Farmers in Poland are receiving support from PepsiCo, Mars, and ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) to adopt regenerative agriculture in the food and pet supply chain. These organisations are assisting 24 farmers to transition to more sustainable, long term crop systems. The initiative covers a total of 5.454 hectares, with Mars supporting regenerative wheat across 3,359 hectares for pet care brands Whiskas and Pedigree. PepsiCo is spearheading sustainable rapeseed cultivation across 2,160 hectares for its brands Lays and Doritos.
The initiative goes beyond single crop sustainability, taking a holistic, farm wide approach to improve soil health, water management, and long-term agricultural resilience. The farmers will also receive latest agricultural expertise, hands on training and guidance from technical experts such as Biospheres. The session will cover practices such as conservation tillage, which is concerned with minimal soil disruption, and cover cropping, where specific plants are grown to protect and enrich the soil.
Deploying Regenerative Agriculture in Poland
As part of a pre competitive collaboration assist farmers in adopting regenerative practices, Mars and PepsiCo will team up with some farmers to integrate regenerative agriculture into crop rotation, a farming approach that methodically alternates between crops, such as cereals, legumes and cover crop blends. By rotating crops on the same land each season to replenish nutrients, break pest and disease cycles, and improve soil structure.
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ADM will contribute technical and financial resources to assist the farmers adopting regenerative agriculture. The farmers will receive financial incentives tied to the regenerative practice they implement and farm’s soil condition at the outset.
The scheme is structured to provide benefits over, helping to offset initial investment and generate long term value for farmers. The practices will not only focus on improving soil structure and water retention but also reduce dependence on synthetic inputs, helping farms adapt to climate related stresses.
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.
Regenerative agriculture is an important tool for enhancing soil health, strengthening farm resilience, and reducing agricultural emissions, which can benefit farmers and their livelihoods. PepsiCo aims to implement regenerative, restorative, or protective practices over 10 million acres of land by 2030 globally, and this project can help generate essential 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.
Mobilizing Data for Supply Chain
The shift from single crop approaches to diversified systems is gaining traction in Western Poland, helping to combat soil degradation while also protecting water sources and buffering against climate variability. To track progress, the project employs Cool Farm Tool (CFT), a digital calculator that helps assess and cut greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. The resulting data will generate valuable insights that will assist in scaling models for other regions.
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.
The partnership from ADM, Mars, and PepsiCo aims to harness insights and data from the project to implement adoption of regenerative agriculture practices across the Polish agricultural system. The methods used in the initiative will not only improve land quality but can also help farmers with soil carbon storage.
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.
In 2024, ADM engaged more than 5 million acres, surpassing its original goal of 3.5 million acres. By aligning regenerative agriculture practices with long term supply chain management, PepsiCo, Mars and ADM can showcase how climate smart farming can directly integrate into global supply chains, benefitting both environment and market expansion.