September 1997, Volume 18 No. 3

Conference Reports

PAN Meeting in Cuba

Some one hundred practitioners, researchers and government officials from more than 40 countries gathered in Santa Clara, Cuba on 18-22 May 1997 for the Fourth International Meeting of the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) to challenge the view that pesticides are necessary for agriculture. PAN is an international coalition of over 400 activist groups, coordinated by five regional centres.

Presentations and workshops address-ed the need to expand PAN groups' participation in international conven-tions 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. Among the many workshops were those on alternatives to methyl bromide, biotechnology - the new green revolution?, biodiversity-based agriculture, and organic cotton.

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 agricul-ture to organic or semi-organic farming ever attempted by a national government. Following the dissolu-tion 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 conser-vation, organic soil amendments, biological pest control and a rapidly expanding organic urban agricultural sector.

PAN's Fourth International Meeting in Cuba was co-sponsored by Food First, a California-based NGO work-ing on food security and organic agriculture issues, and was organized in association with the Third Inter-national Organic Agriculture Con-ference of the Cuban Association of Organic Agriculture (ACAO). Con-ference proceedings will be available later this year (ordering information will be published in the PANUPS Resource Pointer). The PAN Fifth International Meeting is planned for Senegal in 2000.