The aim of this book was to explore the relationship between the agroindustry at Lake Naivasha and cut flower market orders in times of the growing importance of corporate retail chains and direct sales. Empirically, the analysis has shown that the market entry of retail chains and the reorganisation of the Lake Naivasha cut flower industry are mutually dependent, and that the reorganisation of global trade and retail of agricultural commodities has manifold and partly contradictory consequences for agricultures in the Global South and their sustaining social-ecological systems. Theoretically, the book favours a network-inspired approach over more classical approaches using the chain-metaphor (see Figure 16). Geographically, then, it questions all-too-linear and unidirectional representations of global market dynamics that result in local consequences for agro-industries in the Global South, and challenges macro-micro distinctions by showing how market orders are enacted in everyday practices.

To arrive at such conclusions, in this chapter I will first synthesise the empirical findings of this book along three lines which relate to the reorganisation of the cut flower industry: shifts in global trade and new market orders, the reorganisation of agro-industries, and the role of place and space in economic globalisation. On this basis, I will then consider what the empirical case at hand means for economic geography on a conceptual basis, before finally turning towards the political-economic repercussions of the reorganisation of the cut flower industry, and how current policy recommendations look and should look like at Lake Naivasha.

Shifts in global trade

A significant part of this book was dedicated to the question of how changes in the consumption and trade of cut flowers materialise at both the Dutch cut flower trade hub and the Lake Naivasha production cluster, or, more generally speaking, how shifts in global trade are brought about and how they materialise.

The cut flower industry has undergone a globalisation of production since the second half of the 20th century. Europe remains the most important export destination for Kenya. In the last 20 years, the European flower market has been characterised by the market entry of corporate supermarkets as part of the ‘global retail revolution’ (Selwyn 2016, 1776).