The long reach of commodity frontiers: social reproduction and food procurement strategies among migrant workers in Kenya’s flower farms

ABSTRACT

Conceptualizing global floriculture as a commodity frontier, this article explores rural-urban transfers and in loco production and exchange of food by migrant workers at Naivasha flower farms in Kenya. It highlights how food procurement strategies are central to the reproduction of a cheap labour force and are supported by multi-local family networks. Distant livelihoods and rural ecologies are thus tied to the frontier's interests and are embedded into global chains of cut flowers. We argue that considering reproductive labour strategies is critical to understand the functioning and expansion of commodity frontiers and their impact on peasant families and food circulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Global commodities
• reproductive labour
• floriculture industry
• rural-urban food transfers
• food exchange
• reciprocity
• Naivasha

Acknowledgments

Our gratitude goes to all those flower farm workers who shared their stories with us. We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on our manuscript. We also wish to thank our research partners, Samson Ngugi, Jane Mwangi and John Kariuki from Slow Food Kenya for their invaluable support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ugali is a thick porridge, staple food in east and central Africa, made from maize, finger millet, or other grains.

2 Table-banking is a group saving strategy where members from a group place their savings and borrow immediately if they wish, giving thus each member access to the money.

3 Besides, the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown measures and restrictions (e.g. on weddings, funerals, celebrations), especially in European countries, have hit hard the floriculture industry in 2020, with widespread orders cancelled in Europe, exports plunging by up to 80%, tons of flowers dumped in Kenya, and thousand workers laid off. The ways in which these frontier dynamics have impacted workers’ livelihoods and social reproduction deserve their own study. Even if flower production seems to have resumed, though not at full capacity, in 2021, information collected from follow-up phone interviews and journalistic reports (e.g. Barker 2020; Bhalla and Wuilbercq 2020) suggest that workers, to cope with the frontier’s temporary collapse, turned to a higher reliance on forms of self-production and livelihood diversification (e.g. a man who lost his job in a flower farm began fishing, hoping to sell the catch at local markets), to exacerbating strategies of expenditure and consumption reduction like postponing rent payments and skipping meals, as well as to temporary back-migration to their rural areas of origin. What we find relevant here is that the livelihood strategies and trajectories of workers during the 2020 collapse may mimic, at smaller scale, those that will be pursued when the frontier will advance and leave them behind. All this has obvious relevance for the understanding of strategies of social reproduction at commodity frontiers.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of a larger research study on Sustainable Food Systems in sub-Saharan Africa, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR) (Project code: H42F16002450001; Kenyan Research License Number: 23753).

Notes on contributors

Gabriele Volpato

Gabriele Volpato is an anthropologist, lecturer, and research fellow at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy). His interests are interdisciplinary and include biocultural diversity studies, ethnobiology, pastoralism and human-animal relationships, as well as food systems and peasants’ livelihood strategies.

Maura Benegiamo

Maura Benegiamo is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pisa and associate researcher at College d’Études Mondiales. She has conducted fieldwork research on socio-environmental conflicts, extractivism, and agrarian policies in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central America. Her research interests include political and decolonial ecologies, capitalist development, and its transformations in the context of the ecological crises.

Rachele Ellena

Rachele Ellena is an ethnobotanist engaged in research with grassroots organizations that aim to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract food commodification, and promote access to quality food. Her research focuses on traditional food systems and marginalized communities and examines the socio-cultural and ecological drivers of food selection.