Managed Outgrowers

The Flamingo group not only invests hugely into its own farms, but also into many smaller farms around the world, and in doing so enables over 3000 smallholders from South America, Asia and Africa to access the European markets with first class produce, grown to exacting Homegrown standards.

Managed Outgrowers


In rural areas of Kenya, for instance, there are over 600 smallholders who have undertaken to grow vegetables for Homegrown. Each group of 13 to 15 outgrowers is looked after by a Technical Assistant who gives them all the technical support and training needed to grow vegetables to the high standards demanded by the supermarket.
Because their vegetables will end up on the same shelves as those grown on Homegrown’s farms, the same rigorous standards must be maintained. Indeed, all outgrowers are trained to grow to accepted international standards. Each crop is grown from seed provided by Homegrown, and is regularly checked and logged by the Technical Assistant and the farmer, and each week they will discuss crop management on the farm.
The range of vegetables grown by the outgrowers goes from fine beans and courgettes through to mange touts, baby corn and carrots, and these will all be taken out to the Homegrown collection shed by the farmers, where they will be greeted by the Technical Assistant. After the usual health and hygiene checks, it is into the shed to sort out the day’s pick.
Each farmer is part of the committee that owns the shed, and is responsible for grading and weighing his own produce and preparing it for shipment to Nairobi. The day’s pick is logged and each crate labelled so the vegetables can be traced back to the individual farmer, and is then placed in a low-tech cooler. The Technical Assistant then talks to the farmer about which crop he might grow next, as crop rotation is such an important growing practice on the farm. Once he has looked through the log sheets of that farm, he will give the farmer the new seeds he needs.
Successful schemes such as this have radically changed the areas where they operate. They have brought a level of stability to the farmers that was not there before, as Robert Hale explains: Robert Hale, Africa Now: “Well, this is really the only means for many people to earn a livelihood and it is one of the few assets, or the only asset often, that a family has to utilise to earn some income. We also see that people start to make business decisions about farm investment, it is not just merely a source of growing food for the family but can generate some income and can be treated more as an enterprise than as simply a farm”.
Once the truck arrives the vegetables are loaded up to go off to the pack house at Nairobi. Here they meet up with the other vegetables grown on Flamingo’s farms, are packed ready to go to the UK, then off to the airport.Once in Britain, the produce that was grown in rural areas around the world is sold alongside Flamingo’s other produce throughout the high street supermarkets.
Farming to the very highest standards with Flamingo Holdings’ assistance, these outgrowers can be proud to be commercial farmers with newfound financial security for their families and control over their own livelihoods.