On Friday, 20th September, we will be closing our Brighton office to join the global strike for climate and biodiversity. Industrial agriculture is a key driver of climate change for a number of reasons. Land that has been deforested and converted to crop production reduces the availability of diverse, carbon-sequestering ecosystems. [...]
By Paul Lievens, Communications & Policy Officer, Banana Link "Twenty or thirty years ago, people who are growing organic – they are crazy people! To grow organic is to think different. About the workers, about the social aspects also. To work with the communities. Also, to work with the [...]
By Deborah Lewis, SumOfUs Paul François and SumofUs activists at the Bayer-Monsanto AGM Every spring, in Germany’s former capital city Bonn, Bayer-Monsanto’s top executives, shareholders and CEO meet for the chemical giant's annual general meeting (AGM). Ultimately, this is the corporation's most important meeting of the year as [...]
by Stephanie Williamson, Staff Scientist, PAN UK Launched in July 2019, the latest report from the convenors of the RSA’s Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, entitled Our Future in the Land, could have been yet another worthy, dull and hard to digest report of interest mainly to policy nerds and [...]
By Nick Mole, Policy Officer, PAN UK 2019 is proving to be an amazing year for our Pesticide-Free Towns campaign, as an ever growing number of councils adopt policies that will bring an end to the use of potentially harmful pesticides in the parks and playgrounds, streets and schools where [...]
by Josie Cohen, Head of Policy & Campaigns, PAN UK PAN UK has been campaigning to promote Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as an effective way to reduce pesticide use for decades. We were delighted, therefore, when the government’s 25 Year Environment Plan committed to making IPM ‘central’ to the UK’s [...]
We were delighted to be featured on Countryfile this week talking about the support British farmers need to move away from pesticides. PAN UK has been working to reduce pesticide-related harms in the UK for more than three decades and it’s great to see this agenda getting more attention. For [...]
by Koen Hertoge, PAN Europe and Peter Clausing, PAN Germany Agricultural pesticide drift contaminates children's playgrounds - Image: Shutterstock Fruit and wine production is among the agricultural sectors with the highest pesticide applications. Yet, the extent to which such public places are affected by pesticide drift from agricultural [...]
by Michel Pimbert, Professor of Agroecology and Food Politics at Coventry University Pesticide companies are caught up in a fierce competition for survival. In the current context of global mergers and restructurings, transnational corporations need to continuously increase their sales of synthetic pesticides in every possible corner of the [...]
The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the three key international chemical conventions (the Basel Convention, the Rotterdam Convention and Stockholm Convention) is being held this May in Geneva. The theme of the meetings is "Clean Planet, Healthy People: Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste". This is an important event [...]
Brighton & Hove Environment Hustings 2019 Thursday 18th April saw council election candidates from the four main political parties take part in Brighton & Hove’s Environment Hustings, ahead of local elections on 2nd May. Organised jointly by PAN UK and the Brighthelm Centre, the ‘hustings’ - an event during an election [...]
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 [...]
