Feeding the World Without Poisons – 
the 5th PAN International Conference

Over 120 representatives from 40 countries gathered in Dakar, Senegal for the Fifth International PAN Conference from 18-21 May 2000 – celebration of the growth of the PAN network since its inaugural meeting eighteen years ago. PAN now includes over 400 groups in 60 countries. The meeting was the first to be organised by the PAN Africa Regional Centre and included a packed agenda of panel presentations, discussions and workshops.

The conference was preceeded by two days of field visits that illustrated both the successes of and the challenges to sustainable agriculture. PAN members visited an organic farm, and a vegetable production enterprise to see how sustainable production is possible, but were also reminded of the difficulties facing developing countries in struggling to achieve that goal. A mango orchard was rescued from 75% potential cut in production following the successful application of parasitic wasps to control cottony cushion scale. However, biological control on a wider scale is prevented at the moment because the research station is limited to one partially working insectary to produce the predator wasps.
   Conference participants also visited a smallholder about to work on his field. He had been advised on pesticide use by a salesman, just once, some ten years ago. He was ready with his knapsack sprayer, about to load his two stock products, the organophosphates dimethoate (WHO Class II – moderately hazardous) and methamidophos 60% concentrate (WHO Class Ib – highly hazardous). This illustrates the work that still remains to be done to prevent the continued use of dangerous pesticides, some fifteen years after the introduction of the FAO Code.
    The Conference heard of the many activities of PAN regions and their member groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America, and Europe. The panel sessions and workshops of the Conference produced resolutions and agreed priorities for many of the existing issues and new ones that have emerged.

Old pesticides, new problems
Although the FAO Code is now well established, it will be strengthened over the next year to take account of new issues. The Prior Informed Consent provisions of the Code are now given the force of international law as the Rotterdam Convention. Further recognition of the longer term dangers of some pesticides is accorded in the UN Persistent Organic Pollutants process, which looks to sunset worldwide production and reduce transboundary environmental pollution. The issue of disposal of obsolete pesticide stocks has also risen up the agenda. The long-term human and environmental impacts of pesticides as endocrine disrupting chemicals echo the warnings of Rachel Carson’s prophetic Silent Spring nearly forty years ago.

Changing context for PAN
The 4th International Conference was held in 1997 in Cuba. Looking back over that short time PAN’s strategies have developed to meet new challenges. The ever-increasing pace of globalisation demands an analysis of the threats and opportunities for PAN concerns. The Conference heard evidence of the adverse impacts on food security and small farmers as a consequence of trade liberalisation and the present inclusion of agriculture within the domain of the World Trade Organisation regime.
   The actual and potential introduction in many parts of the world of genetically engineered herbicide tolerant crops and plants that produce their own insecticide has galvanised groups. The successes and failures of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the realisation that sustainable agriculture depends on maintaining agricultural biodiversity has led more groups to focus on the protection of biodiversity, including opposition to patenting of seeds and protection of indigenous knowledge.

New alliances
Capacity building has always been a strong PAN theme, but this year’s conference reflects new links with the union movement and calls for increased cooperation between PAN and small farmers and waged agricultural workers. Participatory methods are increasingly seen as the way forward in research, in lay epidemiology and in the development of sustainable agricultural movements. Work in developing organic cotton production has shown the benefits of linking consumers with producers. Pesticide reduction strategies depend on all parts of the community being involved in deciding what the acceptable level of risk is from pesticides.

The future
PAN has now established itself as a strong and vibrant network throughout the world, coordinated by the five Regional Centres. This provides a powerful tool for North-South linkages as well as for regions to pursue their own priorities. The Conference demonstrated again that even in an age of (for some) the internet and electronic communication, the need for information about pesticides and their hazards, and the alternatives to synthetic chemical pest control, remain paramount. The tests of our success will be the wider dissemination of organic and other lower external input farming methods, and whether the smallholder we saw can safely manage his farm without spraying organophosphate or other synthetic products wearing only t-shirt, shorts and sandals, and whether biological methods of pest control can be propagated as the norm.

We, 120 participants from 40 countries, representing farmers, workers, agricultural trade unions, women, scientists, and health, environmental, consumer and development activists belonging to the international Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and its partner organizations, have gathered in Dakar, Senegal for the Fifth International PAN Conference from 18-21 May 2000.
   We view with grave concern the developments that threaten the people’s food security, health, and livelihood and the environment all over the world. Pesticides use continues to cause havoc to people’s health and well being, and to the environment. At the same time, transnational corporations are developing and marketing genetically engineered organisms and food that threaten the environment, biodiversity and people’s health, jobs and livelihoods. This technology will consolidate corporate control over agriculture and food production, increase pesticide use and undermine farmer control over seeds and technology.
    The process of globalization promotes the corporate agenda for profit. This is undermining local food production and increasing the practice of food dumping, especially on poor countries, the sale of unnecessary and excessive agricultural inputs, the concentration of monopoly corporations in agrochemical, food and seed industries, the development of genetic engineering and corporatisation of agriculture.
    We are deeply concerned with the resultant loss of access and self-sufficiency in food, loss of local and indigenous knowledge and seeds, displacement of farming and fishing livelihoods, break-up of rural communities, increased indebtedness for farmers, forced migration of people, greater misery for women, hunger and malnutrition, especially for rural populations, land concentration and marginalization of sustainable agriculture.
    We commit ourselves to fight for the elimination of pesticides, the termination of genetic engineering of organisms in food and agriculture, the end of corporate globalization and the realization of food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture worldwide.

We will: 

1. Advance sustainable agriculture as a holistic, scientific approach and a movement for social transformation that integrates local and indigenous knowledge, participatory research, empowerment of women, farmer control over land, water, seeds and forests, protection of workers’ rights and of rural communities, appropriate technology, biodiversity conservation, access to and equitable distribution of food, equitable sharing of benefits and food self-sufficiency respecting ecological integrity.

2. Support alternatives to synthetic chemical pesticides, especially organic agriculture.

3. Continue to fight for local, national and international agreements to restrict, reduce and eliminate pesticide dependence and to phase out and ban synthetic chemical pesticides especially those that cause acute, chronic and endocrine disrupting effects.

4. Campaign to stop the development and use of genetically modified organisms in food and agriculture through national, sub-regional and international coordinated actions.

5. Launch and join campaigns against globalization of agriculture, and the international institutions and instruments that promote it, such as transnational corporations, the International Monetary Fund, multi-lateral development banks, structural adjustment programs and the World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture and Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights.

6. Increase protests against injustices of agrochemical, food and fibre transnational corporations and campaign for corporate and government accountability.  

PAN will achieve this by:

1. Developing participatory research and monitoring, resource base building, education and mobilization, and advocacy work in order to strengthen grassroots and national capacity.

2. Developing nationwide, regional and international networks and alliances and strengthen grassroots peasant and women movements as their foundation.

3. Launching coordinated campaigns with farmers, industrial workers, waged and food agricultural workers, environmentalists; women’s, human rights and consumer movements and many others.

4. Influencing, through coordinated actions and activities, the policies and practices of governments, inter-governmental organisations, and other institutions at national, regional and global level.

We, the participants of the 5th PAN International Conference, challenge the paradigm that the world can only be fed with pesticides and genetic engineering, we demand that our collective voice be heard and we commit ourselves to realize our goal to feed the world without poisons through sustainable agricultural practices, controlled and managed by the community.

Dakar, Senegal
21 May 2000

The Dakar Declaration, Workshop Resolutions and the proceedings of the Conference will be collated and translated, and will be available from PAN Africa (details see page 2) in September 2000.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 48, June 2000, pages 12-13]