India’s rose boom tests export ambitions as trade deals multiply

As India seals sweeping trade agreements with major global partners policymakers are betting that high-value agriculture can drive the country’s next export surge. But in rose-growing villages of the south, farmers say the reality of export markets remains far more distant than the headlines suggest, Robert Bociaga reports.

Before sunrise, under the glow of a single hanging bulb, Shankar R. moves carefully between rows of red roses inside a plastic-covered polyhouse. Each stem is cut at a precise length, bundled and placed in buckets of water. By mid-morning, the flowers from Annilayam village in Tamil Nadu state will be on a truck headed not to Europe, but to a wholesale market in Chennai, a major regional hub, over 300 km away.

“We grow every day,” he said. “But export is not for us.”

Read more at: Asia Media Centre