-KH News Desk(cbedit@imaws.org)
PepsiCo India’s Lay’s brand has introduced a predictive intelligence model to help farmers maximize potato yields and quality via functional dashboards on user-friendly mobile apps. The initiative is part of PepsiCo’s Precision Agriculture model for India, implemented as a pilot project in demo farms in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh in collaboration with Cropin, a global agri-tech firm that created the first industry cloud for agriculture. Most Indian farmers own less than one hectare of farmland and face constant challenges due to a lack of means to evaluate optimum agri-input consumption like water, fertilizers, and pesticides, as well as actionable weather data. PepsiCo’s Lay’s initiative has the potential to address these challenges by using satellite imagery correlated with remote sensing data to provide insights, generating a forecast up to ten days in advance, assisting farmers in identifying different crop stages and monitoring crop health, including a disease warning system that relies on weather forecasts and historical data.
In India, PepsiCo works with over 27,000 farmers across 14 states, and 100% of the potatoes for its Lay’s brand are sourced from farmers within the country. The model, which covers 62 farms in the pilot stage (51 in Gujarat and 11 in Madhya Pradesh), is being offered through the Cropin Grow app for farm data management and the Plot Risk app for crop intelligence. The apps support multiple languages and would be accessed by farmers through their smartphones. PepsiCo plans to offer the solutions in 14 regional languages to align with its commitment to inclusivity in the supply chain.
Anukool Joshi, Director-Agro at PepsiCo India, stated that through the partnership with Cropin, PepsiCo aims to bring in sustainable, resilient, and inclusive solutions that would address the diverse issues of farmers and help them improve their livelihoods. The model’s benefits include real-time tracking of crop health to maximize yield and quality, empowering farmers to manage their crops more efficiently.
Krishna Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO of Cropin, praised PepsiCo for leading the way to enable agriculture modernization and its impact at the grassroots level. He added that the partnership was accelerating small-holder farmer empowerment, driving sustainability, and setting new standards in global farming. PepsiCo’s Crop Intelligence Model is a digital innovation with the potential of being implemented at a fractional cost per acre compared to other solutions, making it affordable and scalable even for small-scale farmers.
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