Our farming model protects farmers from volatility of open market pricing: Anukool Joshi, PepsiCo India

PepsiCo primarily operates in India through a collaborative farming model that enables the company to offer farmers assured buyback for their produce at pre-agreed prices, says Anukool Joshi, Director, Supply Chain Agro, PepsiCo India. This approach, he notes, significantly reduces market risk and provides income predictability for thousands of farming families across the country.

In an interaction with ET Digital, Joshi noted that the company’s role goes far beyond procurement. From access to high-quality seeds suited for processing to agronomic advice tailored to local soil and climate conditions, the company ensures that farmers are well-equipped at every stage. Edited excerpts:

The Economic Times (ET): PepsiCo India collaborates with farmers in Punjab and West Bengal for sourcing potatoes. The company also works with farmers growing rice, corn, and citrus fruits to source ingredients for its popular products like Lays, Uncle Chipps, Kurkure, and Tropicana. What’s your strategy for developing agro supply chains?

Anukool Joshi (AJ): PepsiCo India is an agri-company at heart and a pioneer of collaborative potato farming in the country. Our approach to developing agro supply chains is rooted in strong partnerships with farming communities. As one of the leading buyers of chip-grade potatoes, we work directly and indirectly with over 27,000 farmers across 14 states, ensuring 100% local sourcing. Our strategy focuses on quality across the entire value chain—from the first minituber grown at our Zahura facility in Punjab to the final packaged snack on the shelf. Outside the US, Zahura is PepsiCo’s largest minituber lab and serves as a critical hub for agronomic innovation, seed development, and cold storage infrastructure, enabling end-to-end traceability and consistent product quality.

For potato sourcing, we primarily operate in India through a collaborative farming model, which allows us to offer farmers assured buyback of produce at pre-agreed prices. This minimizes their market risk and provides income predictability. Our support goes beyond procurement—we provide end-to-end agri assistance, including high-quality seeds, agronomic guidance, precision farming tools, weather forecasts, disease alerts, and post-harvest best practices.

ET: How does PepsiCo ensure that farmers get appropriate prices for their produce?
AJ: We are committed to fostering a fair and transparent ecosystem for the farmers we partner with. PepsiCo India operates on a contract farming model, wherein prices for the produce are agreed upon at the beginning of the cropping season. This model protects farmers from the volatility of open market pricing.

The agreed prices are determined through a rigorous cost benchmarking process and are designed to be remunerative while accounting for variations in input costs. Additionally, our agronomy support helps farmers improve their productivity, which in turn increases their overall earnings. Payments are made timely to the farmers’ accounts, ensuring transparency.

ET: How does PepsiCo invest in cold storage facilities, especially to maintain its potato supply chain?
AJ: PepsiCo India’s approach to cold storage is rooted in strategic partnerships and infrastructure improvement to ensure quality, reduce post-harvest losses, and maintain a seamless supply chain for critical raw materials like chip-grade potatoes.

We operate on a three-pronged strategy: First, we leverage existing cold storage facilities by collaborating with partners that meet our stringent standards for temperature and humidity control. Second, we actively support the modernisation of these facilities through technical guidance, helping them align with evolving quality and efficiency benchmarks. Third, we forge long-term agreements with local players to enable the creation of new, dedicated storage infrastructure designed to right specifications, ensuring availability, traceability, and consistency at scale.

This tiered approach allows us to maintain quality across the value chain—from seed to shelf—while also strengthening local ecosystems. Our work in regions like Punjab, West Bengal and UP is a clear example of how this model ensures adequate and right storage capacity available for produce from our farmers, in time with the crop cycle.

ET: Indian agriculture generally faces challenges like low yields. What kind of initiatives has PepsiCo introduced to improve productivity and quality?
AJ: We have built a comprehensive farm-to-factory ecosystem to tackle the challenges of low yields and variability in agricultural productivity. As shared earlier, we support 27,000 farmers across 14 states, ensuring quality across the value chain—from minituber production at our Zahura facility to the final harvested crop.

Our first intervention is through R&D and seed innovation. We’ve pioneered chip-grade potato varieties in India and continue to develop short-duration, high-yield variants tailored for specific geographies. We also manage the seed value chain end-to-end, providing farmers with high-quality planting material that ensures consistency and resilience. Second, through our collaborative farming program, we deliver geography-specific packages of practices, backed by end-to-end support from our agronomists. These include scientific guidance, real-time crop advisories, and direct handholding through the crop cycle.

We are also committed to advancing sustainable and regenerative agriculture practices. In addition to promoting micro-irrigation to improve crop productivity and reduce water consumption, we are enabling farmers to adopt biochar to enhance soil health and nutrient efficiency. By putting carbon back into the soil, biochar improves soil function, retains essential nutrients, and reduces input costs—ultimately boosting agricultural output. It also offers an effective solution for managing crop residue, while helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improving long-term soil resilience.

ET: How does technology function at the farm level, especially for smallholder farmers?
AJ: At PepsiCo India, technology is central to how we empower our farmer partners and create a more resilient agri-value chain. Our flagship initiative—Lay’s Smart Farms—uses satellite imagery, AI-powered analytics, and predictive intelligence to deliver real-time insights, early disease alerts, and yield forecasts up to 45 days in advance. This helps farmers make timely, data-driven decisions that enhance productivity and reduce risk.

To ensure crops receive the right nutrition at the right time, we also support soil testing initiatives thereby promoting optimized nutrient management. One such effort is Project Mitti Didi, launched in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal. Soil testing, as important as it may be, remains limited in adoption due to longer turnaround times. To overcome these hurdles, as a pilot, we trained women from rural communities to operate portable InSoil machines that test soil across 12 key parameters—including (but not limited to) Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium (Macronutrients), Electrical Conductivity (EC), Organic Carbon (OC) and pH—and deliver a comprehensive report within just 30 minutes.

ET: What kind of mechanisms are in place to ensure timely and effective farmer action, considering the high volume of weather and disease alerts?
AJ: We recognise that the value of real-time weather and disease alerts lies in the speed and accuracy with which they translate into action on the ground.

Alerts are delivered through SMS or phone calls in local languages, offering specific guidance based on weather and satellite data, historical trends, and on-ground scouting. In high-risk zones, we proactively schedule training and awareness sessions to prepare farmers ahead of time.

ET: How do you capture the farmers’ feedback?
AJ: PepsiCo India maintains a strong, two-way engagement model with its farmer partners through a dedicated network of on-ground agronomists. These agronomists work closely with farmers across 14 states—offering hands-on guidance on all aspects of crop management, including sowing, disease prevention, and harvesting.

What sets our approach apart is that farmers are not just beneficiaries of our supply chain—they are key participants and co-creators of it. Over the years, continuous feedback from them has been instrumental in shaping our collaborative farming (model. For instance, when farmers highlighted late blight as a recurring challenge, we responded by developing FC-11—a chip-grade potato variety with improved tolerance to the disease. Similarly, several of our seed innovations and best practices have emerged directly from farmer insights, ensuring that our solutions are rooted in real-world needs.

By embedding our agriculture function within the supply chain and building long-term partnerships, we have created a system where farmer feedback leads to tangible action. This continuous engagement allows us to co-create solutions with our farmers and address challenges as they arise.