PepsiCo Contributes to Sustainable Food System

PepsiCo Contributing to Sustainable Food Systems As one of the world's largest food and beverage companies and simultaneously one of the world's largest agricultural operations, PepsiCo continues to contribute to the creation of a sustainable food system at every point of the value chain from farm to end consumer, in line with its PepsiCo Positive (Pep+) strategy. PepsiCo Turkey continues to implement highly significant work in line with global targets within Positive Agriculture, the third pillar of this strategy alongside Positive Value Chain and Positive Choices. While working in numerous areas ranging from regenerative agriculture practices to contract farming, from farmer education programmes to technology adoption in agriculture, it also brings together stakeholders in the agricultural ecosystem through pioneering programmes that create shared awareness and understanding on these matters, supporting collective effort. With this approach, at the Positive Future in Agriculture Symposium held on 19 October 2022 Wednesday under PepsiCo's hosting, ideas, practices and projects on how to create a positive future in agriculture were discussed with the participation of PepsiCo Global President of Corporate Relations and PepsiCo Foundation President Roberto Azevêdo, PepsiCo Turkey General Manager Evrim Şen, and numerous experts in the field. In the "Positive Transformation in Agriculture: Regenerative Farming" session moderated by journalist Ilgaz Gürsoy at the Positive Future in Agriculture Symposium, PepsiCo Foundation Vice President C.D. Glin, Anadolu Meraları Co-founder Durukan Dudu, and Ankara University Faculty of Agriculture Faculty Member Prof. Dr. İlkay Dellal held an engaging and productive discussion on regenerative agriculture. In the "Access to Food and Creating Sustainable Food Systems" session moderated by Bloomberg HT television's İrfan Donat, Basic Needs Association General Manager Nil Tibukoğlu, social entrepreneur and chef Ebru Baybara Demir, founder of the "From Soil to Table" initiative, and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry European Union Coordination Department Head and Food Protection Campaign Coordinator Zeynep Özkan addressed sustainable food systems. In the symposium's final session, also moderated by İrfan Donat, under the title "The Future of Agriculture and Young Generations' Interest in Agriculture," Targi founder and farmer Ahmet Sümer, Tabit Smart Agriculture Technologies Inc. Co-founder Tülin Akın, and Dryland Farming founder and CEO Dr. Ece Aynur Onur discussed through good examples what can be done to increase young people's interest in agriculture.

PepsiCo Global President of Corporate Relations and PepsiCo Foundation President Roberto Azevêdo, noting that PepsiCo has been in Turkey for 60 years and operates one of PepsiCo's most strategically important global operations in Turkey, made the following remarks on the subject:

"As PepsiCo, over the past few years we have significantly accelerated our sustainability efforts worldwide. Our entire purpose and goal is to help create a more efficient, more resilient, more sustainable food system. By making the system more sustainable, we believe we can help address some of the fundamental challenges the world faces, from hunger and malnutrition to climate change and inequality. We feel responsible for this, being one of the world's leading agricultural companies with products consumed by more than one billion people daily in more than 200 countries and regions, with 55% of our revenues coming from food products, sourcing 25 different products from 28.3 million acres across 30 countries. Because of our scale, we believe we can make significant contributions in this area. Under the Pep+ strategy, we have strong targets across many areas, particularly agriculture, which is the focus of today's meeting. We have already made significant progress on these targets in Turkey. We sustainably source 100% of our potatoes and corn in Turkey through our Sustainable Agriculture Program. We are implementing highly significant work within regenerative agriculture in Turkey. Through Agro Academy we provide training and financial support to Turkish farmers. Certainly, there is much more work to be done to support positive agriculture and our farmers. While we face obstacles, meetings like this give us great hope. To achieve a sustainable food system, we can only overcome the challenges ahead through collaboration and cooperation. That is why we believe today's Positive Future in Agriculture Symposium and other such meetings like the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference will provide important contributions to the transformation of food systems."  

PepsiCo Turkey General Manager Evrim Şen, noting that PepsiCo Turkey is implementing important work within the framework of Positive Agriculture and has a very large-scale agricultural ecosystem, expressed his views on the matter as follows:

"As PepsiCo Turkey, we have a successful agricultural team of 266 skilled professionals. We produce 63% of potato production for chips in Turkey through contract farming with our farmers across 50,000 acres in 20 provinces. Raising awareness among our farmers is one of our most critical issues. To this end, for 15 years we have supported our farmers through Agro Academy. To date, our academy has provided over 20,000 person-hours of training. We place great emphasis particularly on technology use in agriculture and the use of new generation machinery. Thanks to our technology investments, we have increased net field productivity by 30% since 2010 for the farmers we collaborate with; storage losses have decreased by 26%. Carbon emissions from unit potato production have been reduced by 50%. Through our work on low-pressure irrigation technologies and productivity increases, we have achieved a 50% reduction in water used per unit in agriculture in Turkey. Thanks to the digital applications we use, we provide 50% of the data for Europe's PepsiCo ecosystem as the Turkey team. As PepsiCo Turkey, from organic waste generated in our food factories, we first produce biogas, and then produce our own organo-mineral fertilizer, Naturalis, by enriching the resulting pulp with minerals. Through our "Regenerative Agriculture Practices in Potatoes" project, we are implementing regenerative agriculture practices across 2,350 acres total. With this work, we will reach PepsiCo's global target of 100% transition to regenerative agriculture practices by 2030 two years early. We also place great importance on collaboration related to regenerative agriculture. Recently, with support from the PepsiCo Foundation and in collaboration with Anadolu Meraları, our Lay's brand implemented a wonderful project in Konya. Within our "Lay's Regenerative Agriculture" project, we grew potatoes, sugar beets, sunflowers and corn using regenerative agriculture practices on our land in Konya. We educated the farmers we invited to our site about these practices and provided them with the necessary training to use them on their own land. From the first harvest under this project, we donated 60 tons of potatoes obtained to food banks in Konya and Istanbul through Basic Needs Association (TİDER), another stakeholder among our guests today, to reach those in need. The visit of approximately one thousand farmers to our application site has increased their awareness in regenerative agriculture. We have reached 200 farmers in our training activities. Through our grant programme, we support 75 farmers. As PepsiCo, we believe that a sustainable food system is a shared concern for all of us, and we support collaboration on this matter."