LONGONOT FARM is a giant factory for mass-producing roses: a model of efficiency in a country whose natural condition seems to be chaos. The roses are housed in enormous plastic greenhouses—49 in all, some covering a hectare and a half—and planted in long troughs. Workers in neat uniforms bearing the legend “Growing in Harmony” harvest the flowers and deliver them to an on-site packaging facility. There they are graded and sorted, stripped of their thorns and leaves, packed, labelled “Marks & Spencer” or “Sainsbury’s”, loaded onto lorries, sent to the airport and delivered to Europe by the next day. The farm produces 72m stems a year.A couple of dozen farms like Longonot line the shore of Lake Naivasha, a 139-square-kilometre (54-square-mile) expanse of freshwater in the Rift Valley, north-west of Nairobi. These farms are in turn part of a Kenyan horticultural industry that produces fruit and vegetables as well as flowers.Central Kenya is perfect for growing things, being blessed not only with 12 hours of tropical sunlight a day but also with a more temperate climate at higher elevations. The Rift Valley is full of lakes, and their water and surrounding...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1hEEPwT
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