It’s not a rosy Valentine for flower farms

Ahead of Valentine’s Day on Monday 14, flower farmers in Naivasha are busy on their farms hoping to cash in on the highly commercialised Lover’s Day season after a tough season. Indeed it has been a tough season for the flower sector having been hard hit following lockdowns and curfews effected by countries to slow down spread of Covid virus.

The pandemic situation led to shortage of cargo planes and high freight charges that have doubled in the last one year. To further compound the issue, is the soaring prices of fertiliser yet the prices of flowers in the EU market have remained the same for the last couple of years.

But with the opening of the economy, the good news is that the flower sector is on its way to full recovery after the harsh effects of Covid-19 pandemic which saw flowers worth millions going to waste.

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At the height of the pandemic, so bad was the situation nearly all the flower farms were forced to send home a number of their staff while others had to dispose of their flowers.

The Smart Harvest visited a number of flower farms in Naivasha to assess the situation ahead of Valentines’s Day. At Van Den Berg Roses and Maridadi Flower Farms which are the leading rose producers in the country, there was excitement and optimism on the farms as the workers went on with their work.

Van den Berg Roses human resource manager George Onyango says they look forward to the high season but also admits that the high charges in exporting their flowers was affecting their profit margins.

Mr Onyango says the farm which produces more than 350,000 stems of roses daily for the Dutch Auction, is facing major challenges getting cargo flights. 

Few cargo planes

“Currently the biggest challenge facing the flower farmers is lack of cargo planes and space. The few available are very expensive and this affects our profit margins,” he says.

Onyango says the farm which has more than 1,000 workers had fully recovered from the pandemic but now the high cost of production was threatening to wipe away the gains they have made. To avoid that scenario, Onyango calls for State support.

“The President promised a Sh1.5 billion stimulus package to cushion farmers from the harsh economic times but we are yet to receive a penny as fertiliser prices as still very high,” he points out.

Onyango also raises issue with the double taxation by the national and county governments which he points out erodes investor confidence.

“We are not getting enough support from the national government like our competitors in Ethiopia. On top of the many taxes on our side, we also have new taxes like the offloading fee in Nairobi,” he says.

On his part, MD Maridadi MD Jack Kneppers says they were producing over 200,000 stems of roses daily for export though they had the capacity to produce more.

“All our flowers are destined for the Dutch market. We have recovered fully from the pandemic and are shipping out daily production despite the flight challenges,” he says.

He says lack of enough cargo had forced them to hire charter planes to meet their daily orders.

“The biggest challenge we have now is lack of space in the cargo planes and costs have doubled,” he says.

Kneppers says the cost of flowers exported through charter planes had also gone from two and a half to six dollars per kilogramme.

“Notably, the prices of flowers have remained stagnant in the European Union market for some years despite the fact that fertiliser prices have doubled in the last one year,” he says.

The farm’s production manager Esther Waithera reveals that they have had to limit their production due to challenges caused by the cargo space.

“Despite the challenges, we are on the path to full recovery after the impact of the Covid-19 and our entire workforce is back to work,” she says.

Waithera says that they are hoping to cash in on the Valentine’s season.

“It is our time to bounce back. We are still observing the health regulations like wearing of masks, social distancing and washing hands as per the directives from the Ministry of Health,” she says. 

Soaring cost of farm inputs

The Kenya Flower Council (KFC) admits that it has been a tough season for the sector but now things are looking up. 

KFC CEO Clement Tulezi notes that the country’s flower export dropped by 10 per cent in the last one year due to the pandemic, high freight charges and the soaring cost of farm inputs.

With the Valentine’s Day around the corner, the council was projecting a growth in the floriculture sector if the government moved in to support the farmers.

Tulezi observes that the country produced 160,000 tonnes of flowers last year compared to 173,000 tonnes in 2020. Tulezi attributes the drop to the effects of the pandemic and the new health regulations that left countries in Europe in lockdown.

“We recorded a slight decline in flower exports last year but we hope this will change once we get support from the government,” he says.

The CEO notes that the floriculture sector was second after tea in terms of foreign exchange earned from export but there was little support from the government. He says the President in his address to the nation last year promised the farmers Sh1.5 billion economic stimulus package to deal with the high cost of freight but nothing concrete has come forth.

“Months after the promise we are yet to hear from the Treasury. High freight and fertiliser charges continue to be the biggest challenges for the sector and we need State intervention,” he says.

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, Tulezi observes that demand for flowers had risen though farmers cannot hit their daily targets due to lack of cargo planes and the high freight charges.

New demands

He says flower demand stood at 5,000 tonnes per week but farmers can only export 3,000 tonnes due to lack of cargo planes.

“We are facing a major challenge in exports of flowers due to lack of cargo planes and this has pushed the freight cost from 1.9 dollars to 5.8 dollars per kilo,” he says. To chart the way forward, Tulezi says stakeholders in export of fresh produce had held a meeting in which several recommendations including direct flights from the country to the market were discussed.

“The country has observed all the Covid-19 regulations meaning Kenya is safe and the government should release the Sh1.5 billion stimulus package to cushion farmers,” he says.

According to Tulezi, flower farmers are paying a record 45 different taxes to the national and county governments every year. The CEO accuses the national and county governments of unfairly targeting the flower farmers despite the losses they were incurring. Thanks to the many taxes levied on them, their profits are significantly low.

“The government should spread its tax margins to the informal sector instead of unfairly targeting flower farmers. There is a misconception that flower farmers make millions in profit from the exports,” he says. Despite these hurdles facing the sector, experts agree that the sector is lucrative and has huge potential.

In 2020, the horticulture sector earned the country a whopping Sh151.29 billion a rise from, Sh144.58 in 2019 despite the Covid-19 pandemic that left the floriculture sector on its knees.

According to KFC, the country’s flower export dropped by around ten per cent in 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, high freight charges and the soaring cost of farm inputs.

According to the council, the country produced 160,000 tonnes of flowers last year compared to 173,000 tonnes in 2020.

Currently, according to KFC, the Kenya cut flower industry employs 200,000 people directly and has over 1 million people supplying the industry.

Majority of Kenya’s cut flowers are shipped to Europe and in recent years the farmers have spread their wings to Japan, Far East and there are plans to explore the US market.