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PANUPS: PAN Meeting in Cuba
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P A N U P S
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Pesticide Action Network
North America
Updates Service
http://www.panna.org/panna/
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June 5, 1997
Fourth International Meeting of PAN Highlights Campaigns and
Alternatives
Over one hundred activists, researchers and government
officials from more than 40 countries gathered in Santa
Clara, Cuba from May 18-22, 1997 for the fourth international
meeting of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN). PAN is an
international coalition of over 400 activist groups,
coordinated by five regional centers.
The PAN meeting was a historic juncture of the international
pesticide reform movement and related movements including
organic agriculture, food security, and farmers' and women's
rights. Activists from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North,
Central and South America represented many aspects of the
struggles for environmentally sound and socially just food
and fiber production.
Presentations and workshops addressed the need to expand PAN
groups' participation in international conventions and policy
initiatives; to increase the availability of information on
health and environmental impacts of pesticides, especially in
the South; to strengthen efforts to regulate the global
pesticide trade; and to address threats to sustainable
agriculture from the agrochemical and biotechnology
industries. Participants also focused on promoting socially
just and sustainable pest management through local, national
and international institutions. In addition, meeting
participants developed a new PAN international campaign,
"Feeding the World Without Poisons," as a framework for
diverse activities of NGOs working to improve pest management
practices, upgrade pesticide legislation, respond to
international trade regulation and promote alternatives to
pesticides.
The PAN meeting began with a field trip highlighting the
widespread implementation of organic and low input
sustainable agriculture in Cuba, and was attended by more
than a dozen Cuban representatives of research, teaching and
farming groups assisting their country's dramatic conversion
to ecologically sound agriculture. Cuba is in the midst of
the most comprehensive conversion from conventional
agriculture to organic or semi-organic farming ever attempted
by a national government. Following the dissolution of the
socialist trading bloc in the early 1990s, imports of
pesticides, fertilizers, petroleum and animal feed to Cuba
dropped by well over 50%; food imports fell dramatically as
well. Cuban researchers and farmers are now working to
replace their former heavy dependence on imported farm
machinery, chemical inputs and food and are instead building
on their long experience with biocontrol. They are increasing
yields through use of animal traction, crop and pasture
rotations, polyculture, soil conservation, organic soil
amendments, biological pest control and a rapidly expanding
organic urban agricultural sector.
PAN meeting participants also considered the recent outbreaks
in Cuba of the exotic crop pest Thrips palmi following the
aerial release of an unconfirmed substance over Cuba airspace
by a plane registered to the U.S. State Department in October
1996. Meeting participants issued a statement calling for an
immediate, thorough and transparent United Nations
investigation of Cuban government allegations filed with the
UN in March 1997 that this pest was intentionally released in
an act of "biological aggression" against Cuba.
PAN's Fourth International Meeting in Cuba was co-sponsored
by Food First, a California-based NGO working on food
security and organic agriculture issues, and was organized in
association with the Third International Organic Agriculture
Conference of the Cuban Association of Organic Agriculture
(ACAO). The first, second and third PAN International
meetings took place in The Netherlands, Canada and Malaysia,
respectively, and the fifth is planned to be in Senegal in
2000. Conference proceedings for both the fourth PAN
International and the ACAO conference are under preparation
and will be available later this year (ordering information
will be published in the PANUPS Resource Pointer).
For information about the ACAO Organic Agriculture
Conference, contact: ACAO, Tulipan 1011 e/Loma y 47; Apdo.
Postal 6236, Codigo Postal 10600, Nuevo Vedado, La Habana,
Cuba; phone (53-7) 811 448.
For information about Food First, contact:
Food First, Institute for Food and Development
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618; phone (510) 654-4400; fax
(510) 654-4551; email foodfirst@igc.org.
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