Kraft-Heinz is known for its iconic ketchup bottles and its blue-and-yellow macaroni and cheese boxes. Those products would not be on store shelves ready for consumers to enjoy without the hard work of farmers, and increasingly, technological investments that are making the CPG giant’s supply chain more efficient and sustainable.
Patrick Sheridan, Kraft Heinz’s VP of global agriculture, sustainability and seed, drives the CPG company’s long-term vision for agriculture and the supply chain. Kraft-Heinz is not only making its supply chain more efficient but also doing so by helping its farmer partners be more sustainable, Sheridan told AgTechNavigator.
Last year, for instance, Kraft Heinz partnered with the Illinois Corn Growers Association to incentivise regenerative agriculture practices, like using cover crops and reducing tillage and nitrogen fertiliser usage, designed to improve soil health and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as shared in a press release.
“When you look at farming as a system, a more productive farming system is a more sustainable farming system. So, whatever dimension you look at — a per unit basis, CO2 per pound of beef, acres per ton of tomatoes, tomatoes per gallon of water — it does not matter. If your system is more efficient, it is also more sustainable,” Sheridan elaborated.
He added, “The single biggest driver of CO2 emissions is land-use change, and the single biggest driver of biodiversity loss is also land-use change. What drives land-use change is farming. So if you find ways of reducing land-use change, or using the land that we have converted more productively, you inevitably do good by the planet, and it is also good business.”
Hear Patrick Sheridan speak at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit
Looking to learn more about Kraft Heinz's digital farming and supply chain strategy? Then, make sure to attend the 2026 World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in San Francisco, March 17-18, to hear Patrick Sheridan discuss Kraft Heinz's commitment to sustainable and efficient farming.
Sheridan will speak on a panel titled "Intelligent Supply Chains: Powering Resilience Through Data Insight," alongside representatives from Yara International and Corvian. Learn more about that panel here and register to attend the event here. AgTechNavigator readers can take 10% off admission by using the promo code ATN10.
‘There is so much good going on in Brazil’
Regen ag is gaining a foothold around the world, but what sustainable farming practices look like from one country to another can be very different, Sheridan explained. Brazil is one of “the more advanced countries in terms of doing regen ag,” but those practices might only be relevant for that country, he added.
“When people [ask] me about, ‘Where can I look at regen ag at scale and practice?’ I send them to Brazil. I find it difficult to imagine what professional Brazilian farmers could change and improve that is totally different from what they are doing right now. They have permanent soil cover — a lot of them. They rotate their crops — multiple harvests. They apply minimum tillage,” he added.
He added, “You cannot take a farming system from Brazil and deploy it in France. It won’t work. Similarly, if you want to grow tomatoes in California, you cannot use the same system as if you were to grow them in, say, Ohio.”
How farmers are using technology to become more efficient
Farmers are turning to technology to improve efficiency, including AI to surface agronomic data and to power precision farming tools that can apply crop protection product without over-applying, Sheridan explained. Also, AI can help farmers “understand the interaction of soil and plant on a totally different level,” he emphasised.
While technology is advancing, adoption of agtech can be challenging, with farmers often requiring a lot of data to understand the benefits and risks of using any technology, Sheridan said.
“I feel a big barrier to adopting any new technology is that you need a really robust data set that gives you a good understanding of the cash flows, the risks, the comps of that system. So, whether we speak about regenerative agriculture or a new sprayer or artificial intelligence, it is very similar,” Sheridan said.
