PepsiCo made meaningful progress on its digital transformation goals in 2025, launching its Digital North Star framework to improve its supply chain, help farmers, and ensure consumers can enjoy the CPG company’s products.
The company unveiled its Digital North Star at its Innovation Summit in Thailand over the summer, which highlighted eight key technologies of key strategic importance, Rob Meyers, VP of agriculture at PepsiCo, told AgTechNavigator.
These eight technologies are broken into three core competencies and include:
- Seed potato production: standardized seed data and seed planning optimization
- On-farm production: agronomic data management, in-season agronomic support, and integrated farm-to-market data
- Post-harvest: storage data acquisition, storage automation, and sensing and unwashed grading for early defect detection
Meyers joined PepsiCo’s agriculture department at its inception nearly 20 years ago and worked to evolve the department to address a myriad of supply chain challenges with technology.
“When I started to look into our supply chain two decades ago, I was really shocked at a couple of things. One was the level of risk that existed in our supply chain and that farmers face every day, and the recognition that their risks are our risks, so we share in the risk. Maybe it should not have been a revelation, but it was for our organisation,” Meyers elaborated.
He added, “So, really shining a light on that story is the foundation for our approach, which is very much a partnership approach. We try to understand where there are opportunities to drive value with farmers — to de-risk their operations and de-risk ours and then share in the value that is created.”
PepsiCo’s AI strategy: Why the CPG company is taking time to get it right
AI garnered a lot of attention in 2025, and like many companies, PepsiCo questioned how aggressively they should invest in the space, Meyers noted.
“With AI in particular, we even asked the question, ‘should we just let it happen?’” he admitted.
Many companies feel pressured to go fast with AI, but PepsiCo is “going a little bit slower than that extreme fast” pace, taking a methodical approach to ensure AI is helping its associates and farmers with on-farm issues, Meyers explained.
For instance, PepsiCo is using AI to improve its potato supply chain, which is crucial since the vegetable is notoriously difficult to transport, Meyers noted. In response, PepsiCo launched an AI-based “opportunity assessment tool,” which identifies storage problems and helps farmers and third parties store potatoes better, he added.
Additionally, the snack and beverage company is developing small language models to process information on specific potato varieties to better inform agronomists and to combat crop diseases, Meyers explained.
“We are leveraging this technology to understand potential disease pressure within the root of the potato under the ground, and that often takes a lot of time. You have to do a big dig. And with AI, we’re able to do a much smaller dig with fewer potatoes, take images, and then it interrogates the information. And so, we are really excited about it because it saves a lot of time. It helps the agronomist and the farmer diagnose the problem, and then it comes with the ‘hey, here are some potential solutions,’” he elaborated.
Can the metaverse solve farming’s labour challenge?
Beyond the supply chain, PepsiCo is partnering with ag stakeholders to develop solutions to solve persistent labour challenges, including through a forthcoming announcement with a major potato harvesting company, Meyers said.
With this undisclosed partner, PepsiCo developed a virtual reality (VR) program that allows users to simulate the experience of riding a harvester, which was showcased at its inaugural Global Farm Awards, he said. Younger event attendees received the technology particularly well, he noted.
“What we ended up doing with this partner is together developing a digital twin of their harvester, as a way to supplement training for folks on the ground,” Meyers elaborated.
Beyond expanding its technology capabilities, PepsiCo has collaborated on numerous regenerative agriculture projects across the world this year, including in Brazil, Poland, France, and Belgium.
