Optimising Water Use of Agricultural Supply Chains

Background

The perfect balance

To produce high yielding crops, much of the potatoes and corn utilised in PepsiCo’s supply chain need irrigation. As PepsiCo operate a global supply chain, some of its crops come from areas of high water risk where the demand for water exceeds or is at risk of exceeding the supply due to pressures from agricultural, industrial, and domestic sources. To ensure PepsiCo’s crops receive enough water, irrigation systems supplement natural rainfall.

PepsiCo’s ambitious plan

In 2015, PepsiCo recognised that they needed to reduce the amount of water used to produce their potato and corn crops. Initially, by 2025, they aimed to improve water-use efficiency by 15% in high water-risk areas. However, as part of their ambitious PepsiCo Positive (pep+) transformation, the company has set a series of new agriculture goals that include working to measurably improve the health of the watersheds at supplier locations.

Standardising best practice

To reach this ambitious target, PepsiCo needed to understand how much water was being used on each farm and what practices were in place. This would enable them to develop a strategy to improve the irrigation systems whilst maintaining crop yield and quality.

Producers of PepsiCo crops range from smallholders in India through to large multisite commercial farms in the US. This provided an additional challenge as the level of infrastructure, management and monitoring was highly variable. Many sites were unable to measure water usage at all.

Actions taken

Collaborating for change

PepsiCo collaborated with ADAS to develop a Water Use Efficiency Modelling Tool (WUEMT) that would enable them to model the current water usage on each farm and monitor changes in usage over time.

The system allows PepsiCo to:

capture crop specific data, such as planting and harvesting dates and yields
estimate water requirements of the crop based on regionally-specific climate data
identify on-farm practices in relation to conveyance of water to the field, including the management of irrigation systems and scheduling
calculate the efficiency of the practices and therefore the water use efficiency of the individual elements and system as a whole

The CROPWAT model

In 2015, ADAS built the WUEMT using the FAO’s CROPWAT model. The CROPWAT model combines growing season parameters, climate data and soil information to determine the water needs of the specific crop, including how much supplementary irrigation is needed to achieve a healthy yield. Depending on the efficiency of the irrigation systems used, significant volumes of water can be lost before it reaches the plant, through evaporation, surface run off and leaks.

To help PepsiCo scale up efforts, which includes improving watershed health, each farming irrigation system needed to be standardised to allow for effective monitoring.

Results

By standardising each farming system, ADAS was able to identify water-loss hotspots. This enabled PepsiCo to focus their resources in areas of concern and ultimately work towards their goal of reducing water usage throughout their global supply chain.

Since the implementation of the ADAS WUEMT, PepsiCo and ADAS have continued to work symbiotically to gather important data and identify areas of opportunity to improve irrigation efficiencies and reduce water use in crop production.

This data has allowed ADAS to make the following recommendations:

improve irrigation scheduling so that growers apply the right amount of water at the right time to meet the crop’s needs
encourage uptake of more efficient irrigation systems and better maintenance of existing systems
grow varieties that have shorter growing season and less need for irrigation
move crop production to periods of the year where irrigation requirements are lower
source crops from regions with a climate better suited to production

Looking towards the future

With help from ADAS, PepsiCo is addressing the use of water in agriculture, and is on track to achieve its 15% improvement target. Given the increasing risks from climate change, and the increasing demand for water, the agricultural industry must adapt to ensure it is sustainable for future generations.

By working alongside farmers, landowners, and manufacturers, the ADAS Climate and Sustainability team are able to create bespoke solutions that support the transition to more environmentally sustainable agricultural practices.