The way we produce our food has impacts on our health and the environment. Since the introduction of industrialised agriculture and the so-called ‘green revolution’ there have been growing problems with pesticide poisonings and pollution of water, soil and air. There is now virtually nowhere on earth that doesn’t have pesticide pollution and we all have pesticide pollution in our bodies, including wildlife in remote places.

New technologies such as genetically engineered organisms and nanotechnology are rapidly being introduced into our food, which brings a different set of concerns and new types of pollution to deal with.

The globalised marketplace also means we now ship food around the planet which has huge implications in terms of resources and climate change. The community is already beginning to feel the vulnerabilities of a food system that relies so heavily on petrochemical inputs.

The industrialisation of food production has also seen the control over our food supply move out of the hands of communities and into the pockets of corporations. These corporations fundamentally want to make money for their products and will stop at nothing to find new markets to sell them. This ‘chemical colonialism’ is a having a devastating impact on cultures and ecologies everywhere and has become the focus for the pesticide campaigns globally which seek to secure ecological agriculture and food sovereignty.

Many of the corporations now involved in food production, supplying hybrid seeds and chemicals, are the same companies NTN has campaigned against for years to clean up their toxic pollution. Many industrial pollution issues we face today are the result of pesticide production from years ago, eg Union Carbide dioxin contamination of the Rhodes Peninsula in Sydney.

NTN has campaigned for many years on the impacts of pesticides, sometimes tackling issues chemical by chemical. We have had some successes with the banning of organochlorines but clearly, with so many pesticides now in use and novel pollutants also being introduced, this approach is not effective.

We want our position on sustainable food production to be clear. We will continue to work towards a toxic-free food production system and support moves to secure a genuinely sustainable food production system that embraces integrated pest management, agro-ecological strategies, organic and biodynamic farming methods, localisation and diversity.

NTN positions:

NTN does not support chemically intensive food production systems that are totally dependent on synthetic pesticides and fertilizers;

NTN does not support the introduction of genetically modified organisms into agriculture and food production. The benefits are unclear and the risks are too great.

NTN does not support the introduction of nanotechnology into agriculture and food production. This technology is currently totally unregulated and the risks unknown.

NTN supports environmentally sound, socially equitable food production.