Buy African flowers on Valentine's Day to help make
poverty history
13 February 2007 Related pages: Why trade
matters in the fight against poverty |
What can I do to make a
difference? | Does aid work?
 Hilary
Benn, Secretary of State, gave a speech to an international sustainable food
conference on air miles, roses and ending
poverty on Valentine's Day at the Rembrandt Hotel, London, 13th February 2007.
Read our press release
for more details
For some, the Food Miles Debate poses a real dilemma. Should I only buy local
and boycott produce from abroad, especially things flown in, or should I support
poor farmers who are trying to work and trade their way out of poverty?
Recent research commissioned by World
Flowers suggests that the emissions produced by growing flowers in Kenya
and flying them here can be less than a fifth of those grown in heated and
lighted greenhouses in Holland. Why? Because Kenya is warm and sunny, and
heating greenhouses in Holland uses enormous amounts of fossil fuels.
Mr Benn said: "This Valentine’s day, you can be a romantic, reduce your
environmental impact and help make poverty history. This is about social justice
and making it easier, not harder, for African people to make a decent living."
Blooming jobs for Kenya's poor
 The UK is the world’s biggest
importers of flowers and almost a third of what we import is from Kenya. This is
a country where half of the population live on less than 50p a day.
You can buy a small bar of chocolate for that – but for them, that 50p means not knowing in the morning
where the food for your children will come from that evening.
The flower industry in Kenya means jobs for poor people. Up to 70,000 are
employed – mainly women – like Dorcas Kariuki who has worked on a flower farm in
Naivasha for 10 years, educating her three children, meeting their health needs.
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