Valentines Day

SteveM

My neighbor raises a lot of flowers and has several flower stands/shops. This time of year is crazy busy. The crew works 16 hour days making bouquets all week.

Krista

SteveM Wow it’s cool to have a glimpse into a large flower operation! What flowers are the “stars” of bouquets this time of year?

SteveM

Krista What flowers are the “stars” of bouquets this time of year?

Valentines Day is a rose holiday. The roses come from South America (Columbia and ?). It is tricky to source roses because there is only a 100% markup. It is easy to lose money if you over buy. Lilies are also popular and this grower also uses quite a few protea that he raises himself.

Krista

SteveM Valentines Day is a rose holiday.

Oh of course it is, I wasn’t thinking. I guess I’ve just outed the fact that I never receive flowers on Valentine’s Day. And I think Protea are so coooool!

Do you also work with accounts that require you to source roses for sales on Valentine’s Day? It sounds like it’d be very stressful business.

SteveM

Krista I only sell dahlias wholesale, both cut dahlias and dahlia cuttings. I haven't had a flower stand for about 20 years so no need to source roses now. There used to be a lot of local rose growers but they were not able to compete with the quality and price of South American roses so there are no more commercial rose growers here. Valentines Day is very hectic for flower stands and flower shops but , if things go well, there is money to be made.

Krista

SteveM Oh I didn’t realize you only grow dahlias, that’s super neat! As think it’s wild that local rose growers can’t compete with South American roses - I wondered why there weren’t local options.

blown_dry

Krista There used to be domestic production of roses, but the cut flower industry in places like Columbia was built by design in the 90s and domestic could not compete.
“The idea from the United States and Colombian governments was to form a series of agricultural products that could diversify Colombia’s economy and drive it away from a coca-centred economy.”
Did it work? No. Though it did help provide relatively good jobs that weren't there before.
“You have to understand the issue with the drug war and, in part, the cocaine production in Colombia is that the demand is very inflexible,” Guzman said. “There is an inelastic demand for drugs.”

Teddahlia

They grow the roses near the equator in South America. One would think it would be too hot but they are high in the Andes mountains. The expected high and low temperature are nearly the same every day of the year. And it does not generally get above 70F.

Krista

blown_dry Fascinating, I didn’t know about this piece of economic history. I will do some additional reading to learn more, thank you for delivering these tidbits of enticing bait to lure me in!

bloomhjelm

blown_dry

There is a similar but more backwards story in Afghanistan. In the 2000s, Afghanistan's cotton farms were struggling, but had potential with renewed US interest in economic development. Cotton being the second most valuable crop after poppies for heroin, and well-suited to the climate and agricultural history. It is also a labor-intensive crop which employs workers who would otherwise be likely to join the Taliban. However, USAID made a series of mistakes which prevented minimal funding (one being claiming that aid for cotton was disallowed by law because it would compete with American cotton). The US failed in multiple other agribusiness initiatives in Afghanistan also between 2012-2017 due to mismanagement of funds, poor financial and bureaucratic infrastructure, poorly trained populace and aging equipment.

Anyway, no USAID funds to Afghanistan this year. But cotton production was up 30% last year under the Taliban and they have created lucrative cotton thread export deals with China.

https://www.theglobalist.com/aid-and-the-afghan-cotton-saga/

blown_dry

Krista I know that the tightened borders after 9/11 affected where marijuana is cultivated and how much. There was an infamous black market industry in my area (which coca producing countries would point to when asked to crack down on their own black markets resulting in some rather militaristic marijuana eradication campaigns around here in the 80s) but a lot of the US demand was met by farms south of the border where labor was cheap and enforcement lax, and then smuggled into the US. After 9/11, border security was tightened quite a bit so organized crime started sending people to do larger scale farming directly in the US which resulted in larger, more damaging and more dangerous illegal growing operations run by non-locals. Uh, Happy Valentine's Day? ❤

Krista

blown_dry Ohhh I want to know more about this too! I’ve got my reading laid out for the weekend — Wild! 🤯

MissyWeitzel

Twenty five years ago I worked for a hospital pharmacy and we had medications delivered every day via a local delivery service called Velocity Delivery. Our delivery driver was quite a character who loved joking around with everyone. His Velocity Delivery work uniform included a baseball hat that simply said 'VD' and we teased the heck outta him but he always had hilarious comebacks.

Happy VD, friends. 😆

silvarerum

A lot of growers are also forcing tulips for V Day. It's a nice "local" option and easy enough to force pre-cooled tulip bulbs and time them for V Day. I did this the last few years. I am no longer forcing tulips because it's a massive carbon cost for the operation (bulbs must be imported from Holland new every year, the bulb storage and grow spaces need to be rigorously temp and humidity controlled) and I was too terrible of a retailer to make proper $ off the operation. (Though I did fine on V Day.)

These are the flowers I sold for V Day last year and the year before. The red is really perfect for the holiday. It's a nicely forced, healthy, red early double that works super well and gives a "rose" like look in a local winter flower. Customers really appreciate "buying local," though, as mentioned it's *kind of sleight of hand since all tulip bulb are imported.

silvarerum

silvarerum Interesting to note, too, that while a lot of winter tulip growers tout "buy local," some studies suggest that imported roses might have a smaller carbon footprint. Flowers are flown in full airplanes in cargo, the flowers don't require heated spaces to grow, employees often live close by and walke bike to work, etc.

Thought I'd add since you were all talking here about the SA flower industry. (In Europe most of the roses and industry flowers are imported from Kenya where similar logistics apply.)

ETA: Last note I am now using my tulup growing space (which was apparently too humid for some of my tulips varieties and many had stem topple and other growing problems last year) to start my dahlias and mums and I am much happier with this! No more tulips for me. 🙂