Category: Featured Articles March – April 2022

1. What experiences led you into agronomy, take us through the journey and your current role with Bayer East Africa, What do you enjoy most about working with farmers?
Agronomy started in my childhood since farming was the only way of living in our society where I was growing up. This led up me to pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Horticulture at JKUAT and started my career at Technoserve impacting growers with GAP knowledge. One thing led to the other and I found myself in Bayer as a technical assistant in horticulture sector and later joined the floriculture industry where I have grown through for 10 year to my current role of leading Floriculture and Export vegetables sector in Kenya. Farmers are the most patient people you will ever find, and out of this you can learn a lot from them. That’s why I enjoy working with the farmer.

This Valentine’s Day many people bought flowers for their significant other without a lot of thought as to where those flowers came from. International trade, however, has a huge part to play in keeping the UK’s florists stocked with fresh cut flowers.

Where the UK imports flowers from
A little-known fact is the second top import market to the UK for flowers is Kenya, which supplies just over 8 percent of British-sold flowers, or 10,000 tonnes, worth not far off £67 million. Cut flowers account for 25% of all Kenyan imports to the UK.

Alongside the domestic UK trade in flower cultivation, the biggest import market to Britain is the Netherlands, which supplies more than 80 percent of cut flowers, worth £500 million, according to Trade Maps.

Digital trade corridor
The Institute of Export & International Trade has been working with donor organisation TradeMark East Africa (TMEA) to implement a ‘digital trade corridor’ between the UK and Kenya to help simplify trade between the two nations.

The initiative, called the ‘UK-Kenya Trade Logistics Information Pipeline’ (TLIP), aims to eliminate documentation and introduce better visibility in the supply chains flowing between the UK and Kenya. This initiative builds upon the Kenya-UK Economic Partnership Agreement, which was signed in December 2020.

If it is possible to learn from the mistakes of others, a moment has come for our parliamentary committees and the Ministry of Agriculture to take a good look at Sri Lanka. For, what better way to implement great policies than by seeing their impact beforehand?

And, as the Kenyan establishment continues to flirt with the idea of banning most of the country’s pesticides, it now has a full example of a country that did it. For, in April last year, Sri Lanka became the world’s first organic-only nation, by banning all agrochemicals. 

So no one needs to argue anymore about what it does to agriculture stopping the medicines, the dips, the weed control, or the insecticides. Now, we can see it, as Sri Lanka handles a consequent and colossal food crisis. This is particularly important, as it clearly cuts no ice pointing out the obvious outcomes of slashing our agricultural production by an estimated 40%.

Flowers Expo Moscow, Russia By Mary Mwende Mbithi With the industry just recuperating from the ravages of covid-19 pandemic, another setback has just hit the

By Mary Mwende Mbithi

Though a happy day painted Red in colour, with overwhelmingly high expectations, this year’s Valentine’s Day might not have been so rosy for flower farms in Kenya. Like it has always been the norm, most flower farms have always looked forward to cash in on the day, but this year there was nothing to smile about.

Having experienced the biting jaws of the pandemic and almost shaken to its roots, the flower industry is struggling to resuscitate amid prevailing challenges. The Kenya Flower Council (KFC) in a statement said that the adverse effects of the pandemic saw the country’s export of flowers go down by 10% in the year 2021. As of now, the industry is almost on its feet despite hitches here and there.

Besides the lockdowns and curfews that almost crippled the industry during the onset of the pandemic, new setbacks have continued to add salt to the injury. According to the Kenya Flower Council (KFC), Kenya recorded a decline in flower production with the country producing 160,000 tonnes of flowers last year (2021) compared to 173,000 tonnes in 2020.

Kenya prides herself of a blooming flower sector and partnered with fourteen (14) pavilions at Expo 2020 Dubai to distribute one million branded red roses this Valentine’s Day as the world celebrated love the Kenyan way: “From Kenya with love.”

The pavilions distributing Kenyan flowers included Sudan, Chile, Nigeria, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Philippines, Dubai Cares, San Marino, Marshall Islands, Malaysia, Lesotho, Mexico, Bhutan and Malta.

Top world flower exporter
Kenya is Africa’s lead exporter of flowers and ranks as the fourth largest exporter of flowers globally behind Netherlands, Colombia and Ecuador.

The most significant markets for Kenyan flowers are the European Union, United States of America, United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Asia and Africa.

Kenya is the lead exporter of cut flowers to the European Union (EU) with a market share of about 38%. Approximately 50% of exported flowers are sold through the Dutch auctions, although direct sales are growing. Kenyan flowers are sold in more than 60 countries.

Valentine’s Day is a day for love, romance, and fragrant floral bouquets. But we can also make it a day for gender equality. That’s because when it comes to Fairtrade flowers, more than half of the 73,000 workers on Fairtrade certified farms around the world are women.

Fairtrade flower plantations offer a lifeline to rural women, providing essential income, enabling their families to thrive, and increasing their independence. According to a recent report, female flower workers also have more control over money. A third jointly manage household finances and 38 percent are solely responsible for them. Above all, specific Fairtrade programmes enable women flower workers to take part in leadership training, helping them achieve the futures they dream for themselves

It’s Fairtrade’s role as the connective tissue between social justice and on-the-ground action that inspired Susan Limisi, Fairtrade Africa’s Gender Coordinator, to lead the organization’s gender portfolio across 33 countries in Africa and the Middle East. An experienced gender specialist with a background in gender programming, monitoring and evaluation and psychological counselling, Susan saw in Fairtrade’s mission the opportunity to advance gender equality across the agriculture value chain by working directly with Fairtrade certified producer organizations.

By Jack Wekesa

Nematodes which are typically most abundant in upper soil layers where organic matter, plant roots and other resources are most abundant can be very devastating to the farmer. Some species can damage plant roots, stems, foliage and flowers by puncturing the cell walls using their sharply pointed mouths. It is estimated in flowers that 5 % of the Pesticides budget is for nematodes control.

Pesticide resistance can become a problem when the same chemicals are used over and over to control a particular pest. After a period, the pest may develop resistance to a chemical so that the chemical no longer effectively controls the pest at the same rate, and higher rates and more frequent applications become necessary until eventually the chemical provides little or no control.

The best way to manage pesticide resistance is to focus on three strategies: avoid, delay, and reversal. Avoid the development of pesticide resistance problems with the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs, which reduce reliance on chemical control. Delay resistance by using pesticides only when needed, as indicated by monitoring, and when pests are at a susceptible stage.

Ruth Vaughan

Plant nutrition is the study of the chemical elements and compounds necessary for plant growth, plant metabolism and their external supply. Without proper plant nutrition, plants tend to die off or produce little or no yield.

In my line of work I visit hundreds of flower farms a year; the flourishing, the ticking over, and the ones in dire straits. A lot of my more demanding work is dealing with farms that suddenly run into problems. “Ruth, please come and visit our farm as soon as possible, our production has suddenly dropped to half” is a common call. My advice to flower farmers on the critical issues in plant nutrition in floriculture would be as follows:-

Start with the Basics
Start with the basics, understand your soil and water and know what you are dealing with. A solid ‘risk’ assessment before you even buy the farm is recommended.