The best cut flowers grow right outside your door

The all-day event, entitled Cut Flowers: Do They Have a Future? offered a varied program on the origin, significance, and future of flowers for nearly 70 experts, flower sellers, educators, and students interested in sustainability. The event was opened by Markéta Munzarová, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Science, who welcomed visitors with a reminder that our relationship with the beauty of nature shapes us from childhood. Slávek Rabušic, a specialist in flower arranging, opened the first block with a lecture on the significance of flowers from ancient Egypt to the present day. "In the beginning, flowers had mainly a reverential meaning, and only later did they become an aesthetic, utilitarian, and commercial commodity," he explained.

Flowers from Kenya and the price of cheap beauty

Unlike experts, not everyone knows that most cut flowers sold in Czechia come from East Africa. That is why the second part of the block belonged to Stanislav Komínek, campaign manager for Fairtrade Czechia and Slovakia and a documentary filmmaker who has been monitoring the conditions of growers in developing countries for a long time. In his lecture on rose cultivation in Kenya, he presented the background of the flower business, which is far from romantic in reality.

Komínek mentioned that two Kenyan flower farms produce as many flowers as the whole of Czechia combined. Moreover, the price of one flower is around two crowns, maximum two fifty. However, the selling prices remain the same compared to the production costs. "The growing conditions there are ideal – lots of sun, long days, mountain climate. But the question is: who actually benefits from this?" Komínek asked rhetorically. According to him, there is a harsh reality behind the beautiful bouquets. Employees on Kenyan farms earn between 1,600 and 2,100 crowns a month, even though they work eight hours a day, six days a week. "According to the World Bank, 46 percent of people in Kenya live in extreme poverty. Most workers live in slums, struggling to provide basic food and education for their children," he described. Food prices are often comparable to those in the Czech Republic. "When someone speaks up and asks for a decent wage, the response is: there are plenty of others waiting outside the gate who will take the job," Komínek quoted Kenyan activist Eunice Waweru from the organization Workers Rights Watch.

Although the flowers travel more than 7,000 kilometers by air to Europe, their carbon footprint is almost three times lower than that of flowers grown in the Netherlands, where greenhouses have to be heated, according to Komínek. Even so, the question remains whether the current system is sustainable – not only ecologically, but also socially. Some fair trade farms offer examples of how things can be done differently – they try to reduce their impact on the environment by planting trees, producing natural fertilizers, limiting pesticides, and installing photovoltaic power plants.

Local alternative and future

Markéta Róza Střechová, owner of the Rosebud (Do Země) flower shop, spoke at the conference about the topic of local flower cultivation and sales in Czechia. "Sustainability is defined in the context of human civilization as the practical ability to meet today's basic needs without compromising the ability to meet the basic needs and maintain the standard of living of future generations," Střechová began with a definition of sustainability. She then went on to describe the import of flowers from the large Royal FloraHolland exchange, from wholesalers, farmers, or from her own production. However, the local Czech source has a limited time frame – six months. "Czech farmers usually have to arrange everything from cultivation to sale and operate on small farms of up to 5,000 square meters, where they try to rotate as many flowers as possible in one season. If they also operate near a larger city, they are more successful," Střechová described.

Střechová sees soil as our greatest asset. "Sustainable agriculture refers to the ability of farms or estates to produce indefinitely without causing long-term damage to the soil and adjacent ecosystems. This form of farming respects and works with the soil nutrient cycle—the soil nourishes plants, which nourish animals, whose remains nourish the soil, and the soil then nourishes more plants. And that's what makes human existence on this planet possible," Střechová concluded her lecture. Her words also inspired one of the conference participants, Alena Šinoglová, a floristry teacher at the Secondary Vocational School in Znojmo. "It was really true to life. She described the entire course of her business to us, which is interesting both for us and for the students we teach," Šinoglová responded. The topic of sustainability is quite new to her, and she plans to introduce it into her teaching. "In the future, we should definitely focus on how to adapt to drought in South Moravia so that we can continue to grow our own flowers and not import so many."

Deana Láníková, an expert at the Botanical Garden of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University, also shared her knowledge of gardening in harmony with nature. "The key is to grow without chemicals and artificial fertilizers, to use compost, manure, or biochar and rainwater for watering, mulching, or supporting wildlife. It is also good to prune and clean up the garden in the spring."

Flowers as a test of our responsibility

In the third block, conference participants listened to lectures on trends in ornamental plants from Czech greenhouses and on decorating festive events. The conference concluded with a discussion with the speakers and a tour of the botanical garden's greenhouses, where a traveling exhibition documenting rose cultivation in Kenya, Invisible Thorns, is on display until the end of October. This exhibition was one of the impulses for the conference itself. "We felt that this issue had not been discussed in the media for a long time, so we wanted to raise awareness of it again and at the same time point out what we can do as a botanical garden, Czech companies and florists, and also initiatives such as Výkvět," said Hana Ondrušková, a specialist at the botanical garden and one of the conference organizers, commenting on the exhibition.

"The main problem is the consumerist approach to conventionally grown flowers, which is linked to slave labor and environmental damage. If we want to continue functioning on this planet, we must seek sustainable ways and go a little against globalization—for example, by supporting local sellers," she said. Another option is to buy flowers with the Fairtrade certification mark, which are not genetically modified, have a lower impact on the surrounding nature, and leave a lower carbon footprint than flowers grown in heated European greenhouses. In addition, thanks to Fairtrade fees, farms can provide people with better working conditions.

Tereza Štorková, a student at the Faculty of Horticulture at Mendel University, confirmed the findings of the study at the conference. "I also mentioned Fairtrade in my bachelor's thesis, but it is important to see with your own eyes how this industry actually works, because you can't learn it so well in theory. That's why I'm glad I listened to, for example, a lecture on flowers from Kenya by Mr. Komínek, who was there and saw everything live," Tereza said.

The conference showed that flowers are not only a symbol of beauty, but also a mirror of global inequalities. It confirmed that the question of whether cut flowers have a future may not only concern their appearance, but above all our willingness to look beyond the petals to the people who grow them.

The author of the article is a student at the Faculty of Social Studies and a member of the student editorial board of Magazín M.

Photo: Renata Sasková