Marks and Spencer - Flowers

This project is helping the Ethiopian Horticulture Produce & Exporters Association (EHPEA) access the UK fresh flower market through the development of its own standards that, through benchmarking against International standards become acceptable to the UK retail sector. EHPEA has developed a code of practice to drive environmental and good agricultural best practise for the industry. However, Ethiopian horticulture also needs to develop ethical trading and labour standards due to weak labour laws and the project is working to achieve this.

The project is:

• Developing a silver code for the Ethiopian Horticulture sector;
• Developing the standards to include a collective bargaining agreement to improve labour standards for workers on the farms;
• Putting together a multi-stakeholder working group to approve the standards;
• Benchmarking  the EHPEA Code of Practice at silver level with Global GAP;
• Benchmarking the EHPEA Code of Practice at silver level with ETI / SMETA and GSCP; matching compliance criteria  and development and benchmarking of the Code Rules and regulations;
• Providing training in ETI standards;
• Preparation of training materials relevant to ethical training initiative standards and
• Supporting a pilot group of 6 farms working to achieve the silver standard;
• Sharing experience with the sector and to discuss market opportunities for Silver labelled produce in the UK
• Purchasing a minimum 500,000 roses from farms that meet the silver standards.
• Highlighting Ethiopia as a sourcing country to customers using a variety of awareness raising initiatives

The key aims of the project are to:

• Raise labour standards in Ethiopian Flower Farms
• Raise Technical standards in Ethiopian Flower Farms
• Develop local training capacity
• Increase sourcing of Ethiopian Roses to the UK
• Promote Ethiopia as a reliable and robust sourcing country
• Raise awareness of International Standards in the Ethiopian Horticulture Industry

Finlays, one of the project partners hosted a visit to Kenya for Ethiopia Horticulture Producers and Exporters Association (EHPEA), local producers & Africa Now’s local representative to discuss social and ethical issues & gain best practices in action as well as to discuss commercial & technical elements of the cut flower sector. The group visited several farms on the ground in Kenya looking at the technical and ethical best practice already in place in Kenya. The visit also included workshops on how this can apply to Ethiopian Growers.

Training materials are now being collated and rollout of this training is due to start in October. Marks & Spencer visited Ethiopia in July to visit some of the farms. The visit also focussed on raising awareness of the project and  finalising plans for the remaining activities in the project.