By Xuefei Chen Axelsson

STOCKHOLM, Sept. 7(SCBR)–In the globalized era, many multinational corporations pay attention to sustainable issues in their home country. But when they go abroad and get their raw material in the local source, very often they don’t pay much attention to the local environment and thus contribute to the deterioration of the local environment, waste of resources and even have bad practices in using cheap labor in other countries.

From Left, second is Ian Hope-Johnstone, Director of Sustainable Agriculture for PepsiCo.
The photo is from World Water Week pool. PepsiCo wins 2012 Stockholm Industry Water
Award.

Yet PepsiCo is a global food and beverage corporation that pays attention to sustainable farming and agricultural sustainability which is not only good for themselves, but also good for those who are involved in their global production chains.

Working in about 200 countries and regions in the world, purposely locally sourced, the company has four major crops including potatoes, oats, juice and corn and has a revenue of 66 billion US dollars.

The company conserved nearly 16 billion litres of water in 2011, from a 2006 baseline, through the application of water saving equipment and technologies, creative recycling and re-use, and by deploying a water management system throughout its manufacturing facilities. The company achieved its goal four years ahead of schedule.

“It is our food industry that drives agricultural sustainability, we take a lot of local perspective, positive water impact on partners and save water for two million people,” explained Ian Hope-Johnstone, director of sustainable agriculture for PepsiCo in an exclusive interview with SCBR, a web-based media committed to sustainable development.

Hope-Johnstone said that PepsiCo has close colllaboratiaon with Cambridge Farms over the past decades to help PepsiCo’s breakthrough in I-crop precision technology in 2010, used to conserve water and enhance harvests.

“Many farmers might consider water, fertilizer and soil but very often in separate ways, thus can have problems one way or the other which prevent them from achieving the full potential of farming,” Hope-Johnstone explained.

I-crop is a web-based tool that enables PepsiCo’s farmers to monitor, manage and reduce their water use and carbon emissions, and consider all factors of climate, fertilizer, geography, soil and others so that the integrated system can help maximize potential yield and quality.

Initial trials of i-crop across 46 of PepsiCo’s UK potato farms have already seen a 13 percent increase in crop yield and 8 percent reduction in water usage. Results are expected to be amplified with the recent introduction of mobile technology and a revolutionary smartphone application.

Hope-Johnstone said they are beginning to experiment this technology in its China’s farms in Inner Mongolia and Hubei Province.

Over the years, PepsiCo has established very good partnership with all sectors in the local areas and tried to take care of sustainability factors in all its chain.

Talking about sustainable agriculture, Hope-Johnstone said it is such a comprehensive and integrated system that people should not ignore any of them and have to consider all of them at the same time.

“We have a sustainable farming initiative, that is to consider environmental, social and economic viabilities,” said Hope-Johnstone.

On environmental aspect, there are nine important indicators including water, nutrients, agrochemicals, air quality, waste, biodiversity, fertilizer, plant breeding, site selection so that they can make the right decision.

On social aspect, PepsiCo considers working conditions, employment practices and training etc.

On economic aspect, it refers to anything affecting economic viability on a farm, long term market relationship with companies like PepsiCo.

”It is important that you should not look at any of this in isolation. If you have very good water program, you might have bad soil condition. You can’t talk about biodiversity without similar discussion on agrichemicals. They are not together, if you want to have biodiversity, but if you have bad agrichemical, biodiversity will not be able to achieve,” Hope-Johnstone stressed the holistic thinking and practices.

The company won 2012 Stockholm Industry Water Prize for its water saving achievement and efforts to improve water efficiency. Good practices include rainwater harvesting in India and recycling and reuse of waste water.

“PepsiCo has set and achieved a high standard for its own operations, and has demonstrated that responsible water use makes good business sense,” the jury said.

The company has a clear view in what is sustainable agriculture and water usage and even put it into practice, thus setting up a good example for other multinational corporations to be a good company.