The makers of Walkers crisps have set a goal to cut carbon emissions and water use in its crops 50 per cent by 2015.

PepsiCo has become the latest conglomerate to unveil strict new agricultural targets.

Under the initiative, farmers growing potatoes, apples and oats for PepsiCo UK and Ireland have started testing internet crop management tools, low carbon fertilisers and greener machinery in a bid to halve carbon emissions and water usage across PepsiCo core crops within just five years.

The target, neatly dubbed ’50 to 5′ was confirmed in PepsiCo’s first Sustainable Farming Report, published today.

To help deliver the target some of PepsiCo’s 350 farms have started to test ‘icrop’, a web-based crop management tool developed with Cambridge University, which allows growers to track crop inputs and outputs and accurately calculate water use and carbon emissions.

Potato farmers will be able to use a computerised carbon calculator called The Cool Farm Tool, which shows how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted during each part of the agricultural cycle in an attempt to help farmers understand how much carbon results from different practices.

PepsiCo claims to be the largest buyer of British potatoes since switching to 100 per cent British potatoes in 2007 for Walkers crisps; and says it is one of the UK’s largest purchasers of British oats and apples.

Richard Evans, president of PepsiCo UK and Ireland said: “Farming is in the DNA of our business – we rely on British produce every day and sustainable agriculture is essential to our future. In partnership with our 350 UK farmers, I’m confident that we will realise our aim to reduce carbon emissions and water used in farming by 50% over the next five years.”

The move comes just days after supermarket giant Walmart announced a major new sustainable agriculture strategy designed to increase its use of local produce and better promote best practices across its supply chain.