A 2003 Guardian investigation revealed poor workers' conditions and
environmental degradation [http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/story/
0,,956536,00.html" title="]. Felicity Lawrence finds that despite
progress, concerns remain over water scarcity and tax [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/01/kenya-flower-industry-tax-investigation"
title="]
Felicity Lawrence in Naivasha, Kenya
Saturday April 2 2011
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/01/kenya-flower-industry-worker-conditions-water-tax
H3O Pink is the formula to remember if you are looking for a
commercial way to express love on Mother's Day on Sunday. It is the
name given by hi-tech breeders to one of the roses being imported by
the million this week from Kenya's leading flower company, Flamingo
Homegrown, as shops such as M&S gear up for a peak in sales.
Flamingo's warm pink rose, marketed as symbolising a gentler love than
the red-blooded passion of crimson Valentine's blooms, will be
M&S's top seller this weekend. The hint of water in the H3O name
is apposite too, as most of Britain's flowers are imported by air from
water-scarce countries in Africa. Flamingo's farms and those of the
other large flower multinationals are concentrated around one of the
few freshwater lakes in Kenya, Lake Naivasha. As climate change
threatens more frequent droughts, and with population growth adding to
pressure on resources, the water footprint of this kind of trade is
again under scrutiny.
Flowers are one of Kenya's main sources of foreign currency earnings,
bringing in more than ?300m a year to the economy, but questions are
also being asked about how much of that money stays in Kenya.
The head of the Kenya Revenue Authority, John Njiraini, has announced
that he is investigating the flower sector, including the three
largest multinational exporters, because he suspects they are shifting
profits to other jurisdictions and not paying their fair share of tax
in Kenya [http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/01/kenya-
flower-industry-tax-investigation" title="].
The flower business has been controversial for other reasons. In 2003,
campaigners raised the alarm about conditions for workers on some of
the flower farms and in packhouses. A Guardian investigation [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/food/focus/story/0,,956536,00.html" title="] made
public serious concerns about health and safety arising from chemical
spraying, long working hours and instances of harassment. So Guardian
Films, with funding from Christian Aid, went back to Kenya to look
into the new complaint about tax and to see if conditions had changed
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/video/2011/apr/01/true-
cost-mothers-day-flowers-video" title="].
Flying out of Nairobi as you pass over the huge geological fault line
of the Great Rift Valley, its floor opens out in front of you with
Lake Naivasha gleaming like a sheet of glass below. Originally Masai
grazing land, this was one of the first areas settled by white
farmers. Today huge stretches of white plastic reflect back the
equatorial light. These are the greenhouses of the intensive farms.
In 2009 the industry had a wake-up call. The lake, on which the flower
farms depend for irrigation, shrank dramatically after a prolonged
drought, putting the whole business under threat. A flash storm then
washed untreated sewage from Naivasha town and, it is suspected,
chemical residues from some of the farms into the lake, killing large
numbers of fish. The population of the town has grown from about 6,000
people in the early 1980s to approximately 240,000, according to its
mayor, Paul Karanja, largely thanks to an influx of migrants drawn to
the farms for work. Its infrastructure has not been able to keep up.
On top of the sewage problems, the schools are struggling to cope with
classes of up to 80 children, and patients in the hospital sometimes
have to share beds, he told us.
The crisis has, however, accelerated efforts to make the area more
sustainable. Big companies such as Flamingo have invested millions of
pounds to minimise their water use and maximise recycling and
rainwater harvesting. Flamingo's general manager, Craig Oulton, told
us it had cut its water use in half in 10 years by completely
rethinking its growing practices. But perhaps more significant is that
businesses such as Flamingo now acknowledge that cutting their own
water use is not enough if they do not help with the wider needs
around them. Flamingo's head of sustainable business, Richard Fox,
told us: "In the last two years the water dropped to levels not seen
since the 1940s. We've had to take our programmes outside our gates.
Social equity now has to be part of the equation if we want our
business to survive."
Horticultural companies agreed last year to pay a new tax to the town,
based on acreage, to tackle infrastructure problems. Regulation of
water use has been weak, so Marks & Spencer has put up funding to
help develop a democratic system of negotiating how all the groups
that depend on the lake will share its water and cut back in times of
drought. These include Masai pastoralists, smallholders, fishermen and
hotels as well as big horticulture firms.
Louise Nicholls, M&S's head of sustainable sourcing, said: "As
climate change impacts we will have to make some difficult choices
about where we source food and flowers, especially if it's a water-
vulnerable country. If you want a mandate to supply from a particular
country, it will be very important to show the wider benefit of your
trade there."
The bad publicity in 2003 has driven other changes too. Roses are a
luxury feel-good purchase. If consumers feel bad about how they are
produced, they may not want to buy, so companies have had to respond
to criticism. All Flamingo flowers are produced to Fairtrade
standards.
The company has also slashed its pesticide use. The most toxic class-1
chemicals are no longer used, and most pests are treated with
biological controls instead, including the deployment of ladybirds and
other predators cultivated in specially built bug-harvesting
greenhouses.
Labour conditions on Flamingo's farms have also improved, as workers
we interviewed independently away from the farms confirmed. Overtime
is voluntary, casual contracts have mostly been replaced with
permanent ones and a real effort has been made to train and promote
women supervisors and eliminate harassment. Gender and welfare
committees deal with any problems swiftly.
The agricultural workers union, which has not yet won recognition at
the company, would like to see a greater distribution of profits in
the form of higher wages, but wages and benefits are at least above
average. Most of the workers from other big firms we interviewed said
they were glad to have the jobs but it was a struggle to survive on ?
50 to ?60 pay a month.
Rachel English is co-ordinator for Women Working Worldwide [http://
www.women-ww.org/index.php/campaigns/where-do-flowers-come-from"
title="], which blew the whistle [http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/
sep/23/guardianobituaries.gender" title="] on conditions. She said:
"They've made progress on labour rights, but ... are the workers
earning a living wage? What's fair? The big farms may pay more, but
it's nothing like enough to live on decently. That's the next
challenge."
Flower trends
The best-selling roses are white and yellow, but the fashion for
vintage clothing has filtered through to the flower market, with
washed-out tones of pale pink, oatmeal and even soft brown gaining
popularity.
Bouquet trends, meanwhile, are shifting from the clash of bold colours
of recent years to a more subtle mix of shades and tones of the same
colour.
Plant breeding over the years has concentrated on producing the
perfect shape, colour, stem length and shelf life for cut roses, with
the result that scent has faded.
Breeders have been working to bring back the rose's distinctive
fragrance, crossing old English varieties with newer ones. However,
the unconventional, slightly serrated petals this produces have not
proved popular with the public.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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