Sustainable Food Systems: advancing solutions to global climate, health and food crises.
Our vision is the creation of local, national and global food and farming systems that protect community and individual health, advance social equity and food sovereignty, and rely on precaution and democratic control.
Our goal is to strengthen and support the creation, further development, adoption, and widespread recognition of socially just and environmentally sustainable pest management practices and food and agricultural systems in California, the US, and internationally.
We are building public will to establish policies and market shifts that support ecological farming, localized control over food systems and fairness for family farmers and workers around the world.
PAN’s Current Priorities:
- We are promoting agroecological solutions to global climate and food crises and the adoption of sustainable alternatives to extremely hazardous, “Bad Actor” pesticides.
- We are working to transform domestic and international development policies and aid to support equitable and environmentally sustainable farming.
- We are helping build marketplace incentives to reward farmers for good practice by negotiating a new U.S. domestic fair trade label that includes farm labor standards.
- We are working to promote food sovereignty in the US and around the world, in partnership with Pesticide Action Network centers in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and Europe.
Adopting Sustainable Alternatives
PANNA promotes the adoption of sustainable alternatives to Bad Actor pesticides, especially organochlorine, organophosphate, and fumigant pesticides. We document and publicize the contribution of agroecology to sustainable development (PDF), profile the successes of local organic farmers and provide technical support on alternatives to our pesticide-focused campaigns. We are also helping build linkages between the pesticide activist, climate and food justice, and sustainable farming communities, to strengthen our respective campaigns (these include, for example, banning specific pesticides, exposing false solutions of corporate biotech and supporting progressive Farm Bill policies). We are also highlighting the role of ecological farming practices in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping farmers adapt to climate change.
Shifting Domestic and International Policies and Investments towards Sustainable Agriculture
PANNA is working to ensure that US food and agricultural policies and investments support a transition towards more equitable and sustainable food and agricultural systems at home and abroad.
Current work includes:
- Campaigning with the US Working Group on the Food Crisis — a coalition of environmental, labor, health, faith-based and hunger groups, of which PANNA is a founding member. Together we are crafting a grassroots and policy-oriented campaign that aims to build U.S. public support for and pressure on policymakers to transition towards safe, clean, healthy and green food and agricultural systems, at home and abroad.
- Organizing public opposition to the White House's nomination of CropLife Vice-President, biotech industry rep and former pesticide lobbyist, Islam Siddiqui, to the influential post of Chief Agriculture Negotiator at the US Office of the Trade Representative.
- Mobilizing public participation throughout 2010 in the first-ever US Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture workshops on corporate concentration and anti-trust issues. PAN will be on the ground in Iowa with family farmers and other mid-West partners for the first workshop in March which focuses on impacts on producers and consumers of consolidation of the seed industry.
- Mobilizing public and Congressional resistance to giveaways of public monies to the false solutions offered by the corporate biotech industry. We investigate and expose the revolving door between industry and US agencies, and we are opposing the provision in Senate Bill 384 (Global Food Security Act) that mandates allocating U.S. taxpayer dollars towards GMO research to "aid" developing countries. See April 23, 2009 PANUPS: "Get GE research out of foreign aid," and April 16 press release.
- Promoting implementation of the findings of the UN's International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, which highlighted the need to increase investments and policy supports for biodiverse, agroecological science and small-scale farming. PANNA played a key role in co-authoring the report and facilitating civil society participation throughout the 4-year process. The final IAASTD reports were approved in 2008 by 58 governments.
Rewarding Excellence on the Farm in the Marketplace: Domestic Fair Trade
PAN North America has joined farmworkers in their efforts to introduce labor
standards in a Domestic Fair Trade label for food grown and sold within
the United States. Negotiations for the development of a domestic fair
trade label address social justice for farmworkers, farmers, and
consumers in the production of food that is healthy and socially just.
PAN actively supports the participation of farmworkers so that their
voices are heard in the development process of a Domestic Fair Trade
(DFT) label. In 2007 PAN participated in a farmworker conference on
Dometic Fair Trade that formulated guidelines for the development and implementation of a DFT label.
Advancing a Vision of Food Sovereignty
PAN defines food sovereignty as: the freedom and power of people, their
communities and nations to assert and realize the right to food and to
produce food in a sustainable way, and to fight the power of
corporations and other forces that destroy people’s food production and
consumption systems.
We are working with PAN centers in Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Europe
and Latin America to advance food sovereignty platforms and policies in
the Global South, or developing world. We are working together to
create a training module for people in the global North, including the
U.S. and Europe, to learn more about food sovereignty, peasant farmer
movements around the world and how we can advocate for increased global
fairness and sustainability as part of U.S. and Canadian agricultural
policy.
