FSI members focusing on volumes from responsible sources and improved practices

Floriculture Sustainability Initiative (FSI) members are moving forward with their commitment for a sustainable floriculture sector. This came out of the FSI General Assembly that took place on 28 January 2016 at the IPM Trade Fair in Essen, Germany. Working together in the supply chain, the FSI members’ ambition is to have 90% of the flowers and pot plants traded by FSI members from responsible sources by 2020.

For the third year in a row, the growing group of industry leaders from Production, Trade, Retail, Civil Society and Standards; all members of FSI, came together for the Annual Meeting to discuss the latest developments and align on the way forward.

Volumes from responsible sources
To create more transparency and comparability, Floriculture Standards have been benchmarked against the international environmental GlobalGAP and social GSCP references. FSI welcomes the efforts of Standards to carry out the benchmarking and based on the positive results the ‘2015 FSI basket of responsible sources’ was presented to the members. With the Standards that are in the Basket, FSI members will measure the volumes originating from responsible sources. The FSI members and sector outcomes, presented in percentages for both flowers and plants, will be presented during the Kenyan IFTEX Flower Show in June 2016.

Improved practices
Parallel to the measuring and building on the success of the first 10 FSI members projects, a new round of projects starts in 2016. The focus is to improve practices on four key topics: Workers Conditions, Agrochemical use, Climate and Smallholders. FSI members are invited to present project proposals and create pre-competitive partnerships. This supply chain cooperation of FSI members will have scalable impact on main issues and brings shared learnings to the sector. The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) will provide co-funding for selected FSI member projects.

Election of Trade and CSOs Board representatives
The General Assembly also elected the new Board representatives for Trade and Civil Society. FSI Ordinary members unanimously approved the re-election of Richard Fox (Union Fleurs) as Trade representative and voted in favor of Lara Ladipo (Partner Africa) as representative of the Civil Society Organizations.