PepsiCo’s farm innovation revealed:
- New agricultural technologies often stall because changing one practice can disrupt an entire farming system and expose growers to additional risk.
- PepsiCo’s Global Agro University combines expert guidance with farmer-to-farmer learning and locally developed action plans.
- Manufacturers must understand agricultural pressures, support local adaptation and treat grower trust as a valuable business asset.
A technology may perform impressively in trials yet still fail when it reaches a commercial farm. According to Rob Meyers, PepsiCo’s VP of global agriculture procurement, the problem is rarely a shortage of ideas or an unwillingness among farmers to innovate. More often, it’s the difficulty of fitting one new practice into a complex farming system without creating fresh costs or risks elsewhere.
PepsiCo made that challenge a central theme of its 2026 Global Agro University in Hannover, Germany, bringing more than 140 growers, suppliers, agronomists and agricultural experts from 35 countries together to examine how innovation works in practice. Sessions covered soil preparation, irrigation, plant nutrition, pest management, harvesting, storage and precision agriculture, combining classroom discussion with demonstrations in fields and storage facilities.
The issue has direct commercial implications for the snacking giant. Potatoes are considered a specialty crop and those destined for Lay’s, Walkers and other crisp brands must meet exact requirements for quality, flesh colour and sugar content. Any disruption in the field can therefore affect processing performance, product consistency and the availability of suitable raw materials.
Climate change, volatile input costs and shortages of skilled labour are adding to the pressure, but Meyers argues that manufacturers can’t respond simply by presenting growers with more technology. They need to understand why adoption is difficult; how local conditions alter the outcome; and what support farmers need before they can take the risk of changing an established system.
Why good farm technology still fails
Meyers challenges the persistent assumption that farmers are reluctant to embrace change. In his experience, growers who have remained successful have done so because they’ve repeatedly adapted their operations.
“What strikes me is that farmers who are still successful today have had to innovate, often across multiple generations,” he says. “That spirit of innovation is at the core of a successful farmer.”
He also rejects the idea that agriculture lacks possible solutions. The fundamentals of crop production remain constant – suitable soil, sufficient water, nutrients and sunlight – but growers now have a growing range of technologies and practices to help manage those resources more effectively.
The difficulty begins when an innovation moves from a demonstration into an operating farm. A change to irrigation, machinery, crop monitoring or soil management can affect labour requirements, costs, production schedules and decisions across the rest of the operation.
“Adoption at scale is one of the biggest challenges, whether we’re talking about new technologies or new practices,” says Meyers. “Any change in a farming system, even one small change, affects the whole system, so there’s a lot of uncertainty and risk for growers.”
Those decisions are being made against an increasingly difficult backdrop. Severe weather events are becoming more frequent, growing seasons are less predictable and geopolitical disruption is raising the cost of agricultural inputs. Skilled labour is also becoming harder to secure in parts of the world.
Potato producers feel these pressures particularly sharply because their crop doesn’t receive the same level of support in many countries as commodities such as corn, soybeans or wheat.
“Potatoes are considered a specialty crop, and the potatoes we grow are a specialty within a specialty,” says Meyers. “We have very specific requirements for quality, flesh colour and sugar content to make a really good potato chip. Any disruption is therefore important for us to understand because we depend so greatly on growers and need to work with them to build resilience.”
Even when a technology has already delivered results elsewhere, transferring it successfully is far from automatic. Meyers points out that conditions can vary between neighbouring fields, while the differences between countries may extend to climate, soils, infrastructure, skills and farm economics.
“When technologies and innovations fail, it’s often not because the technology itself wasn’t good or didn’t have the ability to solve the problem,” he says. “The difficulty lies in incorporating it into the local system. Applying an idea under local conditions requires an understanding of those conditions and of the farming system around it.”
That is why PepsiCo avoids simply “throwing an innovation over the fence” and expecting growers to make it work. Meyers believes manufacturers need to create an environment in which farmers can understand the change, learn from previous experience and manage the risks attached to implementation.
PepsiCo uses demonstration farms, learning journeys, regional events and smaller local meetings to bring growers into contact with agronomists and other farmers who have already tested particular approaches. “We spend a lot of time bringing together growers, advisers, subject-matter experts and our own agronomists to discuss the changes they’re making, what they’re learning, how to do it well and which challenges to avoid.”
Farmer-to-farmer learning carries particular weight because growers are often more willing to trust someone who has faced the same practical problems than a manufacturer promoting a solution. “Growers learn from each other and trust each other much more than they’re going to trust a food company – and rightly so in many respects. We try to create those opportunities for growers to come together because farming can be a solitary activity.”
PepsiCo’s Global Agro University was designed to expand that exchange across markets. Participants examined 10 international case studies, including drip irrigation in China, grower capability development in Vietnam, mechanisation in Thailand and efforts to improve potato supply and quality in India.
The intention wasn’t to replicate each intervention exactly, but to show how growers elsewhere had approached a problem and give participants the opportunity to question those involved.
“If somebody has solved something in one part of the world, we need to ask how we can lift that idea and adapt it somewhere else,” says Meyers. “It saves time and effort, avoids unnecessary reinvention and allows growers to focus on delivering the impact they’re after.”
What happens after growers go home?
A conference can generate plenty of enthusiasm, but PepsiCo wanted participants to leave Hannover with more than just notes and new contacts. The final three-hour session divided growers, agronomists and company employees into their operating units and asked each group to identify three to five ideas that could be implemented locally.
“The ask was to take the top things they had learnt during the week back to their own operations and implement them to deliver positive outcomes and business value,” says Meyers. “Every group reported its plan, we collected all of those ideas and we’ll track implementation and provide support where it’s needed.”
That follow-up will provide a more meaningful indication of the programme’s impact than attendance alone. The event connected participants from 35 countries, but its value will ultimately depend on whether those action plans change farming practices, solve operational problems or prevent growers from repeating expensive mistakes.
PepsiCo also opened parts of the programme to remote participants, with more than 200 people joining online. Recordings and supporting material are being added to Frito-Lay Ag, the company’s learning management system for employees, agronomists and potato growers. The platform includes AI-powered search capabilities intended to help users find practical guidance on subjects such as growing particular varieties or managing storage problems. “If a grower has a question about how to grow a variety successfully or is experiencing a storage challenge, they can go to the site and find not only information but the insights held within it. We’ve been doing a lot of work to capture knowledge in that system.”
Regional grower meetings are also being recorded with participants’ consent because valuable practical discussions can otherwise disappear when the meeting ends. AI tools can turn that accumulated material into searchable insight, making experience from one market accessible to growers and agronomists elsewhere.
“We want to avoid reinventing the wheel,” says Meyers. “There’s so much rich discussion in those meetings that is often lost, so we’re trying to capture it and make it useful to the growers producing our varieties.”
PepsiCo will now need to demonstrate that this expanding bank of knowledge produces measurable change on farms. Tracking the action plans developed in Hannover should reveal whether the programme has moved useful ideas beyond discussion and into commercial practice.
Trust is an agricultural asset
Meyers believes food manufacturers have historically underestimated both their dependence on agriculture and the pressures facing growers. He recalls that awareness of PepsiCo’s agricultural footprint among the company’s own business leaders was more limited 10 or 15 years ago.
A recent regional event in Latin America showed him how far that understanding had developed. General managers were able to discuss agricultural challenges; the work being undertaken to address them; and the importance of those efforts to their businesses without leaving the subject solely to specialist teams.
“If you’re in the food and beverage industry, you need to understand the importance of agriculture to your business at every level,” he says. “You need to understand the risks, support efforts to mitigate them and help build resilience.”
PepsiCo works with approximately 300,000 farmers across its direct and indirect supply chains and depends on more than 50 crops and ingredients grown in over 60 countries. Its vertically integrated potato supply chain includes proprietary varieties developed through the company’s breeding programme.
Many potato growers have supplied the business for 30 or 40 years, while some relationships stretch across several generations. Meyers says their longevity reflects more than favourable contracts or successful harvests.
“Not every year has been wonderful, with rose petals and butterflies,” he says. “There are ups and downs in any relationship like that, but we’ve understood that trust is hugely important. It pervades farming and is reflected in those longstanding relationships.”
Manufacturers hoping to introduce new practices should therefore begin by examining the quality of their relationships with growers. Even a technically sound proposal can stall if farmers don’t believe the people promoting it understand their operations or will support them when difficulties arise. “Whenever you’re trying to achieve something with a grower group, you first need to ask where the trust is. It doesn’t necessarily have to sit directly between the food company and the grower, but you need the right people to create an open, trusted dialogue. Otherwise, even with the best intentions, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Many agricultural risks are also too large for one manufacturer to tackle independently. Meyers describes them as pre-competitive issues that require food and beverage companies to work with one another while keeping growers at the centre of the response.
His strongest advice to other manufacturers is also his simplest: “Trust is a valuable asset. It’s very hard to win and extremely easy to lose, so it should be treated like any other asset – just as you would treat the land.”
The technology may be ready, but it won’t transform a supply chain by itself. If manufacturers want innovation to survive beyond the trial field, they must understand the risks growers are carrying, help adapt ideas to local realities and earn the trust required to turn a promising intervention into normal farming practice.
