Positive Agriculture
Global development alliances
Global Development Alliances (GDA) is a partnership between USAID and PepsiCo with the aim to invest in women across our agricultural supply chain. The PepsiCo-USAID partnership is primarily focused on three key workstreams.
Workstream 1: Gender smart farm partnerships and demo farms
GDA works with selected farms to establish Gender Smart Farm Partnerships that focus on expanding inclusive agronomic extension around farm packages of practices (POP) and new regenerative practices. We are also working on gender inclusive infrastructure on farms while catering to women farmers’ needs, and we pair it with gender-aware employment practices. Another key area of focus is gender sensitization for male managers and workers to facilitate enhanced women’s participation in agricultural work.
In addition, our partnerships with large suppliers aim to demonstrate improved practices, provide inclusive agronomic training, and enhance work conditions for women. Through these partnerships we aim to facilitate demo days to support broad uptake of new practices among women agriculturalists.
Through this progressive workstream, small form-factor pluggable (SFP) compliance is achieved with accelerated uptake of regenerative agriculture practices. Our focus is expected to improve quality and yields and increased farmer access to labor that is equipped to add value to the work with dedication. We are also working diligently to improve livelihoods and working conditions for the women laborers in the long run.
We have launched three Gender Smart Farms in Punjab.
Workstream 2: Supply chain expansion to include and develop smallholders as PepsiCo suppliers
This workstream aims to expand the current PepsiCo supplier base in new and existing regions to include smallholder farmers, who are more likely to have women as lead or co-lead farmers. Currently, this is focused on smallholders in Gilgit Baltistan, where women are more active as co-farmers and lead farmers.
We are implementing a supplier development program for smallholders that focuses on agronomic and business skills building that provide supply chain insertion support and access to potential small grants.
The aim of this workstream is to create a diversified supplier base that supports increased procurement volume, an extended timeframe for potato sourcing, improved farmer livelihood and spread of RegenAg practices as well as more opportunities for women to become empowered contract holders. This will also help us expand wage rate and days of paid labor.
Workstream 3: PepsiCo agro team gender capacity building
This workstream supports integrating gender inclusion considerations into supply chain management behaviors and skills.
The program includes gender sensitization training that covers gender-based bias, the business case for equality and equity and skill building for inclusive supply chain management. We also organize regular field visits to Gender Smart farms to see inclusive practices in action for more inspiration and continued innovation.
In addition to this, we rely on the GDA- runs Gender Smart Leadership Lab to build knowledge and skills of our Positive Agriculture team which further supports recruitments of female team members in path-breaking sustainable agriculture roles. The inclusion of more women in the Positive Agriculture team gives us a unique perspective on accelerating the engagement of women in the agriculture supply chain with an improved and inclusive work environment that enhances the representation of women. Our leadership is also committed to institutionalization of the highest impact policies and practices in the agriculture sector for women.
