Thorns in India's cut-rose
industry By Keya Acharya
BANGALORE - The atmosphere looks sleepy:
four women inside a plastic-covered shed, or
greenhouse, quietly tending neat rows of rosebeds;
two more walk leisurely about the premises,
carrying buckets of bright-hued roses on cut
stems.
The quietude in the farm at
Naranahalli village, about 60 kilometers outside
Bangalore city, belies the activities of the
little-known Bangalore-based Karuturi Networks,
the world's largest
rose-producer, with offices
in Bangalore, Dubai, Amsterdam, Nairobi and Addis
Ababa. Worldwide, though, cut-roses from countries
such as Ethiopia and Kenya, form the largest
global suppliers.
In 2007, the company
acquired the 188-hectare, Kenya-based Dutch rose
farm Sher Agencies for US$73 million and says it
has plans to produce 1 million stems daily by
March 2008.
With the government offering
several incentives, though not measuring up to the
increased international demand, India's cut-rose
industry is putting its huge 30-40% net annual
profits into expansion plans.
"Everyone is
making money," said Rohit Kulkarni, marketing head
of Karuturi.
"It's a win-win situation,"
said R D Reddy, managing director of
Bangalore-based Meghna Floritech. "The living
quality of our workers has definitely improved
over the last decade."
Reddy says
year-round wages, instead of the seasonal work
that rural workers have access to, has helped
families.
"Our export dealings, where
clients demand fair-trade practices, ensure that
we follow ethical labor practices," said Reddy,
adding also that if this highly labor-intensive
industry does not look after its labor, "they will
go to the garment or the construction industries
instead".
Most export firms, under
conditions laid out by their clients, need to pass
benchmarks for environmental safeguards, employee
welfare and good working conditions from
international fair-trade organizations like the
Dutch MPS-GAP or EUREPGAP.
Companies doing
well provide bonus wages and medical help; others
with immigrant labor like Karuturi offer food,
education and housing.
The majority of
workers in the industry are women, whose nimble
fingers are better suited to the delicate work of
snipping, grading and bunching the stems.
Though there are reports from workers in
the villages of not being paid the government rate
stipulated for employees in Karnataka, the
influential All India Democratic Women's
Association (AIDWA) has not heard any criticism of
the industry so far. AIDWA's state convener, K S
Vimala noted that it is still a young industry.
Bangalore has roughly 33 rose farms over
200 hectares and together, with Pune, in
neighboring Maharashtra, account for most of
India's cut-flower industry due to their milder
climates.
"We are not level with African
countries with their better climates, soils and
lesser tariff barriers from importing countries,"
said Reddy, "But nearly 70% of agricultural
rose-farm managers worldwide are Indian, known for
their competency."
The roses themselves
are grown in greenhouses, 70,000 plants per
hectare, that require 12 workers and temperatures
below 25 degrees Celsius day time and 15 degrees
at night. "We are now resting our plants ahead of
Valentine's Day [February 14] orders and applying
40 kilograms of NPK ]nitrogen,phosphorous,
potassium] per hectare daily, instead of the usual
25 kgs," said Nagaraj, manager at Karuturi's
Naranahalli farm.
Valentine's Day and the
Christmas season offer great potential to Indian
exporters because of climatic advantage during the
period. Sale prices, usually around 20 US cents
per stem off-season, sell for $3-4 per stem during
the two rose-happy holidays.
The industry
also seems to be fairly ecologically aware -
wasted water and the excessive use of fertilizers
are avoided through a controlled drip irrigation
system. Pesticides are applied only if necessary.
Vermicomposting, farmyard manure, water recharge
channels and natural composting of rose-leafs are
some features.
"We are one of the most
efficient users of water, chemicals and soils. If
we don't see to our soils, we will be out of
business in two years," said Reddy, who retired
some years ago as the head of Andhra Pradesh's
government forestry service.
There has
been controversy though, amid charges of social
and environmental mismanagement by the cut-flower
industry outside of India. A report in the British
Guardian newspaper in February 2007 by journalist
Ochieng Ogodo, noted that the industry is
responsible for both polluting and over-extracting
water from Kenya's Lake Naivasha, reducing it to a
critical habitat today.
Moreover, there
are complaints of poor wages, working conditions
and an urban mess with rising crime in Naivasha
town on the northeast edge of the lake and an area
which has seen a huge influx of migrants attracted
by the rose industry.
Karuturi's
Ramkrishna, who has water-recharging check dams in
his farm in Bangalore and who also Sher rose-farms
adjacent to Lake Naivasha agrees that the industry
is responsible, and needs to be held accountable,
for leaching nitrates into the lake, "but not for
any of Naivasha's other ills", which he blames on
official corruption. He says Sher's farms store
rainwater and, like his Bangalore farm, has check
dams for water recharge.
"We are not
governance, we are industry and we pay our
[taxes]," said Ramkrishna. "I am not heading to
change the world."
Questions have been
raised by environmentalists and food security
specialists on the appropriateness of investing
vast sums of money in rose farms that must import
plant materials, pesticides, greenhouse equipment
and consultants.
Internationally-known
green campaigner and food security specialist
Vandana Shiva says if the resources used for
floriculture were instead allocated to food
production, India could produce four times more
food than it could buy on global markets from the
earnings of its flower sales. "In terms of
national food security, export-oriented
agriculture destroys more than it creates," she
said.
Shiva also contends that
export-oriented agriculture was creating an
"agricultural apartheid", with Third World
countries being asked to stop growing food staples
and instead grow luxury products for the rich
North.
But the cut flower industry has
other troubles to worry about, starting with a
difficult bureaucracy. Though India's Agricultural
Export Development Agency has helped its growth
through infrastructure development subsidies, its
state-of-the-art cold storage and auction facility
IFAB ( International Flower Auction Bangalore) has
been languishing for over a year due to
bureaucratic bungles.
And the glaring lack
of a powerful lobby to put forward the industry's
concerns to government shows the lack of unity
India's cut-rose industry. "The IFAB will begin
[later this month] and there is a sense that
things will start moving," said Karnataka's
additional chief secretary and development
commissioner, Sudhakar Rao, who added that the
lack of an industry association or lobby is one
thorn in India's rose-industry.
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