PepsiCo and Unilever Small Grains

Providing farmers in PepsiCo and Unilever supply sheds a cost-share to add a year of small grains to a corn/soybean rotation and provide their production data from each year in the rotation. Components of the cost-share will include payments for including a small grain with a legume cover crop in a farmer's corn/soybean rotation and also payments for corn acres with reduced nitrogen inputs following that small grain and legume mix. The production data collected will be used to understand the environmental impact of extending rotations by an additional year and to communicate these benefits to the participating companies with an interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chain. This project will be a one-season pilot project allowing for a surrogate crop (wheat) to be used in the rotation for rye. The project will not use the National Indicators Report for data comparisons, the spidergram, national or state benchmarks and only use comparisons of data within the project.

Active

Innovation

Objectives

UL Small Grains Cost-Share Enrollment

PFI will enroll 220 farmers connected to Unilever's supply chain into the program, with the expectation that, accounting for attrition, approximately 200 will complete participation. We will pay farmers to plant 20,000 acres of small grains with leguminous cover crops in rotation with corn and soybeans. We will enter data into the FieldPrint Calculator for all fields using the practice and capture data about the impact on soybean production. We anticipate a slight increase in soybean yield in this rotation and the additional reduction in emissions through use of leguminous cover crops to support overall reductions in fertilizer.

Pep Small Grains Cost-Share Enrollment

PFI will enroll 220 farmers connected to PepsiCo's supply chain into the program, with the expectation that, accounting for attrition, approximately 200 will complete participation. We will pay farmers to plant 20,000 acres of small grains with leguminous cover crops in rotation with corn and soybeans. We will enter data into the FieldPrint Calculator for all fields using the practice and capture data about the impact on corn production. We anticipate a slight increase in corn yield in this rotation and the additional reduction in emissions through use of leguminous cover crops to support overall reductions in fertilizer.

GHG Reductions and Removals Estimates

Reductions: Via data collection of all small grain fields from ~100 participants, PFI will calculate the greenhouse gas emissions reductions from farmers implementing the practice. PFI will collect production data of the small grains + legume cover crop in 2025 and ask how the field will be managed in 2026 and how it was managed in 2024. The total emissions per bushel of the extended rotation will be compared to the total emissions per bushel from a calculated corn – soybean rotation without cover crops using our FieldPrint Calculator data sets. We will then report the percentage reduction in GHG and anticipate the GHG emissions from the three-year rotation being as high as 4% lower than the standard rotation and as low as 2% lower.
Removals: We will estimate removals using Roth-C in addition to the Soil Carbon Indicator in the Platform after collecting field level data this summer and learning how to use the model. Based on estimates from Rothamsted University PFI estimates that we will report removals of no more than 1100 lbs CO2e/acre.

Participants

Project Lead Organization

Practical Farmers of IowaFull

Project Partner

UnileverFull

PepsiCoFull

Project Details

Status

Active

Pathway

Innovation

Primary Crops

Corn (grain)

Soybeans

Natural Resource Concern

Counties the project is located in: