Initiative to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Agriculture Marks One Year Anniversary, Welcomes Pepsico as First Partner

WASHINGTON, April 13, 2021 /3BL Media/ – The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) and U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA) are thrilled to mark the one year anniversary of AgMission, an unprecedented initiative to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) in agriculture, by welcoming PepsiCo as a Founding Partner. With a $5 million committment to AgMission, PepsiCo is expanding its efforts toward creating a more sustainable planet.

In February 2020, FFAR and USFRA formed the Agriculture Climate Partnership, recently rebranded as AgMission, to develop and implement climate-smart solutions at scales previously unimagined. AgMission aims to bring together all organizations and companies currently focused on climate science, while rapidly accelerating research and funding. The effort is leveraging data and research to create customized solutions for individual farms and ranches that will initially be deployed nationwide, and ultimately, worldwide.

AgMission envisions a world where every farmer and rancher employs at least one climate-smart solution on every acre of farmland. The goal is for agriculture to be net negative for GHG emissions.

“Many farmers and ranchers are doing great work employing climate-smart practices on their lands. However, tackling climate change will require more adoption of these practices across the entire agricultural community.  That is why AgMission seeks to create a unprecedented collaboration that will brings us a step closer to positioning agriculture as the natural climate change solution,” said FFAR’s Executive Director Dr. Sally Rockey. “Similar to the Human Genome Project, AgMission envisions an expansive public-private partnership, that will be grounded in technology, research, farmer participation and worldwide data sharing.”

PepsiCo’s work in regenerative agriculture around the world focuses on supporting adoption of practices that build farmer resilience while also delivering environmental benefits to farmlands and livelihood benefits to people. The work is dedicated to improving soil health, reducing GHG emissions, sequestering carbon, improving livelihoods and biodiversity, and improving water quality and quantity. As part of PepsiCo’s endeavors to further regenerative agriculture, they will support the development of AgMission projects across three major workstreams: driving behavior change across the food value chain; supporting climate-resilient supply chains; and enhancing the impact of current cutting-edge PepsiCo-funded projects that contribute to a body of knowledge around the most effective ways to partner with farmers for improving food system outcomes.

“At our core, PepsiCo is an agriculture company,” said Margaret Henry, Director of Sustainable Agriculture at PepsiCo. “We source more than 25 crops from over 7 million acres of farmland across 60 different countries. The AgMission partnership will empower us to use that scale and reach to accelerate the world’s understanding of regenerative agriculture, driving progress toward a carbon-negative future for the sector.”

The agriculture industry accounts for 9.9 percent of GHG emissions in the United States and roughly 13 percent globally. However, agriculture is the only sector with the natural potential to be net negative for GHG emissions. Soil and farmlands already sequester one hundred more times carbon than is emitted in a year. Efforts to reduce emissions from agriculture are happening in fields and labs around the world, but this work is fragmented. There has been no singular effort to coordinate this work until now. AgMission represents the first-of-its-kind coordinated and comprehensive approach to advancing agricultural GHG net negativity. AgMission’s initial work include mapping existing research and partnerships to avoid duplicative efforts and break down research silos.

“The capacity for agriculture to be a planet-changing climate answer is in the hands of farmers and ranchers,” said Erin Fitzgerald, CEO, USFRA. “Their ability to create and deploy climate-smart solutions on acres of farm and ranchland can reduce GHG emissions over time, but they need ongoing learnings from science and data faster, so they can put them to use faster.”

AgMission has also funded a National Academy of Sciences Review to identify how to best implement specific practices necessary to create negative GHG emissions. The review is creating a Scientific Roadmap to a Carbon Negative Agriculture System to implement the most promising strategies to achieve carbon negative agriculture.

FFAR and USFRA are seeking additional partners to join AgMission with a current focus on improving sustainable agriculture nationally, and eventually, globally. For more information, including how to get involved with this groundbreaking partnership, visit the AgMission webpage or email AGmission@foundationfar.org.

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Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) builds public-private partnerships to fund bold research addressing big food and agriculture challenges. FFAR was established in the 2014 Farm Bill to increase public agriculture research investments, fill knowledge gaps and complement USDA’s research agenda. FFAR’s model matches federal funding from Congress with private funding, delivering a powerful return on taxpayer investment. Through collaboration and partnerships, FFAR advances actionable science benefiting farmers, consumers and the environment.

Connect: @FoundationFAR | @RockTalking

U.S. Farmers & Ranchers in Action (USFRA) represents farmer- and rancher-led organizations as well as other leaders throughout the food and agriculture sector with a shared vision of co-creating sustainable food systems and a belief that bold action is needed. It connects farmers and ranchers with the best minds in food, agriculture, science and technology to support the food and agriculture sector in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, and in the process, contributing to increased social and economic stability. USFRA is the secretariat for the Decade of Ag, the first sector-wide movement to align around a shared vision and outcomes for the sustainable food and ag systems of the future.

Connect: @USFRA