Facing boycott calls after it sued four Gujarati potato farmers for Rs. 4.2 crore, food and beverages giant PepsiCo has offered to settle the case if the farmers stop growing the registered potato variety used in its Lays chips. Farmer groups across the political spectrum have joined a growing chorus of outrage on social media to demand that PepsiCo withdraw its rights infringement case. In an Ahmedabad civil court on Friday, PepsiCo’s lawyer offered a settlement on these terms: the farmers must give an undertaking that they will not use its registered variety and surrender their existing stocks, or must enter PepsiCo’s collaborative farming programme where farmers buy seeds from the company and sell produce back to it.