Mobile Floriculture Operators in Southern Sri Lanka: Challenges and Solutions

Floriculture is a flourishing industry in Sri Lanka with a great potential in both domestic and export market. Street and mobile flower vending is a micro enterprise which is not a negligible portion of floriculture sector in the country. Present study was conducted to investigate the constraints faced by street and mobile flower vendors and to understand their willingness to adopt those challenges. Randomly selected 40 flower vendors from Galle, Matara and Hambantota districts were interviewed using a semi structured questionnaire by visiting them at their marketing sites such as streets, week fairs and “Kaprukawaruna” exhibitions conducted by Coconut Cultivation Board, Matara. According to the findings, majority of the respondents engage in the business as a full time employment and 43.3% of the vendors sell plants grown in their own nurseries. Apart from the flowering and ornamental plants, they sell fertilizers, coir dust and coconut husk pieces and product diversification has a significant impact (p=0.016) on their monthly income. Average nursery size was found to be 500ft2 where average income was noted as 200 USD. Among the vendors 70% use their own money to refinance the business. Majority of the respondents (60%) were members of different flower grower societies. Vendors (87.5%) sell their products targeting week fairs and (62.5%) sell their products beside the streets in temporary fixed huts. Not having an authorized place to market their goods was identified as the major problem by 85% of the respondents. Majority of the vendors (62.5%) were willing to expand the business while 42.5% identified this as a profitable venture to invest. According to the binary logistic regression results, age (p=0.000), education level (p=0.001), economic status (p=0.057), nursery size (p=0.004) and credit accessibility (p=0.024) were positively related with their willingness to adopt for the challenges they face. It is concluded that following key actions must be taken to strengthen the street and mobile flower vendors for their further empowerment: Provision of proper authorized sites of operation, improve the market credit and other infrastructure facilities and more training opportunities.