Editor’s Note: This week’s featured nonprofit is the Pesticide Action Network, one of TakePart’s nonprofit partners for Food, Inc.

At Pesticide Action Network (PAN) we know one thing: Pesticides are the linchpin of industrialized agriculture. Their introduction into farming 60 years ago, along with petrochemically-derived fertilizers, set U.S. farming down a costly and unsustainable path. Along the way, community-scale farming was nearly destroyed, generations have suffered ill health ranging from cancer to autism and Parkinson’s, biodiversity has taken big hits, and six mega-corporations who today dominate the genetically-engineered seed and pesticide industry have gotten very rich and very powerful (think Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta).

PAN works to loosen the pesticide industry’s control over global agriculture by holding accountable the governmental bodies that are charged with regulating them. We’ve been in this struggle for more than 27 years, across six continents–and we have never been more confident than we are today that real, global food system reform is possible. Join us.

Our point of view is defined largely by two sets of commitments: to farmers and farm workers on the front lines, and to honest science on the ground. Our network was founded in the Global South where millions were, and tragically still are, being hurt by the onslaught of chemically-dependent farming–especially women and children who shoulder the brunt of pesticide exposure as field laborers. From the get-go, we put scientists together with grassroots environmental justice movements to promote health and equity. PAN’s “grassroots science” approach puts our experts out in the fields with affected communities, documenting the various ways that pesticides are hurting people, and the how they persist in human bodies and the environment for decades, far from where they’re applied.

If you’re wondering why, after 27 years, PAN isn’t (yet) a household name, it’s because we take the “Network” part of our name pretty seriously–we collaborate with no fewer than 600 partner organizations, many of which are small community groups in some 90 countries. We do the science and we organize behind the scenes, intentionally putting the voices of affected communities and our community-based partner organizations up front because we believe in this winning formula:

sound science + testimony of people telling their own stories = unimpeachable truth

This combination of independent, verifiable science and network-based organizing has yielded results. Since our founding in 1982, we’ve been leaders in the movement that initiated and won the main international treaties responsible for regulating the trade in highly hazardous and persistent pesticides (the Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions).

Over the last, dark eight years in the U.S., we watch-dogged the U.S. E.P.A. to keep pesticide regulations largely intact despite increasing concentration of agrichemical corporate power in the marketplace and unprecedented influence in agency affairs and the halls of U.S. Congress. Despite these challenges, we helped ban some of the worst pesticides and led a campaign that has increased controls over fumigant pesticides - among the most dangerous still being widely used in the U.S.

Last year, one of our scientists was a lead author on the U.N. International Assessment of Agricultural Science & Technology (IAASTD). The Assessment was a four-year effort by more than 4,000 scientists and experts, from government, the private sector and–for the first time in U.N. history from civil society as well–who collectively came to a conclusion that literally made Syngenta quit the process in a huff. The IAASTD’s conclusion? For global agriculture “business as usual is not an option.” In other words, industrialized farming (especially reliance on biotechnology) is not only not the best option for feeding the world, it’s not even viable.

The IAASTD’s conclusions were like those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th report on global warming, only for agriculture–a call for fundamental change. Great change is clearly afoot and you can be a part of it.

There has never been a better time to help farmers around the world regain control of food production, and to force big, corporate ag’ to kick its bad habits.

One thing you can do right now:

Ban Endosulfan in the U.S.: Endosulfan is a neurotoxic, organochlorine pesticide–the same chemical class as DDT and other insecticides that were banned long ago. 60+ countries have already banned endosulfan. It’s time for the U.S. to do the same.