To gain insight into the decision-making of palm oil, banana, and tea producers with regard to Paraquat, the IUF and the Berne Declaration have conducted this brief survey.

Forty major producers and traders of palm oil, bananas, and tea, along with industrial buyers of palm oil completed questionnaires sent out by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) and the Berne Declaration on their current use of Paraquat in the production of crops. The questionnaires were crop-specific (i.e. they were tailored to each of the crops covered by the project). The replies received were not verified by Berne Declaration, IUF or any other bodies. They were self-assessments by companies.
The results of the questionnaires indicate:
1. Major producers of bananas like Dole and Chiquita and smaller banana producers have stopped using Paraquat in their banana plantations.
2. Major packers of tea like Unilever and Nestlé along with smaller tea producers have moved away from reliance on Paraquat.
3. Producers of palm oil are about equally divided into Paraquat users and non-users, while palm oil buyers are interested in purchasing palm oil produced without Paraquat.

The Board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) failed to meet the expectations of its members by not identifying safe and cost-effective alternatives to specific hazardous chemicals, such as Paraquat, by the scheduled date of November 2007. Instead, they only started working toward this goal about one year ago in January 2008.
In sum, the results of our questionnaire show that Paraquat-free production of palm oil, banana and tea is not only desirable but is already a reality. The ongoing move away from Paraquat by big companies as well as smallholders shows that Paraquat is not needed for agricultural production.
These findings together with existing knowledge on the detrimental effects of Paraquat should encourage regulators to take action to ban Paraquat immediately.