Development of the EHPEA Code of Practice : Results of fieldwork conducted During September- December 2006

For the Ethiopian flower sector, the European Union is currently its most important market. By improving quality of production, logistics and marketing strategies, the sector aims to enter the European retail sector, and some other specific niche markets. However, these market segments also demand more corporate social responsible behavior regarding social and environmental issues. Besides that, there is growing pressure from local civil society organizations, demanding fair social conditions and good environmental management practices. This is not just the case for the Ethiopian flower farmers, but is a growing concern for the sector at a worldwide level. Finally, both at market level as within Ethiopian, the flower sector has to comply with the existing legislation. Partly due to external pressures, these legal framework change in time and define restrictions and conditions regarding environmental and social issues. For the sector, it is important that this legal and institutional framework enables the sustainable development of the sector. Active cooperation between public and private actors, helps to understand each others mandates and agendas, and to define together reasonable requirements that help the sector to improve its sustainability gradually. Altogether, these are important reasons that have led EHPEAs to decide to identify the design of an Ethiopian specific code of Practice for Sustainable flower cultivation. This is one of the strategic issues to be developed within the framework of the Dutch- Ethiopian Horticulture partnership. In order to be able to design this Code of Practice, EHPEA requested the support of the Dutch LEI (Agricultural Economics Research Institute) to facilitate the process. This support consists of a combination of desk research, expert interviews, workshops and data collection in the field. This report presents the results of the data collected through fieldwork in Ethiopia in the period September-December 2006. This fieldwork should not be considered as an alternative to replace an initial audit for. These audits are normally conducted by an external expert in order to analyze the exact level of compliance and gaps of the current practices applied in the farms in comparison to these standards, and take a considerable amount of time for each farm. To do such audits there was no time, nor budget available. This fieldwork has been a quick scan to identify the most pressing environmental and social issues the farm managers must improve their management system. Also, the fieldwork has been useful for the identification of the most urgent gaps between the requirements of the most important international standards on sustainable flower cultivation to be considered by the Ethiopian sector, and the current practices applied. This information is used to create awareness of the representatives being active in the sector. And, the information is used in workshops organized by EHPEA to define the content of the EHPEA Code of Practice.