Farmer – Exporter partnerships in Kenya’s floriculture industry

Do these partnerships lead to enhancing the smallholder farmers’ innovation capabilities thus increasing their opportunities for accessing export markets?

The smallholders can access export markets directly when the key determinants of value addition, post harvest handling and marketing. But because their operations are small. these factors become a limiting factor to their growth

How do farmer-exporter partnership bridge this gap; without exploitation? Through contracts

Contracts which apportion value addition and marketing functions to the exporters, while production functions are apportioned to the farmers. The exporters also
control the technical infrastructure for value addition and post-harvest handling.

To support value addition and post-harvest handling capabilities, the study recommends the need to: strengthen capacities for demand
articulation amongst smallholder farmers; strengthen and support the role of innovation intermediaries and strengthen capacities for market intelligence gathering.