by Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of Small Robot Company and fourth generation Shropshire farmer 'Harry' prototype robot with Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of Small Robot Company, Andrew Hoad, Partner & Head of the Leckford Estate, and Joe Allnutt, Head of Robot Awesomeness (credit Geoff Pugh) We’re living on [...]
Today, we are announcing our formal resignation from the Pesticides Forum and Voluntary Initiative. These bodies were formed by government and industry to reduce environmental harms from pesticides. However, in the two decades since they were created, the area of land in the UK treated with pesticides has risen by [...]
by Sarah Brown, Growing Advice Editor of Garden Organic It’s all too tempting to think of your lawn as a plain green area. Think instead of a wonderful, natural carpet, composed of thousands of separate plants, with colour, texture and wildlife. The organic lawn can feed birds, insects and soil [...]
by Karen Rigby-Faux, Community Liaison Officer, Burleys Burleys, with its Royal Warrant, is a grounds maintenance company that has been in existence for more than 50 years. Burleys’ main clients include local authorities, the police, numerous sports clubs and schools across the South East. These are large contracts which involve maintaining public [...]
The Pesticide-Free Towns movement is gathering pace across the UK as public concern about the use of glyphosate and other pesticides in our parks, playgrounds and streets continues to grow. Not long after the recent news from the London Borough of Croydon, which has ended the use of pesticides in [...]
by Steve Peters, Garden Manager, The Level Park, Brighton The Level Park is situated in the centre of Brighton and is completely pesticide-free. Entrance to The Level Park in Brighton which is managed without the use of pesticides. The park’s complete restoration using Heritage Lottery, Big Lottery Fund [...]
by Hélène Rudlin (with contributions from Emily Hirst), Whalley Rangers There is a strong sense of community in Whalley Range; we love our streets, we care about gardening, and there are always activities taking place that contribute to making our environment an even more pleasant place to live, [...]
NEW COTTON RESOURCE One of the principles of Integrated Pest Management is to make maximum use of natural pest control services provided by beneficial insects. Farmers are often unaware of these predatory and parasitic insects and may even spray them, not realising that they can help keep pest levels under [...]
by Nick Mole (Policy Officer, PAN UK) We are angry, the public are angry and the insects are dying Yet it appears that our politicians, across the board, are sitting on their hands as they have done for years hoping that this inconvenient truth will disappear and they can get [...]
by Josie Cohen (Head of Policy and Campaigns) PAN UK continues to work intensely on Brexit to make sure our pesticide standards aren’t weakened as a result of the UK’s exit from the EU. Over the past two weeks, our focus has been on what are called ‘Statutory Instruments’ (SIs). [...]
It’s not the first time we’ve heard about declining insect numbers in recent years, but last week a global scientific study, the first of its kind, shocked even those working in the field to the core. The study – as outlined in an article published in The Guardian - found [...]
by Josie Cohen (Head of Policy and Campaigns) Today, Monday 21st January (‘Blue Monday’), is claimed to be the most depressing day of the year. But the agrochemical company Bayer, the world's largest manufacturer of glyphosate-based products, must be desperately hoping that their worst days of 2019 are already behind them. [...]
Supporting healthy, sustainable and productive smallholder vegetable farming: PAN Ethiopia and PAN UK’s new joint project in the Central Rift Valley Excessive use of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) on vegetable crops grown for the Ethiopian market in the Lake Ziway area threatens the health of farmers and consumers. It also [...]
An update on our work with cotton farmers in Benin (November 2018) The latest results on our project working with cotton farmers in Benin, West Africa, are extremely positive. Working in collaboration with the Benin Organisation for the Promotion of Organic Farming (OPEPAB), and funded by TRAID and the Big Lottery Fund, we have [...]
Croydon Council has given its citizens an early Christmas present by committing to end the use of the controversial weed killer glyphosate in all of it public parks and green spaces. At a full council meeting on Tuesday 3rd December, in answer to a question from Councillor Nina Degrads, Councillor Stuart [...]
December 3rd 2018, is the 34th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster when a gas tank exploded in a Union Carbide pesticide factory in India, killing thousands of people. To date, half a million people have suffered from health consequences linked to that disaster. Elderly survivors of the Bhopal disaster [...]
an insider's perspective by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr Every day for five weeks, I sat in a San Francisco courtroom. I listened as Dewayne “Lee” Johnson described, in excruciating detail, how non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a painful and potentially terminal cancer, robbed him of his health. I watched Monsanto’s lawyers try to [...]
John Wilson is a new campaigner who has recently launched a Pesticide-Free Towns campaign in Newcastle. He shares his motivations and campaign progression below: I have been lobbying Newcastle Council to stop using glyphosate-based weed killer for over 15 years. I did this first as an individual and now, for [...]
EUROPEANS JOIN FORCES CALLING FOR A HIGHER LEVEL OF PROTECTION FROM PESTICIDES (31st October 2018) We've joined forces with EU and national civil society organisations including ClientEarth, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), Global 2000 (Austria), Generations Futures (France) and Justice Pesticides (France), as a coalition manifesto for “rigorous science, safe [...]
by Josie Cohen, Head of Policy & Campaigns (26th October, 2018) The Agriculture Bill currently going through parliament is the first chance the UK has had since 1947 to fundamentally reshape how we grow our food. It offers us the opportunity to usher in a new era of sustainable agriculture which better protects both human health and our natural environment. From PAN UK’s [...]
