Flower farming in Naivasha
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 18/Apr/2010 13:37, 34 days ago
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 visited the Bila Shaka flower farm on Lake Naivasha, a 20-hectare, 350+ employee operation which exports more than 100,000 roses per day to Holland. (This is small by comparison to othersin the region, which export as many as 600,000 flower stems per day!) We learned the process of how flowers are grown, as well as the positive and negative impacts of flower farms on the environment, the lake and the local population.The Bila Shaka (“without doubt”) flower farm is a family owned business, which was acquired in 2001 by the Van Kleefs. 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 suchthat 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 Bila Shaka are Kenyan and the owners are committed to giving back to the local community. Among their community development initiatives are the completion of a primary school, 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 Van Kleefs are equally committed to farming techniques which minimize damage to the environment, taking advantage of rainwater collection and solar heating systems. Only 1/3 of the water required for its operations come from the Lake and it operates a closed irrigation system so that contaminated water is not released back into the Lake. The other 2/3 of water comes from rainwater harvesting and re-use / recycling of water from the greenhouses. The Bila Shaka also uses 3,000 square metres of solar panels to heat water used to heat greenhouses minimizing the environmental impact. (In many flower farms the heating would be done with parafin or kerosene burners.) When asked about the reduction of water levels in Lake Naivasha, the owner said the flower farmers only extracted a small percentage of water from the lake and attributed the reduction in the water levels to 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 or rubber 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 cocopit 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 the owner said that sometimes the smaller buds grow into even larger flowers.(6th March 2010)