Investigates the production, trade and consumption of the bouquets sold in European supermarkets and the consequences of this for the globalised economy.

Kenya supplies more than 35 percent of the fresh-cut roses and other flowers sold annually in the European Union. This industry—which employs at least 90,000 workers, most of whom are women—is lucrative but enduringly controversial. More than half the flowers are grown near the shores of Lake Naivasha, a freshwater lake northwest of Nairobi recognized as a Ramsar site, a wetland of international importance. Critics decry the environmental side effects of floriculture, and human rights activists demand better wages and living conditions for workers. In this rich portrait of Kenyan floriculture, Megan Styles presents the point of view of local workers and investigates how the industry shapes Kenyan livelihoods, landscapes, and politics. She investigates the experiences and perspectives of low-wage farmworkers and the more elite actors whose lives revolve around floriculture, including farm managers and owners, Kenyan officials, and the human rights and environmental activists advocating for reform. By exploring these perspectives together, Styles reveals the complex and contradictory ways that rose farming shapes contemporary Kenya. She also shows how the rose industry connects Kenya to the world, and how Kenyan actors perceive these connections. As a key space of encounter, Lake Naivasha is a synergistic center where many actors seek to solve broader Kenyan social and environmental problems using the global flows of people, information, and money generated by floriculture.

This ethnography analyses labour relations within the export-oriented cut flower industry at Lake Naivasha in Kenya. Though this agro-industry has attracted critical attention from journalists and non-governmental organizations, this book is the first comprehensive, social scientific analysis of the industry’s labour arrangements and production processes. Gerda Kuiper here interprets the work on the farms as ‘agro-industrial labour’: a labour system characterized by high levels of discipline and a strict rhythm of work, due to the demands posed by a highly perishable agricultural product. This framework enables the author to draw on insights from a wide range of anthropological and sociological studies on (agro-)industrial wage labour around the globe. This mixed-methods approach, deployed alongside rich ethnographic detail, allows the author to center the flower farm workers in her analysis.

Examines how pastoral peoples imagine, or even design, their futures under the pressure of changing environments and large-scale government projects.

The cut flower and foliage industry is a global business with major production locations in North America, South America, Central America, East Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Few other horticulture crops are as ubiquitous, yet the production techniques and challenges are universal. This book describes the main international production locations and markets, including current trends and directions. The focus is on production in protected cultivation. The major species - including rose, chrysanthemum, carnation, orchid and gerbera - dominate the global market and these are individually explored in detail. Specialty species and cut foliages are also addressed, as well as significant details of production, including irrigation and fertilization, disease and disease management, and biological control of pests. Finally, the postharvest chapter covers details of harvesting, transporting and delivering high quality flowers that provide an excellent vase life.