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
5 - Linking to Buyers: The Making of the Global Cut Flower Market at Lake Naivasha
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
‘As long as people love, get married or die, we will sell roses’.
The translocal cluster of the Lake Naivasha cut flower industry is deeply entangled in the reorganisation of cut flower production, trade, and retail, and therefore also in the emergence of a new market order. As I have shown in the previous chapters, the market entry of corporate retailers brought along with it the emergence and rising importance of new market encounters. Corporate buyers were able to shift trade relations in their favour by influencing the objectification and standardisation of flowers in their interest. Moreover, they achieved a reduction in sales prices through the use of their knowledge in price-making processes. Ultimately, the market entry of retail chains has not led to a simplified, buyer-driven value chain, but has rather complexified market encounters and increased their diversity in forms, volatility, and quantity. Considering this complex network of trade relations, the process of connecting Lake Naivasha to global markets, that is ‘the on-going, and relatively autonomous, material and ideological processes of linking different social and structural elements’ (Bair, Werner 2011, 992), requires further attention. This sort of analysis has been largely neglected by GCC scholars (Bair, Werner 2011). Yet, a detailed account of the forging of linkages is necessary to explain how new power relations unfolded, why standards became an important market device in the cut flower industry, and why production has been reorganised. In this chapter, I will examine how dynamics in cut flower production relate to developments in the Dutch trade hub and the emergence of a new market order. I will first analyse how flower growers in Naivasha are linked to (European) buyers and how new relations between farms in Naivasha and buyers and consumers in Europe influence the local cut flower industry. A detailed examination of these relations is necessary in order to understand to what extent the reorganisation of the cut flower industry has contributed to the rising importance of corporate retailers and, vice versa, how retail chains are driving dynamics in the Lake Naivasha cut flower industry. These questions will be addressed in Chapter 7.
Forging linkages between growers and buyers
The trade statistics for 2017 show that the Netherlands is by far the most important export destination for Kenyan cut flowers with a market share of 52% (see Figure 9).
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- The Kenyan Cut Flower Industry and Global Market Dynamics , pp. 105 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022