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THORNS IN INDIA'S CUT-ROSE INDUSTRY
BLOOMING, SHINING ROSES
By SWATI MENON / 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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