Pesticides and other agrochemicals

Last updated

March 11, 2026

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Why it matters

To PepsiCo:

To maintain the trust of our consumers and customers, we must ensure the safety and quality of the products that they enjoy. The continued growth and success of our company depends on healthy ecosystems that can support sustainable and regenerative agriculture. To that end, PepsiCo seeks continuous improvements in agricultural practices that minimize pesticide and other agrochemical use.

To the World

When used responsibly, pesticides and other agrochemicals have a role to play in sustainable agriculture because they can improve crop yields. This can help to ensure a reliable and productive food chain, reduce pressure to convert more land, help to keep food affordable for consumers and support farmer incomes. Pesticide use has led to concerns around unintended environmental and health impacts. These include the potential for pesticide residues on the raw agricultural materials used in food manufacturing; impacts on the health of soil, pollinators, local water systems and the broader ecology; and, if not handled and applied properly, potential health impacts on farm workers and communities.

Approach

PepsiCo understands the concerns around pesticides and takes them seriously. In recognition of these concerns, evolving regulations and the importance of responsible pesticide use to our business and stakeholders, we established a cross-functional Global Pesticide Council (GPC) comprised of senior leaders across key functions to evaluate pesticide issues and direct the Company’s policies and programs. The work is structured around five key areas: 

  1. Pesticide usage in sourced crops
  2. Risk assessment
  3. Compliance with global regulations
  4. External engagement
  5. Internal governance & communication

The GPC's mission is to ensure global compliance, anticipate changes in the marketplace and take proactive steps to minimize pesticide-related risks. These include environmental and human health risks associated with the application of pesticides in agricultural production as well as food safety risks associated with our raw materials. We take into account the fact that pesticides are highly regulated and routinely evaluated by expert government agencies in markets around the world, to address both environmental and human health risks.

Sustainable agriculture and integrated pest management (IPM)

Our Global Sustainable Agriculture Policy sets standards of performance and expectations for growers across our diverse, global supply chains, including compliance with governmental laws, regulations and industry standards, including appropriate use of pesticides. Our aim is to support sustainable practices that substitute and promote natural controls for some agrochemicals, foster ecosystem balance, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate crop losses. Our policy also recognizes the risk of water pollution from pesticides and the need to responsibly manage water runoff from farms.

To implement our policy, we set specific performance goals on regenerative agriculture and sustainable sourcing of major agricultural raw materials, backed by our global Sustainable Farming Program (SFP) or an equivalent program. The SFP is a comprehensive framework to gauge environmental, social and economic impacts associated with our agricultural supply chain.

PepsiCo has a strong heritage of partnering with experienced farmers who are responsible stewards of natural resources. The SFP has been fully implemented and independently verified across 35 countries and with more than 4,800 verified farmers, from large agribusinesses to smallholder farms. Crops addressed through the program include key ingredients we source directly such as corn, oats and potatoes, among others. The assessments completed on our direct supply chain alone represent 92% of our total agricultural supply chain by volume. For more on our sourcing progress with the SFP, see Agriculture.

The SFP’s framework contains nine environmental, four social and three economic sustainability topics, with detailed criteria and global standards for each. Under the environmental pillar, agrochemicals are one of the nine topics, providing a means through which PepsiCo gathers information on implementation of our principles of pesticide management. The SFP includes seven agrochemical principles, split between required, fundamental principles and encouraged, progressive principles.

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Sustainable protection of crops against pests includes prevention and monitoring of pest problems, using pesticide control methods only when necessary and targeting only the pests that can harm crops. IPM is an important tool for advancing these practices. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization defines IPM as:

the careful consideration of all available pest control techniques and subsequent integration of appropriate measures that discourage the development of pest populations and keep pesticides and other interventions to levels that are economically justified and reduce or minimize risks to human health and the environment. IPM emphasizes the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agro-ecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms.

We encourage our farmer suppliers to use a variety of tools to reduce risks from pests. Using a combination of biological, physical and chemical tools to identify, manage and reduce pest risks can help minimize overall economic, health and environmental impacts. Under IPM, actions are taken to control pests only when their numbers are likely to exceed acceptable levels. Any action taken is designed to target the troublesome pest and limit the impact on other organisms and the environment. Although applications of pesticides are always the last resort in an IPM program, they may be needed to help control the spread of disease, promote farmer safety and/or prevent direct plant loss.

Food safety and quality

PepsiCo has detailed internal programs and procedures for food safety. See Product safety and quality for a summary of our policies, programs and actions.

With respect to food safety, suppliers are expected to adhere to the standards outlined in our Global Supplier Code of Conduct. Where applicable, our ingredient supplier contracts include our Global Raw Material Quality and Food Safety Policy, which covers suppliers’ adherence with all applicable rules and regulations, including those regulating pesticides. We have various programs that involve pesticide audits and/or pesticide surveillance, including focused testing of raw materials for residues and implementing corrective actions where appropriate. We have a long-term program to work towards third-party Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) certification for farmers globally, which includes details of pesticides used and their application. This program has started with North American and European potatoes and includes an annual independent third-party audit at harvest time to a recognized scheme, which includes a detailed inspection of pesticide use on farms. Pilots are underway in other geographies, including Thailand, China, New Zealand and South Africa.

The legal limits for pesticide residues in commodities are governed by local laws and regulations, which cover products produced both conventionally as well as organically. These limits specify the allowable pesticide residue levels, reflect GAP and assure safety. Studies published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and by the European Food Safety Authority concluded that the vast majority of food consumed within the U.S. and the EU, respectively, is largely free of pesticide residues or contains residues that fall within legal limits.1 For example, over 99% of food produced in the U.S. was compliant with federal pesticide residue limits, according to a USDA study.2

Agricultural workers

PepsiCo is compliant with laws and regulations in countries where ingredients are grown and where products are sold. We are aware of concerns around occupational exposure to glyphosate, an herbicide used by farmers, including its use as a drying agent prior to crop harvesting. Glyphosate has been used by farmers around the world for more than 40 years because of its ability to control weeds and its safety profile, which has been vigorously tested and affirmed by numerous risk assessment authorities and independent expert panels. We expect and encourage growers, especially those with whom we have direct relationships, to comply with local agricultural practices and label restrictions to encourage pesticides being applied safely and responsibly. 

Bees and pollinators

We recognize the potential impact of pesticides, among other environmental stressors, on beneficial pollinators as an important issue within PepsiCo’s supply chains. In 2025, we updated our regenerative agriculture goal to include specific objectives for nature within the goal, increasing our ambition to protect, restore and drive the adoption of regenerative practices across 10 million acres by 2030.3 We are actively monitoring scientific understanding and publications regarding pollinator health as well as regulatory activity, including with respect to pesticides called neonicotinoids (“neonics”).

In response to these developments, PepsiCo monitors scientific and regulatory issues related to neonics under our GPC. We have engaged with a wide range of external stakeholders and enlisted external experts to conduct studies and broaden our understanding, including the potential for viable alternative approaches. We continue to implement our policies and programs, such as the SFP and our regenerative agriculture goal, to address the use of pesticides in our supply chains and with the aim to minimize unintended impacts to pollinators.

Progress

Since launching the SFP in 2015, the program has enabled PepsiCo to obtain data and improved visibility into our agricultural supply chains, including the use of IPM. PepsiCo is engaging with our agriculture teams and growers to support the development and implementation of IPM improvement programs, including making the business case for IPM and training on appropriate IPM based on the size and capability of the grower. While the impact of IPM on pesticide application will vary according to a complex set of factors, including crop type, region and climate, IPM aims to help reduce the amounts of pesticides used.

Announced in 2021 and updated in 2025, PepsiCo’s ambition regarding spreading the adoption of regenerative agriculture, restorative or protective practices across 10 million acres of land supporting the growth of our key crops and ingredients also includes practices that can help reduce pesticide usage. These include, but are not limited to, reduced tillage and leaving crop residue on the ground to crowd out weed growth, improving soil health that can support beneficial organisms to naturally control pests, and the usage of cover crops to provide a habitat for beneficial organisms and weed suppression, improve soil health, reduce runoff of pesticides into the environment, and disrupt pest and disease cycles.

Working with farmers

Good Agricultural Practices (GAP)

In 2025, we continued to work with farmers to implement GAP, including GAP training and certification on key crops. As of the end of 2024, approximately 70% of our total potato volumes, including 100% of our potato volumes from our two largest markets (Europe and the United States), were sourced from GAP-certified suppliers. We continue to work to expand GAP training and certification for potato suppliers in our other markets and have a number of pilots underway in other geographies and key crops.

Implementing IPM

As of 2023, approximately 96% of farmers certified under our SFP self-reported that they have implemented IPM. We continue to support implementation of IPM practices with those who are working towards developing IPM, such as smallholder farmers.

Our regenerative agriculture work is part of our efforts to promote IPM and supports a variety of practices associated with reduced pesticide usage. We believe that regenerative agricultural practices will be pivotal in meeting the world’s increasing nutritional demand, while also addressing certain key risks that can be associated with agriculture, such as freshwater scarcity, deforestation, biodiversity loss and soil degradation. Examples of the Company’s efforts to work toward more efficient use of pesticides include:

  1. In Europe, we are using a special “Late Blight” warning app developed by Wageningen University (Netherlands). This in-season decision support tool helps potato farmers to reduce their pesticide usage and increases plant health.
  2. We have also teamed up with agro-tech companies such as AgroScout to pilot precision agriculture programs for more efficient and targeted use of pesticides. For example, we are using drone technology and an integrated machine learning platform in Latin America. The technology improves scouting coverage and accuracy, reduces the amount of pesticides needed for spraying and improves plant health.

Progress and Challenges

Progress and some illustrative examples of how we support IPM implementation and agronomic decision making that are context specific and not prescriptive to every growing region or situation:

  • In New Zealand, our regenerative agriculture work sees farmers planting flowers around potato fields to attract helpful insects that naturally defend the plants and reduce the need for pesticides. Using this natural habitat and helpful insects has been effective at keeping the problematic insect populations at bay even with no insecticide application. By supporting a strong community of natural enemies to the problematic insects, these practices showed the potential of natural solutions to reducing synthetic pesticides, which we are exploring more widely.
  • Across Illinois, PepsiCo supported the implementation of regenerative agriculture on over 250,000 acres in 2024 in collaboration with Precision Conservation Management (PCM). PCM’s results compared pesticide use on cover-crop fields vs. non-cover-crop fields, using pesticide costs as a proxy for the amount of pesticides applied, and indicate that farmers on the higher and lower ends of the bell curve apply fewer total pesticides in cover-crop fields.4
  • Across western Canada, PepsiCo supported the implementation of regenerative agriculture on over 250,000 acres in 2024, where we saw the implementation of a variety of practices on oats and canola crops lead to an approximately 11% and 13% lb/acre of herbicide usage reduction and an approximately 10% and 17% kg CO2e/acre reduction in pesticide usage.
  • Compliance with our IPM program requirement has improved from less than 50% between 2015 and 2018 to approximately 96% globally in 2023.
Challenges
  • The acquisition of businesses extends our agricultural footprint and will take time to assess capabilities and implement our global programs.
  • We continue to see an increase in changes to local pesticide regulations, especially in the EU, and the speed at which these changes are introduced is impacting global supply chains.

Governance

The GPC's strategic plan includes the following aspirations:

  • Advancing foundational horizon scanning initiatives;
  • Improving internal awareness and understanding through consumer message testing and global pesticide media updates;
  • Implementing new audit and selective surveillance programs for potatoes, oats, corn and citrus; and
  • Monitoring global regulatory change and following change management protocol.

Strategic partnerships

PepsiCo actively engages with multi-stakeholder groups, peer companies, growers and NGOs that seek to develop, promote and adopt best practices related to responsible use of pesticides. We participate in a range of collaborative programs that focus on regenerative and sustainable agriculture generally and pesticide use specifically. These include Field to Market, The Keystone Policy Center and the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform and PepsiCo's Farm and Food Council — a forum that brings together farm groups and associations representing growers in our supply chain to facilitate dialogue on emerging practices and policies. These platforms allow collaboration and dialogue with peer companies, growers and other critical stakeholders to better understand established and emerging best practices related to pesticide use and disclosure thereof and help drive industry-wide progress and solutions.

What's next?

The collaborative efforts of the PepsiCo GPC are continuing to address our key challenges and to prioritize and govern PepsiCo pesticide programs to promote global compliance and minimize pesticide-related risks. To achieve our ambitions, PepsiCo’s GPC has developed a five-year strategic plan with clear deliverables, including industry benchmarking, and we are expanding our centralized global scientific and regulatory tracking. Among our priority actions, we continue to engage externally and continue to promote learning opportunities for our staff and management. In addition, we are continuing our program to investigate potential biologic or other alternatives. We have significantly expanded our supplier management programs and continue to review expansion thereof as appropriate to our business. In addition, the GPC is overseeing targeted ingredient surveillance programs.

1European Food Safety Authority. Cabrera, L, Pastor, P. (2023). The 2020 European Union report on pesticide residues in food

U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2022). Pesticide Data Program, Annual Summary Calendar Year 2021

European Food Safety Authority. (2017). Pesticide residues in food: risk to consumers remains low 

2U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2025). Pesticide Data Program, Annual Summary Calendar Year 2023

3See PepsiCo’s Regenerative Agriculture Guidelines for additional information, including details on key crops and regeneration, restoration and protection criteria. Results reflect total acreage meeting these criteria within the annual reporting period

4 Kunwar, Chambers, Gentry and Serra. (2025). What are the carbon services from cover-crop adoption worth from farmers' perspective? American Journal of Agricultural Economics

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