Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Rose Terminology
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Place, Chains, and Actor-Networks: Conceptualising Economic Linkages
- 3 Trading Roses: Reorganising Producer-Buyer Relations in the Dutch Cut Flower Network
- 4 The Lake Naivasha Cut Flower Industry: Past and Present
- 5 Linking to Buyers: The Making of the Global Cut Flower Market at Lake Naivasha
- 6 Growing Roses: Reorganising Flower Production at Lake Naivasha
- 7 The Cut Flower Industry in the Social-Ecological System of Lake Naivasha: Setting the Scene for a New Market Order
- 8 Conclusion: A New Market Order
- Bibliography
- Index
- Future Rural Africa
4 - The Lake Naivasha Cut Flower Industry: Past and Present
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Rose Terminology
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Place, Chains, and Actor-Networks: Conceptualising Economic Linkages
- 3 Trading Roses: Reorganising Producer-Buyer Relations in the Dutch Cut Flower Network
- 4 The Lake Naivasha Cut Flower Industry: Past and Present
- 5 Linking to Buyers: The Making of the Global Cut Flower Market at Lake Naivasha
- 6 Growing Roses: Reorganising Flower Production at Lake Naivasha
- 7 The Cut Flower Industry in the Social-Ecological System of Lake Naivasha: Setting the Scene for a New Market Order
- 8 Conclusion: A New Market Order
- Bibliography
- Index
- Future Rural Africa
Summary
Over the past 40 years, Lake Naivasha has developed into the biggest cut flower producing area in Africa. Located 80km north-west of Nairobi in the Kenyan Rift Valley at 2000m above sea level, the 180km² freshwater lake and its surroundings are home to approximately 50 flower farms. The Lake Naivasha cut flower industry has become a major production centre, especially for European traders and buyers, and is now deeply entangled in the worldwide cut flower network. Yet, ‘markets do not fall out of thin air’ (Berndt, Boeckler 2009, 536), and neither do production sites within markets. Agro-industrial centres such as Lake Naivasha have a variable and contingent spatio-temporality (Coe et al. 2008, 272). Therefore, it is key to outline the historical and geographical context to current marketisation processes. In Nevins and Peluso’s words:
Our point is not only that we need to understand histories and geographies to show changes in commodity production but that comparisons of past and present commodification processes show how the very definitions of nature, people, and places are changing with shifting social relations and political-economic contexts. (Nevins, Peluso 2008, 2)
In this chapter, I will shift the focus to Lake Naivasha as a place of production for the cut flower industry by scrutinising how this area emerged as an agroindustrial cluster. In order to do so, this chapter will first outline the historical framing of Lake Naivasha as an agro-industrial centre. Subsequently it will trace the current cut flower Actor-Network.
Historical development: Turning Lake Naivasha into an agro-industrial centre
Lake Naivasha’s history is often described as a leap from a pristine natural paradise to a densely populated, urbanised agro-industrial centre. According to Mark Seal’s biography on the Naivasha-based environmentalist Joan Root, Lake Naivasha was once ‘a wonderland of wildlife straight out of a Walt Disney film that … is like Doctor Doolittle times one thousand, where 1,200 hippos swim by day and mow the grass by night amid the music of the areas’ 350 species of birds’.
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- The Kenyan Cut Flower Industry and Global Market Dynamics , pp. 84 - 104Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022