KENYA A COOL LOCALE FOR ROSY OUTLOOK
Growing farms in Africa provide Valentine’s Day flowers for Australia, England, Japan and the United States.
Kenya’s cool climate and high altitude make it perfect for growing large, long- lasting roses. Such conditions have made Kenya theworld’s fourthbiggest supplier after the Netherlands, Ecuador and Colombia.
nyahururu, kenya » On a crisp February morning, Phanice Cherop squeezed through a row of shoulder- high white roses, cut a flower and placed it in the bunch she carried. The Kenyan-grown flower was likely headed for a vase in Australia, England, Japan or the United States.
“I know the flowers are for giving on Valentine’s Day,” said Cherop, aworker at a Kenya flower farm. “They are very beautiful.”
Kenya’s cool climate and high altitude make it perfect for growing large, long- lasting roses. Such conditions have helped make Kenya the world’s fourth- biggest supplier after the Netherlands, Ecuador and Colombia.
The Kenya Flower Council said its rose exports jumped from 86,480 tons in 2006 to 136,601 tons in 2014. Kenya’s flower business continues to employ half a million Kenyans and earned more than a half- billion dollars last year, according to government statistics.
Cherop, 29, a single mother of two, works at AAA Growers’ Simba farm in Nyahururu, a four hours drive north of the capital, Nairobi. The company, a sprawling estate of four 50- acre farms, is Kenya’s third- largest grower of vegetables and flowers combined. Cherop was one of 600 workers bused in to pick or pack thousands of roses to be sent around the world ahead of Feb. 14.
In the temperature- controlled storeroom of AAA Growers’ warehouse, stacks of cardboard boxes bound for Canada, Australia, the United States and France are the end point to the process that started with workers like Cherop.
Cherop, who earns Kenya’s rural minimum wage of $ 80 amonth, said the manual work is a necessity to feed her family. After a bit of prodding, she admits she has never received flowers.
“We do not really do this here in Kenya,” she said. “No man has ever given me. I would like some.”