The fertile high valley near La Chimba trembles with sounds. The rhythms of brass bands and cumbia music clash like weather fronts, each playing its own beats in the Andean rain. A rainbow spans the slopes and white plastic greenhouses, protecting the region’s treasure: roses bred for beauty, shipped abroad, blooming far from home.
Amid the drizzle, Patricia Catucuamba and her husband, Milton Navas, share a jug of chicha, a maize brew vital to their harvest celebrations. Since 2000, they have worked as dairy farmers, but sustaining a milk business requires expanses of land beyond the reach of most smallholders.
Like many in Cayambe, they started a new venture five years ago: a cut-flower business specialising in roses, which offer higher profits on less land.
“Diversification isn’t just a strategy, it’s survival here,” says Catucuamba at her family’s ranch, pointing to a 4,500 sq metre greenhouse with rows of five rose varieties built at an altitude of 3,300 metres, where the air is thin and sharp.
Growing and exporting flowers has become a speciality of Ecuador’s economy in recent years, and three-quarters of its rose production is centred in the Cayambe region, according to Expoflores, the national association of flower producers and exporters.
Roses account for 66% of the country’s total flower output, a figure that propelled Ecuador in 2024 to become the world’s third-largest exporter, with more than 2bn stems sold annually, behind only the Netherlands and Colombia.
However, Ecuadorian scholars and campaigners question whether the economic opportunities it offers can really secure producers’ futures – or perhaps trap them in a toxic system marked by the overuse of pesticides.
In the global market, Ecuador’s rise in flower production has been associated with quality. The country’s roses are a high-value export, generating more revenue than coffee, bananas or other agricultural products. Rising demand has led to thousands of hectares flourishing in the water-scarce Andes north-east of Quito.
The region’s high altitude, fertile volcanic soil and intense sunlight create ideal conditions for stems to grow longer and blooms to be larger. From an employer’s perspective, just as advantageous are the low wages paid to many Indigenous workers and the limited enforcement of labour rights.
Through flowers, Cayambe is now connected to the global market. The region’s large-scale producers and co-operatives benefit from exports to the US, the EU and Kazakhstan, which serves as a proxy and supply hub for Russia during its war with Ukraine.
Yet for small businesses, survival is a struggle. Catucuamba and Navas say the growing flower industry has boosted the economy – but not necessarily for people like them.
In Cayambe, a region of more than 100,000 people, nearly half are involved in the sector. Indigenous women such as Catucuamba are crucial to floriculture, participating from planting to harvesting and sometimes being their family’s main earners. Some Indigenous Kayambi people, such as Catucuamba and Navas, practise subsistence farming, but most work on large plantations.
Here, the roses are intensively treated with chemicals to ensure flawless blooms, as required by customers – existing environmental standards in Ecuador are rarely monitored. Unlike agricultural production, pesticide use in cut-flower cultivation has indistinct limits, causing severe short- and long-term problems for workers and people living nearby.
A report by the Austrian environmental organisation Global 2000 revealed what American and European customers buy with their demand for perfect cut flowers all year round: out of 16 bouquets examined, traces of 79 different pesticides were found – 49 of which can affect hormones, are carcinogenic, damaging to fertility, or classified by the World Health Organization as hazardous to human health.
On average, the study showed that each bouquet contained residues of 14 pesticides; one was tainted with as many as 32. Three-quarters carried chemicals long banned in the EU for being especially toxic.
“It’s an uphill battle,” says Dr Jose Suarez of University of California, San Diego. “Many pesticides that have been discontinued or banned in Europe continue to be heavily used in the US.
“Ecuadorian agriculture seems to mirror what the US does – and for the rural communities encircled by the flower plantations, that is bad news.”
A 2024 study of Ecuadorian floriculture workers found that 61% of workers showed symptoms consistent with pneumonitis, attributed to pesticide exposure and other agrochemicals used in flower farming. Skin complaints, such as rashes and eczema, are common from contact with chemicals and plants. Some studies report pesticide poisoning rates of up to 60% among flower workers.
“The risks of the heavy use of agrochemicals extend beyond workers, affecting entire rural communities,” says Suarez.
Since 2008, his research programme studied more than 500 adolescents living in the flower-producing area around Cayambe, where intense pesticide use has led to increases in inflammation among the children. According to his findings, this is directly linked to worse neurobehavioural performance, affecting how children think, learn, remember and socialise.
“After the Mother’s Day harvest, we found that children had way higher pesticide exposure and lower neurocognitive performance than those examined later in the season, when exposure levels declined and abilities improved,“ says Suarez.
In light of concerns that young people in the flower-growing regions are more frequently affected by depression, his team of researchers found that exposure to pesticides – specifically organophosphates – plays a role in this.
“We have found higher depression scores among participants who have higher exposures to pesticides. And we found that more strongly in women than in men,” says Suarez, also mentioning reports of more frequent cases of leukaemia, miscarriages, chronic diseases and neurological damage, such as memory problems and fatigue.
In a large flower plantation in Cayambe, with about 500 workers, an acrid smell drifts through the gate of its cultivation area, protected by armed guards. The agricultural engineer managing the site, who shows visitors around, praises the blooms of their bestselling varieties, Pink Amaretto and Violet Hill. A large billboard advertises “four seasons quality”.
“Our year-round production makes roses from Ecuador CO2-friendlier than the ones grown in energy-intensive greenhouses in the Netherlands during the cold season,” says the manager.
At the production site, workers operate without protection despite the strong chemical fumes inside the poorly ventilated halls. They receive an average monthly pay of $482 (about £350) – the country’s minimum wage – and often work unpaid overtime under pressure to achieve higher productivity. Several workers reported that if they miss a shift, they are fined.
Working conditions in the area where pesticides are sprayed could not be verified due to the company’s restrictions. Outside the production site, toxic waste containers are casually discarded.
“Any agricultural activity leaves an environmental footprint,” says the manager, adding that the company changes the spraying team every three months. “Some chemicals are off-limits because they are carcinogenic, others because they harm pollinators.”
It is no coincidence that only about 0.1% of roses exported from Ecuador are labelled as Fairtrade. Certification schemes aim to ensure safer, more ethical working practices on the plantations, but compliance and enforcement vary.
New labour rights projects aim to improve fair pay, workplace safety and legal protection for agricultural workers, with some progress noted in strengthened labour codes and international monitoring. But they have been challenged by lobbyists, policymakers and the government.
Ecuadorian authorities have not responded to requests for comment.
Ecuador has experienced social and political unrest in recent years, recording one of the highest intentional homicide rates in Latin America. In October 2025, after the government ended the longstanding diesel subsidy, raising fuel prices by more than half, a nationwide strike and roadblocks, mainly in the north around Cayambe, partly paralysed the economy. President Daniel Noboa, son of Ecuador’s wealthiest man, responded with military force, causing civilian casualties.
But crime and state violence seem distant problems to Catucuamba and Navas. For them, access to water is a more pressing concern.
As water trickles from the tap, Navas counts the hours until the irrigation is cut off again – for three 12-hour periods a week – to keep their roses alive, while the large plantations downstream draw from the same shrinking canals.
Catucuamba lays the latest export invoice on the kitchen table, with the amounts neat and impressive, and the costs for pesticides circled in red.
“Water defines everything,” says Navas. “How long the crops will last, how many animals survive, how entire communities endure on the slopes below.”
While a rainbow fades over the greenhouses, Catucuamba places a bunch of roses on their kitchen table. They are not flawless – some petals are blemished – but they have not been treated with chemicals.
This report was supported by Journalismfund Europe.