Towards more stringent sustainability standards? Trends in the cut flower industry

Abstract

Sustainability initiatives have proliferated in many industries in recent years. This has led to an increasing number of standards that exist in parallel seeking to address more or less the same social and environmental issues. In this paper I explore whether parallelism has spurred a race to the bottom in flower standards seeking to regulate social conditions in the production of cut flowers aimed at the European Union market. The analysis suggests that while less stringent standards still dominate, so-called higher bar standards are gaining importance, as is the active inclusion of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade unions in monitoring standard compliance – a practice which potentially could allow standards to address more locally embedded and hidden problems like for example discrimination or lack of freedom of association. Nevertheless, less stringent standards still predominate and although an ongoing multi-stakeholder harmonisation initiative has real potential to ‘scale up’ more stringent standards, so far it has mainly benefited developed – not developing – country growers and workers.

Keywords:

• cut flowers
• sustainability standards
• inclusive monitoring
• enabling rights
• trade unions

Notes

Market shares for developing countries vary between flower types, e.g. in the EU, developing country carnations have a share of 61%, foliage 46% and roses 39% (CBI 2007).

The term value chain here refers to how linkages between production, distribution and consumption of products are globally interconnected in value chains (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994).

The ETI is a UK initiative to promote and improve the implementation of corporate codes of practice which cover supply chain working conditions.

First-party auditing represents forms of internal corporate self-regulation. Second-party auditing involves a company auditing its suppliers against its own code or an external standard, while in third-party auditing a company is audited by an independent and external body.

The FLO Fairtrade standards do to some degree address terms of trade, and the Ethical Trading Initiative has established a project group on purchasing practices which addresses the way in which retailers purchase constrains suppliers' ability to meet codes of practice. Available from: http://www.ethicaltrade.org/Z/actvts/exproj/purchprac/index.shtml#docs [Accessed 4 February 2009].

Some standards are aimed solely or mainly at the EU market, while others mainly target the US market but also have presence in the EU, as is the case for FlorVerde, Flor-Ecuador and the Rainforest Alliance standard.

The UK is the biggest flower consumer in the EU and the retailer share of flower sales there is 60–70% (CBI 2007).

MPS is a national association of all the Dutch flower auctions, the Federation of Agricultural and Horticultural Organisations, Netherlands and the Glasshouse Cultivation.

This estimate is based on figures from the Flower Label Program (which has a 3% market share in Germany) as well as on estimates provided by representatives from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation and Union Fleurs (Interviews 7 and 19, 2008).

See: http://www.fairflowers.net/flowers.html [Accessed July 2008].

The Dutch auctions basically function as a distribution centre, absorbing large quantities of flowers that are repacked and sold to buyers (mainly wholesalers) from all over the world.

Also franchise florists (or florist chains) and Internet flower sale is capturing market share rapidly (Filho 2008).

Around 55% of flowers supplied to the auctions comply with an MPS standard (Interview 9, 2008).

The forecast growth potential of FFP is furthermore based on a rapid increase in FFP participants, with a 414% increase in membership from 2007 to 2008 (Flower News 2008).

The ICC was negotiated by the IUF, the Flower Campaign Germany (Bread for the World, FIAN, Terre des Hommes), IG BAU (Trade Union for Construction, Agriculture and Environment, Germany), FNV (Trade Union Confederation, Netherlands), OLAA (Organisatie Latijns Amerika Activiteiten, Netherlands), INZET (Netherlands), Fair Trade Centre (Sweden), the Flower Coordination (Switzerland) and Christian Aid (UK) (ICC 1998).

The Flower Label Program was created in 1996 as a business-to-business code between the German importers’ association and the Association of Flower Producers and Exporters of Ecuador, but in 1999 it developed into a multi-stakeholder organisation with NGO and trade union representation. The Flower Label Program is now a social and environmental consumer label sold through florists in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Milieu Programma Sierteelt (MPS) is a business-to-business standard system owned by the Dutch auctions and Dutch growers' associations. It certifies companies to MPS A, B or C depending on their environmental performance on a range of indicators. The MPS scheme has gradually expanded and now offers a range of certificates including MPS-GAP (benchmarked against GlobalGAP) and MPS-SQ (certificate for social aspects developed in close cooperation with Dutch NGOs and unions).

Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International (FLO) involves 23 member organisations including labelling initiatives and producer networks. FLO awards a Fairtrade label to products that have been produced in developing countries according to the principles of Fairtrade, including a minimum price and a Fairtrade premium that the producer in agreement with worker representatives must invest in projects enhancing their social, economic and environmental development.

Until 2005 Max Havelaar Switzerland was the only certifier of Fairtrade flowers and they used MPS-SQ or the Flower Label Program certification as a requirement (Interview 11, 2008). In 2005 FLO centralised its certification procedure through FLO-CERT. FLO benchmarked the Flower Label Program and MPS-SQ schemes (and thus indirectly the ICC) against FLO standards and the result was the FLO standard for flowers (Interview 10, 2008).

The ICC founders disagreed on whether or not audits had to be done with the participation of local trade union and NGO observers (Interview 14, 2008). The new guidelines were published by Both ENDS in 2004/5 (Interview 14, 2008). The original guidelines can be found at http://www.flowercampaign.org/code-of-conduct/implementation/ [Accessed 29 January 2009].

There might for example be issues of rent seeking, internal rivalry or corrupt trade unions (see e.g. Riisgaard 2007 or Tallontire et al. 2009).

Contrary to this, FFP and MPS-SQ pay the expenses of the observers. The Flower Label Program does, however, always ask unions to participate when they arrange worker seminars, and furthermore they often consult unions before first audits and conduct unannounced visits in response to complaints.

See: http://www.fairtrade.net/fileadmin/us...owers_and_Plants_HL_March_2007_EN.pdf [Accessed 3 January 2009].

Harmonising existing standard schemes under one FFP consumer label has, however, turned out to be difficult (see Riisgaard 2009b).

Of these 159 are growers, 197 are traders and 4227 are sales outlets; see http://www.fairflowersfairplants.com [Accessed 10 January 2010].

Seventy-nine percent of the Dutch flowers are traded through the Dutch auctions (van Hemert 2005).