PepsiCo has joined forces with the AgMission initiative, founded by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) in collaboration with the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO), to issue a request for applications (RFA) to expedite the adoption of climate-smart practices in agriculture that encompass regenerative agriculture principles. This acceleration will help to support the resiliency of production on-farm and among commodity value chains across North America, Europe, South Africa and Australia, according to a release.
PepsiCo and AgMission are searching for research that establishes climate-smart and regenerative practices that elevate farmer resiliency to extreme weather for certain cropping systems and regions, while keeping track of any impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. Proposals submitted should include “a comparison of the climate-smart and regenerative practice system to alternative practice systems representing current or historical management in the region,” shared the release. AgMission is particularly interested in projects that can achieve practice adoption throughout additional lands and note the effects on farm economics and environmental resilience.
“Accelerating climate-smart agriculture adoption is an all-hands-on-deck effort. We want to see researchers engaging with stakeholder communities to further drive adoption of practices and to include a wide range of farmer demographics in implementation and outreach efforts. This joint RFA in partnership with PepsiCo can help strengthen our understanding of climate-smart practice adoption and accelerate these efforts,” said Allison Thomas, AgMission program director.
“Keeping farmers farming in the face of climate change and other social and environmental challenges is a critical ambition of our PepsiCo Positive ambitions,” shared Margaret Henry, senior director of sustainable agriculture strategy & external engagement at PepsiCo “To create a resilient food system we need to partner with farmers and implementers and learn from the research to find impactful and scalable solutions to aid the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices.”
Research must focus on agricultural systems with corn, wheat, oats, canola, soy or sugar beets in the regions of North America, Europe, South Africa and Australia.
“Investing in climate-smart agriculture practices that are in use and accelerating the adoption and scale-up of new ones is crucial to support the growing need for on-farm resiliency and activate agriculture’s true potential to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” added WFO secretary general Arianna Giuliodori. “Filling the gap between farmers and science globally in the spirit of farmer-centricity and co-creation, starting from the needs and expectations on climate-smart agriculture of producers across the globe, is the real value of the AgMission research agenda.”
AgMission and PepsiCo will award up to $6 million with the RFA. Individual awards are eligible to collect up to $1.5 million. The deadline for pre-proposals is February 22, 2023. For more information, visit the AgMission Regenerative Agriculture Research Open Opportunity webpage.
