Food and nutrition security

Why it matters

Approach

Too many people in communities across the world are feeling the effects of food insecurity. In recent years, PepsiCo has expanded areas of our business into new food categories that can play a more central role in a healthy diet while also continuing to improve the nutritional profile of our existing product portfolio to help make the Positive Choice an easy choice. Beyond the products we sell, we work to advance food security by sharing agronomic expertise with farmers and supporting the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices. These practices can increase crop yields, thereby strengthening farmers’ livelihoods, and support more resilient food systems. PepsiCo also engages in collaborations that aim to provide nutritious meals to underserved children and families around the world.

Governance

PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation jointly lead efforts to Feed Potential — our food and nutrition security mission. This work operates through a cross-functional governance model that brings together PepsiCo teams across R&D, the Global Sustainability Office and Corporate Affairs, alongside the Foundation’s social impact leadership. The Foundation works to advance social impact by directing philanthropic capital toward access to basic needs and social and economic advancement, aligned with pep+ efforts across the food system.

PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation coordinate globally and locally, with market teams and social impact leaders guiding action based on community needs.

Strategy

We recognize that we cannot address food insecurity alone — it is a complex challenge requiring cross-sector solutions. By leveraging relationships at different points along our value chain, our food security efforts aim to increase the availability of and access to nutritious foods, while supporting the stability of the food systems and environments that produce them. We strive to complement our commercial efforts with philanthropic investments in a way that extends positive impact beyond our company walls. We are broadening our ability to drive impact by, for example, leveraging our logistics expertise to facilitate distribution of nutritious meals.

As we work to help improve food and nutrition security, we work across two key pillars, both aligned with the objectives of SDG 2:

• Building food security: We aim to partner with communities to advance food security and help make nutritious food accessible to 50 million people by 2030;²
• Investing towards SDG 2: Zero Hunger: We plan to Invest $100 million in agriculture and other food and nutrition access programs in select priority markets identified by external experts, as part of the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge.

Other areas of our pep+ (PepsiCo Positive) strategy strive to contribute to our ambitions on food and nutrition security, including our efforts to:

• Offer choices in line with consumer interests: We are looking to reduce added sugars, sodium and saturated fat across our portfolio and deliver more portions of diverse ingredients – such as legumes, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, plant-based proteins and nuts and seeds – that people do not consume enough of in many countries.
• Promote sustainable agriculture: We aim to spread the adoption of regenerative agriculture, restorative or protective practices across 10 million acres of land supporting the growth of our key crops and ingredients by 2030³ and aim to improve the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in our agricultural supply chain and supporting communities by 2030 through dedicated programming aiming to support economic prosperity, farmer and farm worker security and inclusion and economic empowerment.³

See our Agriculture and Nutrition pages for more detail on these ambitions.

Building food security

In some areas of the world, affordability and access can stand in the way of adequate nutrition. We are diversifying our portfolio in an effort to expand access to nutritious foods with meaningful benefits. We develop trusted brands with products that meet local taste and nutrition needs while offering value and a range of pack sizes.

To contribute towards our goal to increase access to nutritious food for 50 million people by 2030,² our food products must:

• Meet our internal Global Nutrition Criteria for Affordable Nutrition Initiatives, which includes maximum thresholds for nutrients to limit (e.g., added sugars, sodium, saturated fat and trans-fat); minimum micronutrient levels to help combat hidden hunger; and food groups and nutrients to encourage such as whole grains and fiber; and
• Be accessible to lower-income consumers at risk of poor nutrition. We determine this at the market level informed by local socioeconomic indicators and externally available data.

Investing towards SDG 2: Zero Hunger

PepsiCo was a founding member of the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge in 2021 and has made one of the most ambitious commitments to date, totaling approximately 1/8 of the total amount pledged by 108 companies as of April 2026. Our pledge is made together with over 20 organizations across more than 20 priority markets. This program targets two high impact areas:⁴

• Agricultural interventions to help support sustainable practices that are economically viable for farmers; and
• Scaling up social protection programs aimed at reducing vulnerability to economic shocks, such as school feeding programs.

Expanding offerings

In addition to investing in affordable, nutritious products and expanding into staple foods in some markets, we are working to improve the nutritional content of products across our portfolio. We are pursuing our Positive Choices goals by selling more of our existing products that meet these nutritional targets, launching new, more nutritious products and renovating existing recipes to improve the nutritional profile, helping to make positive choices easy for consumers. For more detail, see Nutrition.

Promoting sustainable agriculture

Regenerative agriculture supports local food supplies and helps meet rising global food demand. We work to support systemic change by providing farming communities in our supply chain with agronomic advice that builds capabilities and accelerates adoption of regenerative practices, which can increase crop yields and quality and strengthen resilience to evolving climate impacts.

Regenerative practices that benefit PepsiCo crops, such as reduced soil tilling, stronger pest management practices or more efficient irrigation, often benefit other crops in farmers’ rotations, including staples like rice, maize, lentils and pulses grown alongside PepsiCo crops. We also help support stable, predictable income for farmers, reducing exposure to post‑planting market volatility. By improving profitability through reliable income from cash crops, we aim to enable farmers’ continued participation in a sustainable agrifood system.

Because poverty and food insecurity are closely linked, improving farm productivity can also strengthen farmer livelihoods and support access to greater nutrition for farmers and their families.

Policy advocacy

PepsiCo supports policies that aim to improve access to safe, affordable and nutritious foods while strengthening the resilience and sustainability of food systems. This includes approaches that address structural barriers to access, support agricultural innovation, and enhance economic stability for farming communities. We also support collaboration across the public and private sectors to help improve food security outcomes.

Progress

Metrics and targets

PepsiCo measures performance against its pep+ food and nutrition security ambitions through the following goal.

Actions and challenges

Building food security

PepsiCo’s commercial activities aiming to advance food security and access to nutritious foods include:

• In Mexico, we sell Quaker^® 3 Minutos, a whole grain, oat-based breakfast food fortified with nine vitamins and minerals, including those that address Iron and Vitamin B-12 deficiencies prevalent in the country.
• In South Africa, White Star^® super maize meal delivers taste and convenience, while providing critical micronutrients, including Vitamin A, Folic Acid, Iron, four B-vitamins and Zinc. Our local portfolio also includes affordable staple foods such as legumes and pulses that offer key nutritional benefits.
• In 2024, we launched Quaker^® Oat “Rice” in Brazil, introducing a nutritious staple alternative with twice the fiber and protein of brown rice that integrates easily into traditional Brazilian dishes. Profits support community food security initiatives through a collaboration with the local organization Amigos do Bem.
• In the U.S., we support access to nutritious products for low-income women, infants and children up to age five who are at nutritional risk through participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). PepsiCo continues to innovate to meet federal- and state-level requirements through new product development, pack size changes and targeted investments. A full list of PepsiCo’s WIC-approved products is available here.

For more detail on the PepsiCo Foundation’s philanthropic efforts to address hunger and nutrition insecurity with scalable, community-based solutions, see the 2025 Global Social Impact Report.

Investing towards SDG 2: Zero Hunger

The coordinators of the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge commission an independent evaluation of company progress on a bi-annual basis. The second accountability report for the pledge was published in 2025. By the end of 2024, PepsiCo had invested more than $40 million of its 2030 $100 million target towards its Pledge.

Improving nutrition

See Nutrition for more on our related efforts to offer consumers more Positive Choices.

Promoting sustainable agriculture

In collaboration with the German government-owned Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), PepsiCo works with local potato crop farmers in Thailand to help drive adoption of climate change adaptation and mitigation practices, including drip irrigation and integrated pest management. The initiative aims to increase yields and reduce the carbon footprint of potato production compared to traditional methods.

Outside the potato season, similar guidance can be adapted for maize and rice crops, demonstrating how regenerative agriculture can support the broader food supply. Additional detail on these impacts is in the second accountability report for the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge.

Strategic collaboration

Achieving food and nutrition security requires addressing a complex set of sociocultural, political, geographic and economic factors. These dynamics call for a collective approach that brings stakeholders together to strengthen shared understanding of how to sustainably produce and distribute food in ways that are safe, available and responsive to consumers’ needs.

By working in collaboration with industry peers, local and international governments and NGOs as well as employees globally, PepsiCo and others in the private sector aim to leverage their unique expertise and capabilities to help accelerate progress towards zero hunger.

Improving food access

Our approach to collaboration focuses on supporting local stakeholders to improve food access in their communities, investing in innovation, and delivering measurable outcomes. We prioritize programs that are community-led, data-informed, and designed to scale impact.

Example interventions include:

• Food banks: PepsiCo Foundation collaborates with numerous food banks globally that focus on reaching the most vulnerable communities with access to food. In addition to providing funds for meals, we support food banks through infrastructure and operational improvements, enabling food banks to reach more people in their communities. In Mexico, we are working with Red BAMX to scale their impact through a multi-approach investment in transportation, equipment, and infrastructure.
• Student meal programs: Through our school-based programs, including PepsiCo’s Food for Good in the U.S. and the Department of Education’s School Breakfast Program in South Africa, we are able to provide more consistent access to food to students by delivering meals daily during morning, after-school and even summer hours.

Promoting sustainable agriculture

PepsiCo aims to establish and scale financial, agronomic and social programs to support farming communities directly with the intent to enable and accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices both within our supply chain and beyond. Examples include:

• She Feeds the World: Through She Feeds the World, a multi-market partnership with CARE, we aim to transform the livelihoods of farmers and their communities by providing local support to help them adopt regenerative agricultural practices, increase their yields and ultimately increase their income.
• Kgodiso Development Fund (South Africa): This program aims to improve local employment and procurement by developing a new generation of sustainable farming enterprises through increased access to funding, post-lending support and markets.
• Earthworm (Spain): The program, delivered in collaboration with The Regen Academy and The Sustainable Smallholder, aims to promote both environmental and social resilience of smallholder farmers in Jaén through regenerative agriculture training and community engagement.

What's next?

A significant amount of work remains to meet SDG 2 — to create a hunger-free world — by 2030. For our part, we remain resolute in our ambitions for global food and nutrition security and are already executing programs aiming to address this issue. We are also working closely with the Zero Hunger Pledge coordinators to report on progress towards our 2030 goal, raise awareness of the Zero Hunger Pledge among our peers and encourage others in the private sector to join. We also believe long-term transformation requires agility to identify what’s working, what isn’t, and adjust our approach to focus our impact where we believe we can be most effective. We regularly review our sustainability goals, investments, and initiatives and consider changes that are from time to time warranted, including in the context of new developments, such as business growth and necessary investments relating to our initiatives, as well as external developments.

¹FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, & WHO. (2025). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024 – Financing to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms

²See Calculation Methodology for detail on how we measure progress on this metric. Metric published August 13, 2026

³See Calculation Methodology for detail on how we measure progress on this metric. Metric published July 1, 2026

⁴High-impact areas were identified by the coordinators of the Zero Hunger Pledge based on the research from Ceres2030, a project led by Cornell University, the International Food Policy Research Institute and the International Institute for Sustainable Development

⁵See archived 2023-2024 Calculation Methodology for detail on how we measured progress on this metric

Calculation Methodology

Target metric

Partner with communities to advance food security and make nutritious food accessible to 50 million people by 2030

How we measure

Assurance: Subjected to third-party limited assurance

Boundary: Programs funded by philanthropic and commercial efforts that are intended to provide nutritious food

Exclusions: None

Baseline: None

Restatement from prior year(s): None

This metric represents the cumulative sum of people who gained access to food through philanthropic or commercial efforts during the reporting period after discounting individuals with sustained access to food. Sustained access refers to the reach from annual programs that operate in the same geography year over year and gained access refers to programs implemented one-time during a set period of time, or from an increase in reach from annual programs over previous years.

For our philanthropic efforts, the number of individuals who have gained access to food as a result of our investments is self-reported by funded NGO partners and aggregated by a third-party validator on behalf of PepsiCo.

For commercial efforts (e.g., Pioneer’s White Star^® brand in South Africa and Quaker’s Tres Minutos in Mexico), the calculation is derived by using household penetration data as a proxy for population penetration. The household penetration rate at lower socio-economic levels, obtained from third-party sources, is then multiplied by the total population for lower socio-economic levels, obtained from relevant geographic government websites to arrive at total number of people reached. Commercial products must be nutritious and accessible in order to count toward this goal.