(Bloomberg) -- Heavy rains pounding East Africa that have caused the death of hundreds of people are hurting production of cut flowers in key producer Kenya.

The El Niño weather pattern has exacerbated the region’s March-to-May rainy season, triggering above-normal precipitation over a region just recovering from the worst drought in four decades. About 260 people in Kenya alone have been killed by torrents or mudslides, and dozens more are still missing.

The downpours have damaged flower greenhouses and made roads impassable, curtailing transport, according to Jack Kneppers, owner of Maridadi Flowers Ltd. The lower temperatures and moisture also affect growth and quality, which forced his production in April below target by as many as 1.3 million stems.

“It’s affecting all of us,” he said by phone. “We could have sold more but we don’t have enough,” he said.

Cut flowers are the leading contributor of Kenya’s horticulture revenue, in turn the nation’s biggest foreign-exchange earner after remittances. Last year, blooms earned 73.5 billion shillings ($560 million) in much-needed export earnings, according to the statistics agency.

Kenya is the top export country for cut flowers to the Netherlands, which then distributes them to other European markets including the UK. 

Kenyan growers ship roughly 1.5 billion stems to Dutch auctions annually, almost the same amount as Ethiopia, according to Michel van Schie, spokeman for Royal FloraHolland. Jointly, the two nations account for almost a third of the 10.5 billion flowers traded via Royal FloraHolland last year.

Kenyan supplies are down by a range of 7% to 10%, according to FloraHolland, which runs three auctions in the Netherlands.

Overall, the volume at auctions in the days before Mother’s Day is down 9% from last year, boosting prices 15%, according to FloraHolland. This is “good news for the growers, because pricing did not match with the inflation in the last years,” Van Schie said in an email.

The holiday marked on the second Sunday of May is Kenya’s best sales period after Valentine’s Day. 

“We see impact on the supply from Africa,” he said. “It has especially impacted on the supply from Kenya.”

(Recasts from first paragraph, adds export data in fifth paragraph)

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