John McQuaid, The Secrets Behind Your Flowers. Chances are the bouquet you're about to buy came from Colombia. What's behind the blooms? Smithsonian Magazine,
www.smithsonianmag.com/people-pl ... your-flowers-53128/
Quote:
“the savanna near Colombia’s capital [Bogotá] * * * about 8,700 feet above sea level and 320 miles north of the Equator, and close to both the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. * * * create a pleasant climate with little temperature variation and consistent light, about 12 hours per day year-round * * * A former lakebed, the savanna also has dense, clay-rich soil and networks of wetlands, tributaries and waterfalls left after the lake receded 100,000 years ago. * * * Bogotá was just a three-hour flight from Miami—closer to East Coast customers than California, the center of the U.S. flower industry
"Colombia now commands about 70 percent of the US market * * * To limit coca farming and expand job opportunities in Colombia, the US government in 1991 suspended import duties on Colombian flowers. The results were dramatic, though disastrous for US growers. In 1971, the United States produced 1.2 billion blooms of the major flowers (roses, carnations and chrysanthemums) and imported only 100 million. By 2003, the trade balance had reversed; the United States imported two billion major blooms and grew only 200 million.
"One $14.99 bouquet caught my eye: about 25 yellow and white gerbera daisies and a sprig of baby’s breath arranged around a single purplish rose. A sticker on the wrapping indicated it had come from Colombia, some 2,400 miles away. * * * My search for answers took me to a barrio about 25 miles northwest of Bogotá. * * * Cartagenita is a neighborhood in Facatativá, a city of about 120,000 people and one of Colombia’s largest flower hubs. * * * More than 100,000 people—many displaced by Colombia’s guerrilla wars and rural poverty—labor in greenhouses spread across the savanna.
"Most flowers grown in Colombia are bred in European labs, especially Dutch labs, which ship seedlings and cuttings to growers
"Not so long ago, Americans got their flowers from neighborhood florists, who bought blooms grown on US farms. Florists crafted bouquets and arrangements to order. They still do, of course, but this approach seems increasingly quaint. These days, the bouquets that many Americans buy, typically at supermarkets, are grown, assembled and packaged overseas. * * * Adjacent to the assembly line [abroad] were spacious storerooms kept at about 34 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s no understatement to say the entire flower industry depends on that number. * * * Putting flowers in water slows that process [death], but only cold temperatures can arrest it for weeks at a time. It took the development of 'cold chains'—refrigerated warehouses and trucks every point along the way—to ensure that flowers remain in suspended animation from farm to store. * * It takes about 48 hours for flowers to get from a field in Colombia to a warehouse in the United States, and one or two more days to reach a retailer.
"From the beginning, the majority of the tens of thousands of job-seekers who migrated to the savanna were women, and many of them were single mothers. Most workers made the minimum wage, which is now about $250 per month. Many of them reported sexual harassment by male bosses; working long hours without breaks
"Producing a single rose bloom requires as much as three gallons of water, according to a study of the Kenyan flower industry by scientists at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. The Bogotá area receives 33 inches of rainfall annually, but after flower farms and other users drilled more than 5,000 wells on the savanna, groundwater levels plunged.
"The global marketplace will always demand cheaper flowers, and Colombian farms must compete with growers in other nations, including neighboring Ecuador and rising flower power Kenya
Note:
(a) There is no need to read Web pages 3 or 4, which dealt with perceived social ills.
(b) Gerbera
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbera
(a genus in the daisy family [this is not a scientific name]; It was named in honour of German botanist and medical doctor Traugott Gerber)
(c) baby's breath, see Gypsophila paniculata
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsophila_paniculata
(d) Spanish English dictionary
barrio (noun masculine; From Arabic barrī, referring to the outer, surrounding or less civilized or urbanized parts of a city): "neighborhood"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/barrio
(e) Facatativá
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facatativá
(located about 18 miles (31km) northwest of Bogotá, Colombia and 2,586 meters above sea level)
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发表于 2-19-2015 18:20:42
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