The blooming illusion: the mirage of sustainable flowers in Ecuador

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.