The story of the world's trading networks
told through eight everyday products.
For more than 200 years, the heart of the global trade in cut flowers has been the Netherlands. The world’s largest global auction for flowers began, famously, in a pub. One trader turned to his peers and asked, how much">over 100,000 people working directly in the flower industry and an estimated two million indirectly.
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Tambuzi Flower Farm in Kenya grows almost 8 million flowers a year across three sites totalling 22 hectares. Located in the rainy foothills of Mount Kenya, around 180km (111 miles) north of Nairobi, at 1,800m above sea level, it exports to 60 countries worldwide, including the UK, Holland, Russia, Australia, the US and China.
As demand for Kenyan flowers has grown, so has Tambuzi, says the farm’s owner, Maggie Hobbs, who took on the business two decades ago.
“We have grown from 20 people growing roses outdoors, to over 500 people on three sites, growing under plastic greenhouses,” says Hobbs.
The farm is the biggest employer within a 30km (18.5 mile) radius and the business s more than 3,000 people. As a certified Fairtrade farm, 10% of the sale price goes back to the workers.
Tambuzi grows 80 flower varieties, but specialises in David Austin scented roses. It also grows summer flowers gypsophila and ammi, and “fillers” for bouquets, such as rosemary, mint and lavender.
“The packing house smells amazing and so do our greenhouses,” says Christine Shikuku, the farm’s HR and environment manager. “When I’m stressed in the office, I just walk into the greenhouses – it’s so therapeutic. I don’t have a favourite flower – they are all lovely.”
Roses are chosen from a breeder and trialled on the farm. “We look at whether they have the scent we love, the number of petals, their tolerance to pests and disease, their colour, and yield,” says Shikuku.
In the commercial greenhouses, workers monitor the soil pH and organic matter, drain the land, weed and feed the roses. Drip-irrigation transports water directly to each plant, minimising waste. To protect the plants from pests and disease, the flowers are sprayed and predatory mites are released to eat insects such as red spider mites and thrips, which feed on and damage the plants. Sticky traps are also set to catch pests such as whitefly.
After eight weeks, workers “bend” the rose stems so shoots start to sprout. The weaker stems are pinched off, leaving only the strongest. At 20 weeks they are harvested by hand, by 67 workers, all of whom are women. They cut the stems and put them into a solution of nutrients, tricking the flower into thinking it’s still attached, so it continues to grow.
The stems are quickly transferred to a cold store and cooled to 4C before being graded, sorted into bunches in the packing house, and returned to the cold store. Finally, they are transported in a refrigerated lorry to Nairobi’s airport.
Tambuzi harvests throughout the year, with one truckload of flowers leaving the site every day, although at peak times – Mothers’ Day, Valentine’s Day and International Women’s Day – this can double. From harvest to the end customer in the UK, the process takes three to four days, says Shikuku.
Despite Tambuzi’s careful management, the farm is facing growing challenges. Climate change is making it increasingly difficult to plan farming activities, says Shikuku. “Last year we had floods I have never seen in my lifetime. Then, when there is drought, it’s extreme – it is worsening every year.”
To help deal with this, the farm harvests rainwater, has installed solar s, and moved some of its production indoors so it can better control the growing environment.
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The farm has brought steady employment to an area with few job opportunities. For 50-year-old Mary Wanjiru Karanja, it offered a welcome change in career. Wanjiru Karanja has been working at Tambuzi for five years and has risen from picker to team leader, helping to manage 64 people. She used to run her own tailoring and dressmaking business, but moved to Tambuzi because the pay was better.
But despite a higher wage, it is an arrangement that requires endurance. Wanjiru Karanja lives 6km (3.7 miles) away and walks two hours to the farm, six days a week. She starts work at 7.30am, getting up at 5am to make breakfast for her family.
“I decided to a Fairtrade farm because I wanted to educate my children better,” she says. “My first-born is a primary school teacher and the second studied business commerce. Tambuzi helped me pay for their university education.”
As team leader, Wanjiru Karanja helps train her co-workers in how to harvest, weed and feed the plants. She enjoys her job, but says weeding is hard work.
Women for 55% of staff at Tambuzi, says Kelvin Ngari, partnerships officer at the farm. Working with the Fairtrade Foundation, the farm is actively promoting more women to leadership roles.
“We’ve seen women rise up from harvesters to managers,” says Ngari. “Women like Mary are challenging the status quo – to educate her children to such a high level has not been seen in her village before.”
Four countries – Kenya, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Tanzania – for 98% of certified Fairtrade flower production. Kenya makes up the greatest proportion, with 39 of the world’s 67 certified Fairtrade flower organisations. These cover around 30,500 people – about 30% of all flower workers in the country.
The Fairtrade flower generates about £6 million ($7.5 million) for Kenyan flower workers and their communities a year, according to the Fairtrade Foundation. Workers collectively decide how to spend the money – this might go directly to them and their families, or to community services such as education and housing. The s can also go towards dedicated medical services to provide much-needed rural healthcare facilities. Some farms go further, and provide hospital services for free for workers and their families, and subsidised care for the rest of the local population.
“In recent years the rapid development of the flower industry in east Africa has driven domestic economic growth, increased investment and provided job opportunities,” says Anna Barker, flowers supply chain and programmes manager at the Fairtrade Foundation. “But many of the people suffer low wages and poor working conditions.
“When we choose a bunch of Fairtrade flowers in the UK, the workers behind them are benefiting from safe working conditions and families are able to send their children to school and access healthcare.”
The UK market for Fairtrade flowers is worth around £21 million ($26 million) – about 2% of the country’s overall flower and plant market, according to UK government statistics. Globally, the market is growing, the Fairtrade Foundation says: 829 million Fairtrade flower stems were sold in 15 countries in 2016, up 5% on the previous year, and this increased to 834 million in 2017.
However, this was only about 20-30% of the 3.8billion flowers grown by Fairtrade workers in 2016 – the rest went to the non-Fairtrade market because demand is not yet big enough, meaning workers did not receive additional money for those flowers. For more workers to benefit from the Fairtrade , sales would need to increase through a combination of consumer demand and more businesses sourcing Fairtrade flowers.
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At Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, world demand for flowers has become so high that it has a dedicated flower terminal.
Tambuzi’s flowers travel 180km (112 miles) by road to the airport. A Boeing 747 can carry 90 tonnes of flowers. In a slow week, about 30 flights loaded with engers and a hold full of flowers will leave the airport. But in the run-up to Valentine’s Day this figure may rise to 100.
The introduction of direct flights over the years has resulted in major developments in trade relations between countries such as America, the UK and China.
Flying flowers thousands of miles undoubtedly uses more energy than transporting them shorter distances, but being on the equator means flower farms themselves can be less energy intensive. “You don’t need to heat your greenhouses, you have more sun exposure – energy usage would be much less than growing flowers in Europe,” says Union Fleurs’ Sylvie Mamias.
For this reason, roses grown in Kenya and sold in Europe produce 5.5 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions than those raised in the Netherlands, even taking into air transport, according to research commissioned by the Fairtrade Foundation.
What happens next – when flowers reach their destination – varies from place to place. The UK is the only country in Europe where the majority of flowers are bought in supermarkets – on the continent most people go to florists, says Mamias.
This means the supply chain is often shorter for flowers reaching the UK, because supermarkets tend to buy direct from suppliers, cutting out the middle-men and reducing costs. Sometimes they might get a wholesaler in the UK to put their bouquets together, mixing flowers from all over the world.
Specialist florists, on the other hand, often buy from wholesalers or go to New Covent Garden Flower Market in London, which receives its flowers mostly via the Netherlands. One of the most specialised and highly sought-after florists in the business is Simon Lycett, based in south London.
Lycett is known for his dream-like creations and was the florist for the wedding of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. He has created flower arrangements for Hampton Court Palace, the Royal Opera House, St Paul’s Cathedral and Kensington Palace.
About 10% of the roses he buys come from Kenya, including the David Austin variety in which Tambuzi specialises. The roses from Kenya are “large, multi-petalled and voluptuous”, says Lycett. “The fragrance is extraordinary. If a client wants to be taken back to their granny’s garden, they are immediately transported by the scent.”
His team buy from New Covent Garden Flower Market every day. For a Saturday event, they will buy on a Tuesday or Wednesday to ensure the flowers are still perfect on the day. The roses arrive packed in cardboard sleeves and Lycett and his team re-cut the stems, strip the leaves, and put the flowers in cool water.
A typical wedding that Lycett works on uses 20,000 roses, but he buys hundreds of different types of flowers, including hydrangeas, peonies and orchids.
“Every client will say they just want it to look perfect. It’s about impact, fragrance, abundance and perfection,” says Lycett.
For developing countries like Kenya, the cut flower industry has brought much-needed employment and opportunity, and it is an increasingly important part of their economic development. In Kenya, flower exports generate income for around 4% of the population, while in South America the trade is a major source of employment in Colombia and Ecuador.
But there are still many challenges ahead. One is the industry’s reputation for poor working conditions, including low pay. But in recent years, conditions have vastly improved for workers in many countries, the Fairtrade Foundation says. Another is the growing concern of climate change, with farms like Tambuzi trying to find better ways to use dwindling and less predictable water resources.
The journey from field to consumer is a long and complex one for something as delicate as a cut flower. For a bloom to maintain its value, it must cover these thousands of miles remaining intact and blemish-free. Over the years, the technological solutions to keep flowers fresh and perfect looking have been honed to a fine art. The next big step will be finding equally robust social and environmental solutions to make sure the trade is truly fair and sustainable.
Image credits: Lion TV, Getty Images
Graphics sources: Rabobank, Observatory of Economic Complexity
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The world’s trading routes have been crafted over centuries and yet remain in a constant state of flux. Made on Earth looks at eight everyday products – from bicycles to whisky, spices to semiconductors – and explores the people, countries and intricate global networks that go into making and bringing these goods to market.