Q&A: PepsiCo's Regenerative Farming for Food & Drink Supply

Margaret Henry, VP of Sustainable and Regenerative Agriculture at PepsiCo, is helping drive the company’s sustainable growth agenda in line with its pep+ vision, creating positive change across its global food and beverage supply chain.

PepsiCo is turning its global ambitions into practical action on the ground, reshaping how key ingredients are grown and sourced.

The business is working to scale regenerative practices, build climate resilience into its food system and support the long-term viability of farming communities that supply its brands.

This spans sustainable sourcing, emissions reduction, soil health, water stewardship and wider partnerships that accelerate progress across the food and drink industry.

In her role, Margaret leads the integration of sustainable and regenerative agriculture across PepsiCo’s global operations, ensuring strategic goals are embedded in local plans, supplier relationships and farm-level programmes.

Her remit includes collaborating directly with farmers, engaging with NGOs and industry partners and shaping initiatives that reduce environmental impact while improving productivity and livelihoods across PepsiCo’s ingredient base.

Margaret shares her insights with Food and Drink Digital here.

What is regenerative agriculture and why is it important?

Regenerative agriculture is a set of farming practices that help improve soil health, reduce agricultural emissions, boost biodiversity, strengthen water systems, focus on farmer livelihoods and ultimately make farms and the communities they support more resilient in the face of changing and extreme weather and other impacts of climate change.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution.

It’s about working with farmers around the globe to understand what works best for their farm and adapt to local conditions with an aim to restore ecosystems and help farmers thrive economically.

For PepsiCo, it’s important for our business and the global food system.

Our foods and drinks rely on a healthy, secure and sustainable agricultural system.

If agriculture fails under the weight of climate change, so does the global food system we all depend on.

How does PepsiCo use regenerative agriculture?

From the potatoes used to make Lay’s potato chips to oats in our Quaker products, we’re deeply embedded in agriculture and source around 50 crops from more than 60 countries.

We work directly with farmers and trusted farm-facing organisations to help them adopt regenerative practices, like cover cropping, reduced tillage, crop rotation and water-efficient irrigation.

These aren’t theoretical commitments either. In 2024 alone, we supported at least 20,000 farmers and helped a more than 3.5 million acres adopt regenerative agriculture restorative or protective practices, globally, as we progress towards our goal of 10 million acres by 2030.

This is about supporting livelihoods, ensuring long-term ingredient supply and ensuring agriculture is recognised and being incorporated as a climate solution.

What is STEP Up for Agriculture?

STEP Up for Agriculture stands for Supporting Trusted Engagement and Partnership for Agriculture, which is a joint initiative among PepsiCo, Unilever and several other major food and beverage companies and retailers.

It was designed to strengthen farmer-facing organisations across the U.S. and Europe.

Through a “train the trainer” model, STEP Up for Agriculture builds organisational capacity, helps scale regenerative practices and accelerates sustainable supply chain solutions.

It’s a first-of-its-kind effort to ensure the organisations that directly support farmers, which have earned the trust of farmers, have the tools and training to drive regenerative solutions and create real change at the field level by meeting farmers where they are.

Why is collaboration essential for regenerative agriculture to work?

No one can do this alone.

The food system is an ecosystem in itself; businesses, governments, NGOs, financial institutions and farmers all play critical roles.

Systemic change requires aligned incentives, policies and shared accountability.

We’ve seen what’s possible when we collaborate, from multi-stakeholder projects in Iowa to our global partnerships with organisations like Walmart.

Farmers are on the frontlines of climate change and they see and experience first hand the impacts it has on soil health and crop resilience – so they know that regenerative practices can be an important solution.

But they need coordinated support, technical, financial and regulatory, to take the risk out of transition and unlock long-term resilience.

How can other interested organisations get involved in STEP Up for Agriculture?

We always say that sustainability is a team sport and it’s true because everyone has a role to play to make our world more sustainable.

So we’re eager to grow the STEP Up for Agriculture coalition.

Organisations can get involved by supporting regional training hubs, funding farmer engagement tools, or helping us scale knowledge transfer through co-branded initiatives.

It’s also about bringing your strengths, whether that’s agronomic expertise, digital platforms or policy advocacy, to the table.

We believe that when the right players show up with intention and alignment, transformation becomes not only possible but inevitable.

Interested organisations should reach out to PepsiCo’s sustainability or agriculture teams.

We’re supporting this movement in real time.