Flower Market wilt in the fire of COVID-19, bourse look for shade.

On May 12, 2020, IFAB (International Flower Auction Bangaluru), a auction house in Hebbal (Bangaluru), India’s only flower exchange and it resumed trading last week- after being in nearly 45 days lockdown. In IFAB (International Flower Auction Bangaluru) auction house, every morning, seven days a week, it is open, there are large flower merchants assemble here to assess the quality “Stems” wheeled in the previous evening.

IFAB (International Flower Auction Bangaluru) auction house, at half-past-eight, opens its intranet-linked bidding counters and then the bidding started, after three hours the bidding is about to close and the auction house would have sold over 2 lakh rose stems, along with a few thousand gerberas, carnations, gladioles and orchids. This is the normal days bidding (two months ago). But now the country locked itself to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, a dangerous virus.

After two months lockdown, when it reopen, the exchange could only auction 18,000-20,000 of rose stems (‘Stem’, a unit signifying number of long-cut flowers) because of the lockdown, in the bidding the presence of a very limited pool of buyers and it is not normal in the IFAB for the first five months of the year calendar.

MD of IFAB, M. Vishwanath says “The biggest problem is low availability of transport……Flower growers are not able to bring their crop to the auction house cold storage the previous energy”. And he also says “On the buyers’ side too, there are no marriages, local festivals or familial celebrations happening anymore. Also large flower traders from Delhi, West Bengal and Goa are not able to air-lift flowers anymore.

Impact of COVID-19 on growers such as several farmers in Pune and surrounding-flower-growing regions have stopped harvesting, because they also faces the labour problems, they go back to their home due to COVID-19, lockdown. So, the farmers have left their crop to wilt. But, the large farmers are trying to keep their crop or healthy by using many techniques.