Category: Past Featured Articles

Regardless of how you grow, the profitability of your farm will depend on three main factors: demand, viability, and profit margin. Lots of new farmers focus the majority of their efforts on their ability to grow a single crop and forget to do research on the other factors.

Turkish Cargo carries 4k tonnes flowers from Nairobi, Quito
Turkish Cargo transported 4,000 tonnes of flowers from Nairobi, Kenya to Stansted, Narita, Maastricht, and Riyadh; and from Quito, Ecuador to Amsterdam, Beijing, Manila, Jakarta and Taiwan, in addition to its charter flights.

The accomplished air cargo brand carried flowers between January 1 to February 10, 2019. Providing its services by means of the airconditioned aircraft for maximum freshness and shelf-life with cold chain solutions, Turkish Cargo makes it possible to carry the flowers of Africa, an important centre to grow flowers, to the entire world with its air cargo services provided to 36 countries across the African region, and a total of 54 destinations.

February 14th is upon us. It is Valentine’s Day; a day marked by lovers, friends and family to show affection by swapping such presents as flowers, cards, chocolates and other expressive, if not romantic gifts

But first, the ever fascinating Valentine’s story
There exists several tales about the origin of Valentine’s Day, and nobody knows if they are factual. The most famous ones all have endings. The first one is about the young Valentine, who was a victim of his belief on February 14 of the year 270. He, a Roman, converted to Christianity and by doing so offended the Roman leaders. On February 14 Valentine was tortured and beheaded. However, he succeeded in giving the daughter of the prison warder a note just before he died. The note contained the legendary text ‘From your Valentine; forever marking february the 14th as a day of love displays.

Another story is about a priest in Rome named Valentine. An emperor named Claudius II had forbidden the Roman soldiers to marry, because he was of the opinion that unmarried men were better soldiers. Priest Valentine ignored this rule and united young couples into marriage. The emperor found out about this and imprisoned Valentine and sentenced him to death.

It is all Red
The big rush is over. In the weeks leading up to February 14th, growers worked around the clock to harvest and ship their flowers, and at the beginning of the week, the final Valentine’s flowers left the farm. Also at the FloraHolland auction in Rijnsburg and Aalsmeer, the same trend happened. “The overall picture this year was moderate to good”, says Amerik de Best, auctioneer at Rijnsburg. “In general, the quality was good and red received good prices at Rijnsburg. White was also doing quite well, but other colours trailed behind.”

Luckily, consumers are starting to request more information on where and how their flowers were grown and who grew them. Most of the Kenyan growers welcome this paradigm shift.

Kenyan growers encourage transparency not only in their business, but in the entire floral industry. “We aim to be stewards of the earth and work in harmony with nature to create amazing cut flowers that are safe for farmers to grow, and promote healthy soil”, says Andrew Wambua as he prepared for 2019 Valentine.

So, how do we highlight to our customers that we are a sustainable farm dedicated to the economic, social, and environmental well-being of our land, our flowers, our team members, and our community?

The way that makes the most sense for the growers, has been to obtain certification to Sustainable Agriculture Standard. This trusted certification quickly signals to consumers that our flowers were grown in a responsible, ethical and sustainable manner.

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union, workers in Kenya’s flower industry are closely monitoring developments. Flowers are big business in Kenya and earnings from exports have doubled in the past five years. A key export destination is the UK, which most of the flowers enter after being auctioned in the Netherlands. Growers and exporters in Kenya are asking the same question – what impact will Brexit have on the flower trade?

What is the current situation?
Kenyan flower exporters currently enjoy zero tariffs on cut flowers sold to the EU. This is set by an interim arrangement, which Kenya secured through signing and ratifying the Economic Partnership Agreement between the EU and the East African Community.

The deal is temporary until the three other members in the regional group sign up so it can come into full effect.

Why does the UK flower trade matter to Kenya?
Britain is the second largest export destination for Kenya’s cut flowers after the Netherlands, taking almost 18% of the flowers produced in the country.

How two Exhibitions Running Concurrently Are Changing Today’s Market

IFTF 2018
From November 7-9, the IFTF took place in Vijfhuizen, the Netherlands. Nearly 300 companies showcased their varieties and services, attracting visitors from all over the world. Every year, the cut flower show is becoming bigger and the number of visitors is increasing. Also this year, the visitor number was about 15% higher compared to last year. And for next year further international growth is expected as a new pavilion will be added: Argentina.

Neat booths
When entering the show, one of the first things – next to the increased exhibition area – that strikes the attention are the neat stands. It seems that many exhibitors took their time and effort to pay attention to the little details and have put up a professional neat-looking stand.

Fresh flowers need the best in packaging solutions to make sure they arrive at their destination in peak condition and our innovative packaging solutions deliver just that. For the export market, packaging is especially designed to provide the required amount of water resistance, strength and insulation to meet the physical requirements of your supply chain, whether you are shipping your flowers by road or by air.

Sustainable packaging is no longer a term for the future. It’s the current state of corporate responsibility and package designs. You can view the concept as an excellent investment not only for the environmental benefits but also as a powerful tool to improve your clients’ sentiment towards your brand.

What is sustainable packaging?
The concept of sustainable packaging includes a wide range of environmentally friendly practices, designs and materials that integrates the entire supply chain. The objective is to improve the longevity and quality of our environment by decreasing pollution caused by plastics and other non-degradable materials.

You’ve probably heard the widely-quoted factoid that the majority of food waste happens in the home. From grocery over-purchasing to over-zealous expiration dates to just plain forgetting to cook that cabbage you bought, it’s not exactly a surprise that the kitchen is where a lot of needless wastage takes place.

So where does the rest of our food waste occur? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, when it comes to fresh produce (the most wasted foods, at least in industrialized countries), almost 1/3 happens along the supply chain. From lack of coordination and communication to inconsistent quality standardization, there are plenty of things that need to go right to get fresh food from A to B without it spoiling — and that doesn’t always happen.

However, there are a few tools and strategies that companies are using to try and reduce food waste at various points along the supply chain. Here are three to watch:

While the ideal of integrated pest management has been pursued and adopted in a variety of settings since the mid-20th century, recent trends point to perhaps too great a focus on killing pests rather than managing host stress. In a new paper in American Entomologist, three experts suggest a modified focus that better accounts for evolution and tolerance to pest injury and shifts from control toward management.

By Robert K.D. Peterson

Whatever happened to integrated pest management? If you’re a regular reader of Entomology Today, you might think “Why, I didn’t know anything had happened to it.” So, why is anyone even asking this question?

It’s true that integrated pest management (IPM) is a term well known. It is used liberally by scientists and other practitioners without the need for definition, and it is a major success story for society. But it can also be argued that IPM has, in fact, lost its way.

There has been little formal discussion of IPM theory and its status over at least the past 10 years, even though in that time we have seen both the overwhelmingly successful adoption of prophylactic pest control tactics in the form of transgenic crops and seed treatments and the increasing application of evolutionary biology in environmental and public health management.

Bridges the Gap Between Supplier and Grower What is your personal back ground? I am an agronomist and marketer with diverse experience in the agriculture

Flowers are the perfect gift for someone close to the heart but geographically distant, i.e. theoretically an ideal e-commerce market.

However, they are also a delicate and perishable commodity, typically requiring hydration during transportation and lasting only four or five days in conventional packaging.

Flexible packaging specialist Uflex gained much attention with the recent release of its Flexfresh solution, which promises waterless transportation with significantly extended product life. Siva Shankaran (VP, Flexfresh) discusses the contexts .

“Internationally, all flowers are transported using expensive air freight from growing region to the markets,” observes Mr Shankaran. “The typical supply chain is grower – auction house – wholesaler – retailer / florist – and finally the consumer. Thanks to e-commerce platforms it’s now possible to connect the growers directly to the consumers. Our concept was to to ship flowers in post parcels without any water. This eliminated the possibility of cross contamination with other courier goods.”