PepsiCo Global and the Israeli smart irrigation company N-Drip have signed a cooperation agreement with an economic potential of about $ 50 million a year.
N-Drip’s smart irrigation system is an alternative to flood or canal irrigation methods, which allows for significant water savings, larger crops and reducing the need for fertilizers. In the first phase, the technology will be assimilated in 100,000 dunams of agricultural land in the United States, India, South Africa and Europe, with the volume of the transaction expected to be about $ 20 million a year.
PepsiCo purchases more than 25 types of crops from more than 60 countries, and it helps farmers increase their production by various methods. As their total flooded area stands at about half a million acres, and the two companies plan to expand their cooperation to more countries around the world by 2025, the financial scope of the move is likely to increase significantly.
Eran Polak, CEO of N Drip / Photo: Sivan Farage
The founders of N-Drip are Prof. Uri Shani, who serves as chairman, Dr. Ariel Halperin and Ran Ben Or. The CEO is Eran Polak, a former deputy director of budgets at the Ministry of Finance, and the company has so far raised $ 40 million from strategic and financial investors in the United States and Israel. According to Polk, “Just as PepsiCo purchases crops from farmers of all types and sizes, so N-Drip’s exclusive technology will allow our partnership to make precise irrigation accessible to all types of farmers.”
Rob Myers, vice president of sustainable agriculture at PepsiCo, added that the company has implemented N-Drip technology among farmers in India, Vietnam and the US as part of a pilot, “We saw increased crop yield, reduced fertilizer use, and a 50% reduction in water use compared to flood irrigation “.
In addition to the benefits noted, PepsiCo also says that the N-Drip irrigation system has led to a reduction of up to 83% in greenhouse gas emissions in the agricultural areas where the pilot was conducted. “Increasing the partnership with N-Drip will allow for a greater impact on our agricultural footprint,” Myers concluded.