PepsiCo Partners With Israeli Micro Irrigation Startup N-Drip

US food and beverage giant PepsiCo partnered with Israeli irrigation company N-Drip to assist farmers who work with Pepsi brands with game-changing water conservation technology across 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) by 2025.

In the present day, flood irrigation methods are used to bring water to 85 percent of all irrigated crops worldwide, an area roughly totaling 600 million acres. However, this practice is wasteful as 70 percent of the water that is used in the process is ultimately lost, but the expensive costs of alternatives to flood irrigation have prevented many struggling farmers from making a switch. 

To alleviate this obstacle, N-Drip’s high-pressure irrigation system delivers water to all types of crops using gravity, which cuts maintenance demands and reduces energy requirements by a whopping 70 percent, making it more of an accessible alternative for all types of farmers. N-Drip deployed its irrigation system in 2019 and is currently operating in 17 countries with India, Australia, and the southwestern United States being its primary business hubs. 

Farmers using N-Drip routinely achieve up to 70 percent water savings and see 33 percent increases in crop yields, among its other benefits. Plus, carbon (CO2) emissions associated with flood irrigation can be slashed by as much as 83 percent and methane emissions by as much as 78 percent by transitioning to N-Drip’s gravity irrigation system.  

“We’re thrilled to partner with PepsiCo with the goal of removing barriers to access, introducing and implementing N-Drip to farmers around the world,” said Eran Pollak, CEO of N-Drip. “As PepsiCo sources crops from farms of all types and sizes, N-Drip’s proprietary technology allows our partnership to make precise irrigation accessible to all types of farmers, from those with massive farms to those with one-acre plots.”

PepsiCo sources over 25 crops across 60 countries and scales the adoption of regenerative farming practices under its PepsiCo Positive initiative, pep+. This effort will contribute to its pep+ agriculture goals of “improving direct agricultural supply chain water use efficiency by 15% by 2025 (compared to 2015 levels) in areas of high-water-risk, spreading regenerative agriculture practices across 7 million acres of farmland, and strengthening the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in its agricultural supply chain.”

“To date, we’ve implemented N-Drip’s technology with farmers in India, Vietnam, and the U.S., and saw improved crop yields, reduced fertilizer usage, and 50% less water consumed compared to flood irrigation,” said Rob Meyers, VP, Sustainable Agriculture, PepsiCo. “We’re thrilled to grow our partnership further by scaling N-Drip’s technology to make an even bigger impact across our agricultural footprint.”