agriculture products ranging from potatoes and oats to sugar, oranges, and more. As a result, PepsiCo supports 100,000+ jobs in the global agricultural supply-chain.

On a local level

In the Kingdom, we directly engage individual farms to promote innovation, knowledge transfer and agricultural best practices while ensuring increased productivity and quality. We are focused on making agriculture more sustainable, intelligent, and inclusive to help meet future needs while also caring for the natural world and agricultural communities. Our goal is to advance environmental, social, and economic benefits to communities in the country by supporting practices and technologies that promote improved farmer livelihoods and agricultural resiliency.

In 2021 we spent close to $31.4 million (over SAR 117 million) on locally grown potatoes supplied by five large scale strategic growers in Saudi Arabia. Our partnership with just one of the potato growers in the Kingdom creates over 3,200 jobs in the agricultural sector. We also support more than 700 local suppliers to our foods business, and more who provide services for our bottlers.

PepsiCo’s Saudi snacks business achieved 22% reduction vs 2015 baseline under the pillar of agricultural water efficiency for the supply of potatoes that are used in the supply chain for the snacks business, via:

• Harvesting and storage of potatoes outside of peak summer months.
• Collaborating with suppliers to enhance irrigation systems efficiency
• Advanced in-field water monitoring such as weather stations and soil moisture probes.
• Leveraging top digital technology such as satellites driving remote irrigation systems, field-based sensors, and drones

Water

As a food and beverage company, we are acutely aware of the critical role water plays in the food system, and our vision is that wherever in the world PepsiCo operates, water resources will be in a better state because of our presence.

Our long-term water strategy aims to achieve sustainable water security for our business, natural ecosystems and local communities that depend on an accessible and reliable supply of clean, safe water. We work to understand the water challenges at a local level and support collaborative solutions that address the specific needs of the watershed. PepsiCo’s Net Water Positive ambition aims to reduce absolute water use and replenish back into the local watershed more than 100% of the water used at company-owned and third-party sites in high water-risk areas.

We are focused on improving operational and agricultural water-use efficiency, local water replenishment in high water-risk areas, public education, advocacy for smart water policies and regulations, and adoption of best practices with key partners in the community. We work to understand the water challenges at a local level and support solutions that address the specific needs of the watershed.

Water replenishment

PepsiCo recognizes that watershed health and giving back water we have used is critical to the continuity of our business, our social license to operate and the health of our communities. We are driving multiple initiatives to help us meet our water replenishment goal to replenish more than 100% of the water we draw for our operations in high-risk watersheds by 2030 and improve overall ecosystem health and biodiversity.

We have a target to replenish 100% of the water we consume in both our snack plants in Riyadh and Dammam. We have focused our efforts on achieving 100% water replenishment in our Riyadh plant through the installation of efficient irrigation technology in the Wadi Dawasir region at various alfalfa and wheat farmers in Q4 2021. The installation of the equipment and training of the farmers is in progress, and the aim was for PepsiCo to replenish 100% of the water it consumes in Riyadh by the end of 2022, but we reached the target earlier.

Water conservation

We are working to create a positive impact in high water risk areas, extend safe water access, and promote stronger governance. We also recognize water as a human right and are committed to working with partners to help ensure that water security is part of the creation of a more sustainable food system.

Over the last decade, we have achieved a 25% reduction in water use in the Kingdom. PepsiCo was presented with the Stockholm Industry Water Award in 2012 for its many water stewardship initiatives, many of which are implemented in Saudi Arabia. Since 2013, our Al Jomaih bottling plant has invested over $37million SAR ($10MM USD) in water sustainability initiatives across its value chain, resulting in a 40% reduction in water consumption.