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30th Anniversary Edition Pesticide Action Network NEWS Advancing alternatives to pesticides worldwide • www.panna.org Year-end 2012 Cultivating the roots of health and justice Pesticide Action Network: The First 30 Years By 1982, the luster of industrial agriculture—the so-called “Green Revolution”—had faded in developing countries. The promised dramatic increases in yields from “miracle” hybrid grains that required high inputs of water, chemical fertilizers and pesticides failed to deliver and were revealed as campaigns to sell technology to people who couldn’t afford it. Local communities were losing control over their own food systems, and women and children shouldered more of the fieldwork—and bore the brunt of pesticide exposure. The global pesticide trade was, however, yielding dramatic profits for chemical companies as more and more farmers were trapped on a pesticide treadmill. That was the world when PAN was founded. In the years since, the world community has reassessed. When rice farming was collapsing in the 1980s due to pest resurgence from resistance to pesticides, Indonesia needed alternatives. A com- ifty years after Silent Spring and 30 years bination of community-scale peer-learning projects recaptured Fafter PAN’s founding, our struggle for health Indigenous farming knowledge and wove it into new ecological pest management. “Farmer Field Schools”—today adapted to and justice remains vital and more urgent than local needs in many countries—returned bountiful crops of rice ever. Challenging the global proliferation of while expenditures on agrichemicals were slashed. By 2002, more pesticides is about challenging corporate control, than a million Indonesian farmers had participated in field schools that became models for localized sustainable agriculture in other ensuring scientific integrity and defending basic countries. Meanwhile, Indonesia and other countries began ban- human rights. ning PAN’s “Dirty Dozen Pesticides.” peoples’ movements are fighting back. Sixty-one countries require Industrial agriculture 2.0 GE food to be labeled, and initiatives are now gaining traction in The companies that profited from the Green Revolution—today California, Washington, and elsewhere in the U.S. consolidated into the “Big 6” pesticide corporations (Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, BASF and Syngenta)—have opened a PAN North America links these struggles in the Global South second front in their ongoing effort to control the world’s food with similar battles in our own region. On Native lands and across supply. The “Gene Revolution” deliberately fosters farmers’ the face of rural America, our scientists and partners are testing dependence on patented seed-and-pesticide technology packages the air for pesticide drift and water for pesticide pollution. We’re “owned” by these corporations. The clear goal is to open up new joining neighbors from Canada to Mexico in resisting further markets while keeping farmers on the pesticide treadmill. Many imposition of GE crops. And we’re helping create an equitable governments have rejected genetically engineered (GE) seed, and food initiative to guarantee living wages and safer conditions for farmers and farmworkers alike. Our commitment is to a truly green revolution, one that includes not only a sustainable vision of agriculture, but equally important, a long-overdue expansion of human rights into the fields of food and farming. We are at a tipping point The model of chemically dependent agriculture marketed by Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta Inside This Issue Protestors on the capitol steps in Sacramento, demanding that 2011–2012 Annual Report p. 3 regulators reject corporate influence and follow the science and common sense to block a carcinogenic strawberry pesticide. and others has lost its credibility with farmers, scientists and As a member of PAN, you are part of the community of people eaters around the world. On farms and in rural kitchens, urban around the world dedicated to a food system and agricultural schools and suburban gardens, families are coming together to economy that nourishes our health, our livelihoods and the eco- demand a food economy that nourishes our health, protects the systems upon which we all depend. Together, as we have for 30 ecosystems upon which we all depend and embodies fairness years, we will continue to roll back pesticide industry influence, from seed to farm to fork. allowing science, democracy and justice to guide policymaking. PAN’s major campaigns and victories Breaking the “Circle of Poison” In the 1990s, PAN turned to building a larger international Inspired by publication of Circle of Poison: Pesticides and People network with other environmental health leaders to press for in a Hungry World in 1981, activists from 17 countries con- creation of a strong Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) treaty vened in 1982 in Malaysia, vowing to stop the export of haz- to eliminate chemicals that remain in the environment long ardous banned pesticides to the Global South. By 1989, PAN after use, travel across regions on wind and ocean currents and had convinced the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that bioaccumulate through the food chain. In 2001, the Stockholm all countries at the very least have a right to be informed when Convention, or POPs treaty, was signed. By 2004, pressure they import banned chemicals. from citizen groups won ratification by 164 governments, moving the treaty to implementation in just three years—more quickly than any previous environmental treaty. Of the first 12 POPs listed for phaseout and eventual elimination, nine were pesticides including DDT and six more from PAN’s Dirty Dozen list. By 2011, after winning state and U.S. bans and restrictions on two more DDT-era pesticides—lindane and endosulfan—they were also added to the treaty to stop their use around the world. PAN continues to work to strengthen the treaty, and to get the only major holdout—the United States—to ratify it. Getting off the pesticide treadmill by investing in agroecology From 1996 through 2003, PAN won stronger World Bank pest management policies and confronted the Bank with many fail- ures of its own approaches to agricultural development projects. As a result of effective Bank engagement and monitoring, the United Nations asked PAN to co-author what came to be known as the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowl- PAN put a spotlight on World Bank pesticide funding, starting with edge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), the community monitoring in China, Indonesia and Mexico, and documented most comprehensive assessment of global agriculture to have projects that were increasing pesticide dependence. ever taken place. In 2008, after four years of research, analysis, debates and orga- nizing, 400-plus experts released the IAASTD report, Agricul- The principle articulated at that founding meeting in Malaysia ture at a Crossroads. They found that small-scale, agroecological was enshrined in a global treaty: the 1998 Rotterdam Conven- farming is most likely to feed the world under conditions of tion on Prior Informed Consent (PIC Treaty). Countries now climate change, while protecting crucial ecological resources receive data on health and environmental harm of pesticides without which food production systems around the world and have the right to refuse import—a remarkable interna- are likely to collapse. Since then PAN has used this landmark tional law that has stood the test of globalization. By 2004, assessment to push for changes in U.S. policy and development the PIC Treaty was adopted by 134 countries. Forty chemicals aid, especially in Africa, where some U.S. foundations in league (including 29 pesticides) are now on the PIC list, requiring with the U.S. government continue to push a disastrous “new prior notification to importing countries. Green Revolution” based on GE seeds and other high-cost, counterproductive technologies. Stopping persistent poisons In 2010, we launched a campaign to protect honey bees from The Dirty Dozen Campaign was launched in 1985 and spurred colony collapse, a dramatic example of the results of the pes- international attention to pesticide poisonings and regulations. ticide treadmill. Bees pollinate crops that provide one in three The campaign achieved a thousand-fold increase in national bites of food we eat, and their disappearance indicates a collapse bans and restrictions over the next two decades. in biodiversity. We’ve spotlighted the latest scientific evidence continued on back page 2 Pesticide Action Network News Year-end 2012 2011–2012 Annual Report How Your Support Was Used Program Impacts Financial Report Programs & Administration PAN reached key benchmarks in 2011– PAN recognizes all grants, pledges and & Fundraising Coalitions 2012, pushing back against the Big 6 contributions in the year they are com- pesticide corporations. PAN’s online mitted. Our overhead expense (adminis- activists reached more than 100,000 and tration and fundraising) was 15.5% of total our network of more than 150 partner unrestricted revenue (14.4% of expenses) in groups is stronger. our fiscal year ending June 30, 2012. For more information, please see our audited financial statements and our IRS Form 990, available at www.panna.org. IRS Form 990 is also available on GuideStar.org. Statement of Financial Position Statement of Activities for the year ended June 30, 2012 June 30, 2012 Temporarily Assets Unrestricted Restricted Total Cash 841,499 Revenue and Support Accounts receivable 47,028 Grants