How Kenya Is Caught on the Thorns of Britain’s Love Affair with the Rose

Clasping a bouquet of roses, Paul Nyaga smiled shyly. "Yes," he said, "there is someone I want to give flowers to on Valentine's Day, but the flowers won't be from here - I'll get them from the field."

All around him, hundreds of workers in green overcoats were sorting blooms, assembling bouquets and wrapping them into plastic packaging complete with British supermarket logos and price tags, in the giant packing hall of Oserian flower farm in central Kenya.

Mr. Nyaga, 26, a slim young man in a brown shirt and blue baseball cap, was checking the labels on a boxful of roses destined for a Sainsbury's shelf. "Same Price. Same Quality. Now Fairtrade," the label promised.

"I don't know what Fairtrade means," Mr Nyaga confessed. "I know that it's one of our products ... but I can't recall the meaning."

Britons spend over £1.5bn a year on cut flowers, and Kenya has nearly a quarter of the market, which peaks today and tomorrow as millions of Britons give flowers to loved ones on Valentine's Day. As many as 50,000 people now work in Kenya's flower industry, and for the past few weeks they have been working flat out to meet orders.

The industry, now the country's second-largest exporter, is driving the expansion of Kenya's economy and is fuelling a population boom around the shores of Lake Naivasha.

But the British love of roses and saying it with blooms has led to a tense trade-off between economic progress, environmental destruction and social problems.

Tarnished image

At the Oserian farm, where 5,000 workers labour in a sprawl of greenhouses from where daily shipments head straight to Tesco's, Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer and other outlets, the Fairtrade brand is seen as a way to polish the industry's tarnished image and balance the competing interests of business and Lake Naivasha's ecosystem.

For years, human rights groups lambasted Kenya's mainly foreign-owned flower companies over low pay, chemical hazards, and the plight of casual workers.

Conditions have mostly improved since then and the ethical imperative has also prompted the company to reduce its environmental impact, employing hydroponic farming to cut back on water use and getting three-quarters of its energy from a geothermal spring.

"Since Fairtrade has come in, the company is more careful with employees," said Isaac Mwagi, chairman of the self-help group which manages the workers' Fairtrade money in Oserian. "Before, there was just two months maternity leave, but now it is 100 days."

Not all is rosy in Oserian's garden, however. Last week workers rioted after being sacked en masse for striking in a dispute over wages and working conditions. Police reportedly fired teargas and fought running battles with strikers.

Fairtrade roses went on sale only two years ago, and most workers do not recognise the name. But it has a direct impact on their lives: 8% of the export price comes back to Oserian to be invested in community projects. That translates as about £2,000 a month from British sales, while a similar brand in Switzerland, named Max Havelaar, netted the workers a premium of £124,000 last year.

"Some people don't understand the concept," admitted Mr Mwagi. "They want cash, and you have to explain that they need to identify a project - because the concept says the project should benefit the majority and not an individual."

Though jobs in the flower farms are keenly sought after, environmentalists fear the impact of extracting water from the lake as well as the risks of pollution from pesticides.

Thousands of migrant labourers have arrived, like David Gikundi, who came from northern Kenya where he was a small-scale tea farmer: the starting wage with Oserian is the equivalent of £39 a month, which sounds paltry but is more than double Kenya's minimum wage.

Mass migration

But business success - even for firms that produce ethical brands - encourages yet more migration, which ultimately threatens the environment.

"It's going to be a challenge to maintain the environment of the lake," admitted Sean Finlayson, roses manager at Oserian. "Because this isn't going to decrease. It's going to get bigger and bigger. The population around the lake, maybe 150,000 people, have no sewage facilities, people are washing their clothes in the lake. They're all coming because of the flower farms."

Giving flowers for Valentine's Day is not an African tradition, and though it is increasingly popular among the young middle-class in Nairobi, the idea of buying a bouquet is mystifying to most workers.

"Hmm, I don't know where it is going to," said Mr Gikundi, 31, harvesting a batch of cerise roses in a vast greenhouse that feels almost as warm as a Turkish bath. "But I know that they are selling them somewhere."