Commodities Shuttle: Rural producer must be a strategic partner and an extension of the industry, says company director

Agribusiness has changed a lot in the last ten years and will change even more in the next ten. Sustainability has to be at the heart of business.

Industries, cooperatives, producers, associations and governments must build together an agenda that will lead to this.

The assessment is by Ricardo Galvão, agribusiness director at PepsiCo, a company in the food and beverage sector. Among the solutions are the adoption of regenerative agriculture and the search for the transformation of the entire chain.

For this, the work must be joint. “The industry needs the producer, and he needs our business”, says Galvão. In the specific case of PepsiCo, he claims that the producer is an extension of the company. It is a strategic partner.

With this partnership, the company hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the entire chain by 40% by 2030.

On the field side, regenerative agriculture will come from better land cover, use of less aggressive inputs, reduction of chemicals and more organic products.

On the industry side, some solutions may be important in this improvement in reducing gas emissions, such as the adoption of electric vehicles, vehicles powered by CNG and energy generation through solar panels.

The climate is changing a lot and there is no questioning that. The occurrence of extreme phenomena, such as excessive rain and intense drought, is increasingly constant, according to the company representative.

Agriculture has a great responsibility for sustainability, and the challenges ahead will be even greater with the increase in demand for food.

The activity, however, has to be profitable. This profitability can be brought about by new technologies. Doubling potato productivity in recent years, one of the main products purchased by the company, was a challenge. The next advances will not be easy either, according to him.

Galvão says that among PepsiCo’s main points in the search for sustainability is the implementation of regenerative agriculture practices.

The goal is to take the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices to 2.8 million hectares in the world by 2030. The area corresponds to the planting space needed to supply the company with raw materials.

In addition, the raw material to be used in 2030 must be entirely of sustainable origin. The company also aims to improve its producers’ livelihoods and increase the participation of women in this production chain.

For Galvão, sustainable practices must be accompanied by an increase in productivity, which should also generate economic and social security in the countryside.

He highlights the efficiency of partnerships. Pepsico has joint programs with potato, corn and oat producers, and is also studying partnerships with wheat producers. This cereal is currently purchased from cooperatives and independent producers.

Partnerships mean security and predictability for the industry and for the producer. The industry has the product at the right time, and the producer has a fair price. Producing is easy, the difficult thing is to sell safely, according to the company’s director.

One of the main potato buyers in the country, PepsiCo acquires 122 thousand tons of the product per year, coming from six states. Different climates and adapted seeds always allow for production in one of these states, ranging from Rio Grande do Sul to Goiás.

According to PepsiCo, 100% of the potatoes used by the company today are already produced sustainably.

Coconut husk, another important product in the company’s chain, which was previously a problem, has now become a solution. 70 thousand tons of this residue are ground, which is transformed into soil cover and organomineral fertilizer.

Pepsico has established a partnership with IICA (Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture) to combat land degradation in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The objective is to increase sustainable agrifood production in the region, establishing conditions for collaboration on issues such as climate change, food security, innovation and technology.