Kenya: Flamingo Horticulture working towards GRASP option 2 for its outgrowers

(Picture taken in 2019 before the Covid 19 pandemic.)

At the end of 2020, COLEACP worked with Flamingo Horticulture Kenya Ltd, a large grower with various production sites (vegetables and flowers). A training session and pre-audit followed on from COLEACP’s previous activities with Flamingo, and should pave the way for the company’s successful social audit of over 400 smallholder growers.

Throughout 2019, COLEACP supported the company with an assessment of GlobalG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practices (GRASP) compliance at outgrower level, and the development of a road map and quality management system for GRASP compliance. In addition, Flamingo’s staff in the outgrower department were trained on the GRASP standard and its requirements – a set of 11 questions addressing specific aspects of workers’ health, safety and welfare. During this training, a specific tool was developed to facilitate GRASP awareness-raising for small-scale producers.

Social compliance has become an important sustainability parameter for consumers, and proof of social welfare in the form of certification has been finding its way upstream in international supply chains. COLEACP member Flamingo Horticulture is compliant with Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit (SMETA) requirements in all its farms and packhouses, but it needed a standard appropriate to roll out to its hundreds of individual small-scale growers. Group certification, as offered by GRASP, offers an appropriate vehicle to reach a level of social compliance. GRASP, a voluntary add-on module of the GLOBALG.A.P. standard designed to assess social practices on the farm, offers buyers added assurance because it helps producers to establish a good social management system. The group certification is often referred to as ‘option 2’.

The Fit For Market programme is implemented by COLEACP within the Framework of Development Cooperation between the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS) and the European Union.