Electricity cost is one of the key expenses in any flower farm. With the fuel component playing a crucial role in determining each month’s charge in Kenya, it has become increasingly important for farms to look into ways of cutting down cost to protect their profit margin.

Speaking exclusively to Floriculture Magazine, Mr. Kumar Sheth, CEO Leda Africa Ltd said, “While some are installing alternative, but often costly sources of energy, such as solar panels, the solution is perhaps as simple as changing the type of bulbs they use”. Adding, “Led Africa Ltd, an Indian company believes the cure to their woes lies in using Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs”. The company believes in the simplistic approach so much so that it has taken up the slogan ‘Saving Energy for Africa’.

And this is why. Most institutions and homes across the country use the ordinary incandescent bulbs that emit a yellow light. Research has shown that they waste 95 per cent of the electricity they consume.

That essentially means for every five units that appear in the electricity bill, 19 more were wasted. These bulbs are cheap but can only light up for about 1,000 hours, which means farms using the latter have to buy 50 bulbs, replace them 50 times and throw 50 burned out bulbs in the garbage, all while still paying high electricity bills. On the other hand LED bulbs, though slightly expensive to buy, take up to three years to burn out. The amount of money saved is enormous. For instance a 10 Watt bulb can operate for 50,000 hours and only consume about Sh4,700 according to research. But it is not solely for their longevity that Led Africa is staking its reputation on the LED bulbs. One of its objectives is to reduce the carbon footprint which is major cause of global warming.

The company says that unlike the ordinary bulb, LED bulbs production releases far much lesser amount of carbon dioxide in the environment. These means the farms that use them can be eligible to earn carbon credits. The bulbs are also environmentally friendly in that by not regularly requiring replacement, they don’t contribute to land fill as a result of disposal and they do not contain harmful ultraviolet rays and gases.

But the bulbs are not only advisable for use farms. Breeders and propagators too stand to save a pretty penny by using them. Broad spectrum grow lights produce a lot of light that plants can’t use efficiently. LED grow lights on the other hand only deliver the colours of light used by plants for efficient and healthy growth.

What’s more, the LED grow lights are warm to touch and won’t scotch young or tender plants as other forms of lighting can. And most of them operate at just a few degrees above room temperature thus reducing a breeders grow room cooling costs. Even better, with their low heat emission, it means growing plants won’t need to be watered so often given that they will transpire less. They can therefore be left unattended for a few days as workers concentrate their energies elsewhere.

The company manufactures flood, spot, tube, bay and panel lights to serve a farm’s all round lighting needs. It has set a target to change every bulb on the continent to the efficient and environment friendly LED.

In spite of signing the delayed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) alongside its East African Community counterparts, Kenya will still have to pay Sh600 million more in tariffs for possibly the next six months for its horticultural exports to the European Union.

This as it tries to work with the EU to realign the tax regime to include Kenya for duty-free, quota free status for all its exports to the EU market. Its exports are currently subjected to GSP regime which required them to be imposed ranging between 4.5 to 8.5%.

The Kenya Flower Council (KFC) said only carnations would benefit from a 0% tariff line in the interim time. “The immediate impact of the GSP tariff on Kenyan exports to the EU is an increase in cost to the EU importers by the margin of the applicable tariff. Exports from Kenya to the EU will suffer import duties of approximately about Sh600 million a month under the regime,” said KFC CEO Jane Nginge. She however said it was a relief since failure to have the GSP agreement in place; the imports would have attracted full Most Favoured Nation (MFN) duties at customs-clearance into the EU.

The Council urged the concerned EU parties to fast- track the process and shorten the period during which GSP duties will be applied. In the, meantime, Ms Nginge said both parties will commence the process of ratification and final signatures of the Agreement in their jurisdictions.

The East African Community and European Union Economic Partnership Agreement (EAC - EU EPA) finished negotiations and reached an agreement on. This comes after the two parties finally reached an agreement on October 13th and 14th 2014 in Brussels Belgium. It had been estimated that without the EU-EAC deal close to 500,000 workers in the horticulture sector would have been rendered jobless.

The previous pact lapsed on October 1. There was a delay in entering a new one as some of the EAC members were said to be taking too long to enter into an agreement.

Arysta LifeScience announced that Platform Specialty Products has reached a definitive agreement with a company backed by the Permira funds to acquire Arysta LifeScience for approximately $3.51 billion, subject to regulatory approval, working capital and other adjustments.

Once the acquisition is complete, Platform Specialty Products will combine Arysta LifeScience with previously acquired companies Agriphar and Chemtura Crop Solutions (the latter of which is still awaiting final governmental approvals). The combined entity will be run as a vertically integrated agricultural chemicals company with sales of approximately US$2.1 billion, the 10th largest in the industry.“Bringing Arysta LifeScience under the Platform umbrella will create a broad agrochemicals offering that is uniquely positioned to provide farmers, globally, with a fulsome suite of products to address their product and geography specific needs,” said Daniel H. Leever, Platform’s Chief Executive Officer.

Current CEO of Arysta LifeScience, Wayne Hewett, will lead the new group. “There are immediate benefits to joining forces with Agriphar and Chemtura,” said Hewett. “We will be able to offer customers a full complement of biosolutions, crop protection, and seed treatment products.

We also will strengthen our global footprint in key geographic areas such as Western Europe and North America.” The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.

Pesticide resistance has for long been a farmer’s worst nightmare. Its management, especially in high value export crops has been difficult partly owing to the high standards required and the limited number of market acceptable pesticides.

But it no longer needs to be the stuff that nightmares are made of. With an understanding of the factors that promote its development, any farmer can stop pests from taking over his farm and watering down his investment. Consequently, Kenya’s produce won’t be the subject of some stringent restrictions in the European market where it exports most of it.

The development of resistance being almost a given where pesticides are used regularly, it is nowadays recommended that farmers should start resistance management from the beginning. That way, they minimize the chances of its occurrence and save on money as well.

Before venturing into the productions of a crop, experts recommend that they should use information from manufacturers and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) specialists.

The two are invaluable sources of information on baseline susceptibilities, can define probable resistance problems beforehand to help the prospective farmer from being found flat-footed and are also helpful in coming up with proper pesticide use strategies.

Alternatively, the grower can extract such information during product launches and by having discussions with fellow growers. There are three broad strategies of managing resistance; namely, moderation, rotations and mixtures and saturation.

Moderation which is basically limiting the use of a pesticide should be the first step. When a farmer decides to engage in moderation he or she should employ it in concert with IPM practices. Experts advise that moderation should be used to the fullest extent that will provide commercially acceptable control.

On other hand if he favours the rotations and mixtures strategy, which works on the premise that an individual pest is less likely to be resistant to two or more differing classes of pesticides, it is advisable to bear in mind the cost of pesticides. However, typically mixtures of insecticides and miticides have performed poorly. The last strategy, saturation, the use of pesticides at higher rates is recommended as a last resort. Even though it provides control for a time by increasing selection pressure on the pest, it comes at a greater cost.

Therefore the need to develop resistance management programs (RMP) is critical in resistance management. The program describes the tactics or measures that should be taken to manage pesticide resistance for a specific pest. The objective is to reduce the selection of resistance genes in a pest population.

In coming up with a programme, IPM should be part of the management. Resistance prevention and management programmes when new pesticides are introduced should also be implemented.

Additionally, a grower ought to consider alternative (non-chemical) pest management measures while also using more than one class of pesticide. The evaluation and refinement of the RPM should be continuous. But perhaps the most important thing to consider is the involvement of stakeholders.

Briefly discuss Irene Njeru (background-personal and as a grower)

I am a graduate in horticulture with a Masters in business administration (Entrepreneurship) and a Post graduate diploma in marketing. I started my working life in 1999 in the floriculture industry until now mostly in pack house, quality and marketing departments. in different flower farms.

You have been marketing flowers for most of your professional life, if you would have to give your remarks about being a flower marketer, what would they be?

Being a flower marketer is very interesting, has its challenges especially during low periods but gives great satisfaction when I am able to take the company successfully through this hard times. The success of the company depends largely how the sales and marketing strategies are implemented.

In your experiences, briefly discuss the vase life and transportability and marketing of flowers in Kenya?

The products from Kenya have a good vase life compared to products from other countries mostly because of the information that is readily available to growers on different post harvest treatments and also because of the seriousness of the partners in business on the cool chain process.

Transportation of flowers from Kenya to various destinations is not a problem as there are enough flights that pass our country however there is limitation of business with some countries due to very expensive freight rates an example being America.

Read more: Meet Irene Njeru, The Marketer

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: “I am blind, please help.” There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words.

He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?” The man said, “I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.” I wrote: “Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it.”

We live in a great country that God created so beautifully with bushes where the wild animals live in harmony, the great beaches where the Indian Ocean rests so peacefully in the coastal region, the snowcapped mountain that is so highly recognized and the great landscapes of the rift valley, beautiful farms with rice, wheat, coffee, tea, fruits and flowers, herds of cows, goats and all the livestock, and most of all the great diversity in the people; Bantu’s, Cushites and Nilotes! All blended together to make this great land called Kenya.

Read more: A Wild Paradise Right in your Backyard