The $50 billion global cut-flower industry, long reliant on stable climatic conditions in a handful of production hubs, faces unprecedented disruption as rising temperatures, erratic rainfall and intensifying droughts undermine the very environmental advantages that made East Africa, South America and the Netherlands dominant suppliers, according to industry analysts and recent research examining the sector’s vulnerabilities.
For decades, the trade has clustered around regions with specific geographic gifts: Kenya’s equatorial highlands produce roses year-round under intense sunshine; Colombia and Ecuador leverage stable Andean temperatures; the Netherlands dominates through auction infrastructure and advanced greenhouse technology. Climate change now threatens each of these models in distinct but interconnected ways, with consequences rippling through supply chains that deliver flowers to consumers on every continent.
East Africa: Water Scarcity Undermines Kenya and Ethiopia
Kenya, the world’s fourth-largest cut-flower exporter and supplier of roughly one-third of all roses sold in the European Union, centers its industry on Lake Naivasha. The lake’s high altitude, steady sunshine and abundant freshwater once made it ideal for year-round rose production supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs.
That water supply has become the sector’s greatest vulnerability. Recurring East African droughts have intensified competition between flower farms, fishing communities and food producers dependent on the same limited resources. Falling lake levels compound biodiversity loss and pesticide-related pollution concerns. Industry analysts describe secure water access—not land, labor or logistics—as the single most consequential long-term risk to Kenya’s flower sector.
Ethiopia, a newer entrant supplying roughly 2 percent of global cut flowers, faces a similar dynamic. Its floriculture industry has created more than 100,000 jobs, predominantly for women, but depends on the same combination of high water demand and climate volatility threatening Kenyan producers. Both countries are being pushed toward more efficient irrigation and water recycling to protect an export sector that has become a major source of foreign revenue.
South America: Colombia and Ecuador Face Weather Disruption
Colombia, the world’s largest cut-flower producer, exports hundreds of millions of stems annually, mostly to the United States. Farms cluster near Bogotá’s international airport to minimize transit time—flowers lose approximately 15 percent of their value for every additional day between harvest and air freight, making the supply chain acutely sensitive to weather disruptions affecting harvests or shipping schedules.
Ecuador has built its reputation on large, high-altitude roses grown in industrial greenhouses. Rose cultivation there remains highly water- and chemical-intensive, and shifting rainfall patterns add new strain to a system already under scrutiny for water use. Reporting on Ecuador’s flower regions has raised concerns about how climate-linked water stress compounds existing labor and environmental issues, from heavy pesticide application to competition with indigenous and farming communities over scarce water resources.
Because Colombia and Ecuador dominate flower supply to North America as Kenya and the Netherlands dominate Europe, sustained climate disruption in the Andes has an outsized effect on U.S. flower prices and availability, particularly during high-demand periods like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, when supply chains run with almost no slack.
The Netherlands: Energy Costs Reshape Greenhouse Production
The Netherlands remains the epicenter of the global flower trade—the world’s largest exporter, home to the dominant auction system and the re-export hub through which a large share of African flowers reach European consumers. Unlike equatorial competitors, the Dutch industry’s climate challenge is not water scarcity but energy.
Because the Netherlands is cold and cloudy for much of the year, greenhouse production depends on heating and supplemental lighting powered largely by fossil fuels. Dutch-grown flowers are surprisingly carbon-intensive; studies have found roses produced in Dutch greenhouses can generate several times the emissions of the same roses grown outdoors in Kenya, even after accounting for air freight from Nairobi to Amsterdam. As climate policy and energy costs increasingly constrain greenhouse heating, Dutch growers are investing in geothermal energy, improved greenhouse glazing and renewable power—changes driven as much by economics as by direct weather disruption.
Broader Implications for Import-Dependent Markets
Britain imports approximately 90 percent of its flowers, making the roughly £2.2 billion market heavily exposed to climate disruptions occurring from Kenya to the Netherlands. A recent Nuffield Farming scholarship report concluded that UK growers have focused almost entirely on cutting their own carbon emissions while giving little attention to building resilience against extreme heat, flooding and drought domestically. Growing interest in home-grown blooms has emerged as a lower-carbon alternative, though domestic flowers still represent a small fraction of UK sales.
In the United States, flower farms concentrated in California face worsening drought and water restrictions. Because the U.S. imports the majority of its cut flowers, mostly from Colombia and Ecuador, American consumers remain indirectly exposed to climate pressures facing South American growers. Domestic flower farming has seen a modest resurgence partly framed around reducing exposure to that long, climate-vulnerable import supply chain.
Southern Europe’s ornamental growers, concentrated in some of the continent’s driest regions, face water-stress dynamics reshaping other water-intensive crops across the Iberian Peninsula, where flower and ornamental plant production competes with traditional rain-fed agriculture for an increasingly scarce resource.
A Common Thread, Divergent Pressures
Despite different climates, economies and crops, flower-growing regions worldwide converge on the same set of pressures: water scarcity, unpredictable growing seasons, rising pest and disease pressure, and the high cost of protecting a highly perishable, low-margin product against increasingly volatile weather. What differs by region is which pressure dominates—water in East Africa and the Andes, energy in the Netherlands, drought in California and southern Europe.
An industry built around exploiting stable, predictable climates must now adapt to a world where that stability can no longer be taken for granted. For consumers, the implications extend beyond Valentine’s Day price spikes: the long-term viability of an industry that delivers flowers across continents depends on how quickly producers and importers can build resilience into every link of the supply chain.