VSO Jitolee’s national Global Education (GE) theme for 2010-2013 is climate change. As such, it seemed fitting that the quarterly Global Education Committee (GEC) meeting be held at Lake Naivasha, which has experienced devastatingly low water levels due to a number of factors, including global warming. Lake Naivasha, as well as nearby lakes Elementaita and Nakuru have all experienced significantly reduced water levels in recent years due to global warming causing detrimental damage to aquatic, bird and animal life.
The full day GEC meeting took place on 6th March 2010 at Fisherman’s Camp in an open air meeting room which overlooks Lake Naivasha. After the official meeting the Committee was given a tour around the Bilashaka flower farm, by Mr Joost Zuurbier. The farm is on Lake Naivasha, and is a 20-hectare, 350+ employee operation which exports more than 100,000 roses per day to Holland. (This is medium size by comparison to some others in the region, which export as many as 600,000 flower stems per day!) Mr Zuurbier told us about the process of how flowers are grown, as well as the positive and negative impacts that flower farms can have on the environment, the lake and the local population.
The Bilashaka (“without doubt”) flower farm is a family owned business, which was acquired in 2001 by the Zuurbier family. The farm is situated on land over the brow of an escarpment on the north side of the Lake, ensuring it is not built on riparian land and allowing a portion of land to remain undeveloped such that herds of buffalo and other wildlife can roam next to the Lake. (As we toured the farm, a herd of zebra ran past us less than 100 metres away!)
Although Dutch owned and operated, all employees of Bilashaka are Kenyan and the owners are committed to giving back to the local community. Among their community development initiatives are the sponsoring of school teachers, a secondary school which is currently under construction, and the provision of a bore hole with a filtration system to reduce the high levels of fluorine in the water for the local community.
The Zuurbier family is equally committed to farming techniques which minimize damage to the environment, taking advantage of rainwater collection and solar heating systems. Only 40% of the water required for its operations comes from the Lake and it operates a closed irrigation system so that contaminated water is not released back into the Lake. The other 60% of water comes from rainwater harvesting and re-use / recycling of water from the greenhouses. The Bilashaka also uses 3,000 square metres of solar panels to heat water used to heat greenhouses minimizing the environmental impact. (In other farms the heating would be done with parafin or kerosene burners.) When asked about the reduction of water levels in Lake Naivasha, Mr Zuurbier said the flower farmers extract a small percentage of water from the lake. He attributed the reduction in the water levels to abstractions but also to many other factors such as the recent drought and the diversion of rivers which feed into the lake due to farming of and degradation to the Riparian land upstream. He said the government had introduced a new law, which stipulated that water management agreements should be set up and he hoped this would help to regulate the level of the water and the rate of pollution into the lake.
THE PROCESS:
– The plants in the greenhouses are grown in long plastic troughs filled with coco peat. The environmental conditions, including temperature, moisture, relative humidity and fertilizer treatment, are centrally controlled by a computer system coupled to environmental sensors within each greenhouse.
– Greenhouses are heated in the early morning to avoid the temperature reaching dew point which can cause diseases. Having the roses at a higher temperature in the early morning also increases production of the flowers.
– The plants are grown in coco pit which is fibre from the bark of coconut trees. The coco peat is imported from Sri Lanka.
– The flowers are cut, graded, packed in protective packaging and then kept in a refrigerated store room at around 10 degrees. They are then taken in refrigerated trucks to Kenyatta Airport and then flown to Holland. They reach the flower auctions in Holland within 48 hours. The blooms can be harvested 1 or 2 times a day.
– Inside the packing room samples from each batch of flowers were kept in water to see what their shelf life is. They aim for a shelf life of 10 to 14 days per bud. Most people like to buy large buds but Mr Zuurbier said that sometimes the smaller buds grow into even larger flowers.
What you can do to support employees of flower farms and protect the environment?
If you buy flowers, whether for a loved one or yourself, you could check the origin. An increasing number of farms are certified with a social and environmental label. However this is not always easy to check because the majority of the certified produce doesn’t have a label.
Reliable certification labels are:
– Fair Trade: – www.fairtrade.org.uk
– Fair Flowers Fair Plants: – www.fairflowersfairplants.com
– MPS SQ and MPS ABC: – www.my-mps.com
Certification means that the flower farms where they are grown must meet basic labor and environmental standards and must commit to ongoing improvements. Workers on certified farms have the right to join trade unions and negotiate with management on terms of their employment. For example at a flower farm where certified flowers are grown, employees must be informed of their wage rates and work schedules, receive regular payment, have access to safe drinking water and be provided with adequate personal protective equipment when handling hazardous chemicals, with strictly observed re-entry intervals after pesticide spraying.
• You could buy locally grown flowers. They have the advantage that the carbon used in shipping the flowers for long distances is eliminated. In general they are lower on pesticides but they have the disadvantage that carbon needed for heating greenhouses is even higher.
• Whether you are in Kenya or another country, write a letter to your local MP about your experiences of climate change, and your ideas as to how politicians can encourage people and businesses to reduce their carbon emissions and act in an environmentally-conscious way. Tell them how you’d like to see politicians support local communities and developing countries (particularly, developing countries, as climate change affects the poorest the most) to adapt to the effects of climate change. Many thanks to Bilashaka flower farm, especially Joost Zuurbier for sparing his time and knowledge and for patiently allowing us to ask so many questions!
Tali Alexander and Rachael Tuckley
GE Committee team at the Bilashaka flower Farm