The blooming illusion
The mirage of sustainable flowers in Ecuador
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24228286 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marta Avesani (0009-0002-9719-6101) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2026-09-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Agriculture and Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0889-048X • E-ISSN: 1572-8366 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10460-026-10943-0 |
| OpenAlex | W7206181501 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 63 |
Flower production is Ecuador’s third-largest industrial sector, but its rapid expansion has entailed precarious employment, low wages, extended working hours, and intensive pesticide use. Fairtrade certification seeks to mitigate these problems through labour protections, environmental safeguards, and mechanisms for formalisation. However, in the floriculture sector the scheme provides no standard for smallholder producers, who constitute a significant share of production in the Ecuadorian highlands. Drawing on fieldwork in the Sierra region, including visits to certified and non-certified farms and interviews with managers, workers, and smallholders, this study shows that the initiative has delivered notable improvements in labour conditions, occupational safety, and traceability on large plantations able to comply with hired-labour requirements. Yet these gains coexist with exclusions. The absence of a framework tailored to small-scale producers, combined with limited attention to royalty arrangements that disproportionately burden smaller farms, prevents many growers from accessing certification despite facing similar labour, environmental, and market risks. As a result, the standard reinforces an uneven governance landscape in which benefits accrue primarily to larger, better-capitalised enterprises. The findings highlight the limited capacity of Fairtrade certification to address sectoral inequalities in the flower sector and suggest the need for stronger coordination between private standards and national regulation to overcome the structural barriers constraining smallholder participation in global floriculture value chains.
Ecuadorian highlands · Fairtrade certification · Floriculture · flower industry · pesticide use · private standards · sectoral differences · Sierra region · smallholder farmers · Traceability · working conditions · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Latin American rural development
Business, Power and Sustainability in a World of Global Value Chains
Rules without Rights
Territorial pluralism
Fairtrade Certification, Labor Standards, and Labor Rights
Arbitrating risk through moral values
Doing Ethnography
Nuevo modelo de acumulación y agroindustria
Fair Trade and Free Entry
Land and livelihood in the age of Covid‐19
Identifying health care access barriers in southern rural Ecuador
The socioeconomic drivers of pesticide use in floriculture
Roses
Fair trade and ethical trade
Contemporary narratives about asymmetries in responsibility in global agri-food value chains
Gender equity, labor rights, and women’s empowerment
Who’s the fairest of them all? The fractured landscape of U.S. fair trade certification
Corporate cooptation of organic and fair trade standards
Some are more fair than others”
Fairtrade, certification, and labor
The fluid nature of water grabbing
Does certification improve hired labour conditions and wageworker conditions at banana plantations
Quality certification, regulation and power in fair trade
Certifying rural spaces
Food or flowers? Contested transformations of community food security and water use priorities under new legal and market regimes in Ecuador's highlands
Fairtrade labour certification
From ‘criminals of the earth’ to ‘stewards of the environment’
Roundtabling’ sustainability
De-colonizing water. Dispossession, water insecurity, and Indigenous claims for resources, authority, and territory
Sustainability Standards and the Water Question
Mountain Agriculture for Global Markets
Field Opacity and Practice-Outcome Decoupling
Fair Trade and Neoliberalism
Cut-Flower Exports, Female Labor, and Community Participation in Highland Ecuador
Moving beyond 'shopping list' positionality
Sustainability and Depoliticisation
Fair Trade Flowers
Who decides what is fair in fair trade? The agri-environmental governance of standards, access, and price
| Highly cited | No |
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