Human Flower Project
Cut-Flower Trade
Denver, Colorado USA
Hollywood, California USA
Ho Chi Minh City, VIETNAM
Thursday, February 02, 2012
HFQ #11: A Freight Forwarder?
Transporting plants internationally takes special expertise. Can anyone help this farmer in Austria find a “travel agent” for sweet potato slips?
Do you know of a reliable freight forwarder with experience handling plants?
A reader in Austria writes:
“We are a family farm in Austria, trying to import young specialty plants from the U.S. for a farm-trial this year (ipomoea batatas ‘slips’; 2 or 3 palletts (450kg each), in May 2012, to be specific).
“The nursery in the US producing them for us has no experience in overseas shipping and could not find any freight forwarder willing to take on the shipment… they all claim they categorically “don’t do plants,” the nursery tells us. Neither have I found any freight forwarder this side of the Atlantic interested/willing to do this, much to my chagrin.
“Therefore, may I ask if you could maybe recommend a freight forwarder, specializing in plant-transport? Or, would you happen to know a possible source/weblink for such freight
companies?
“Thank you so very much, any help is very appreciated.”
Monday, September 05, 2011
Making $39 a Month?
There oughta be law against paying cut-flower workers (or anybody) just $39 a month. Naivasha’s MP has proposed to up their minimum wage. Leaders of the Kenyan industry are pushing back, hard.
A worker in Kenya’s $21 million cut flower industry
Photo: Business Daily
Do the cut-flower workers of Kenya deserve to make $100 A MONTH?
John Mututho, Member of Parliament from Naivasha, where the nation’s biggest flower farms are clustered, thinks so. And that would be a big pay raise! Mututho has introduced an amendment to the Labour Institutions Act that would increase flower workers’ monthly wages from the current 3,765 Kenya Shillings ($39.71) to Sh 10,050 (the equivalent of $106.01).
The Kenya Flower Council is lobbying Parliament, meanwhile, to prevent legislative authority over minimum wages, in other words, to keep wages down.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Silletero to Demonstrate on the Mall
As the Smithsonian Folklife Festival features Colombia, a silletero will bring his floral craft to Washington.
Silleta by Alexander de Jesús Nieto of Santa Elena, Colombia for the 2010 Feria de las Flores, Medellin
Photo: Cristina Diaz-Carrera, Smithsonian Institution
This year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held annually on the national Mall in Washington, D.C., will feature, among many others, Alexander de Jesús Nieto of Santa Elena, Colombia.
Nieto is a silletero, a flower carrier and in folklore-ese, a “tradition bearer” too.
The silleteros carry huge loads of fresh blooms from flower farms, many in the mountains, into the city market centers for sale. We suppose that most flower growers get their blooms to market in trucks these days, but the silletero tradition lives on, perhaps the clearest human flower project on Earth to show the back-bruising work behind cut-flowers.
Culture & Society • Cut-Flower Trade • Secular Customs • Permalink
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Run for the Peonies
The Derby winner gets its Wreath of Roses, but lucky Louisvillians, racing fans or not, get a month of peonies and a chance to buy from one of the nation’s top breeders. Happy belated birthday, Allen.
Tree peony ‘Hephestos’ (God of Fire) recipient of 2009 Gold Medal American Peony Society
Photo: Songsparrow Nursery
By Allen Bush
What a wonderful month of May. Rapture was scheduled for May 21st —a week before my 60th birthday – so there was no time to waste. Proof of the unfathomable came early. I punched the cosmic button on the first Saturday and hit the board on my Kentucky Derby bet. (I won $3,952.00 on a $2.00 trifecta box with four horses. The $48.00 bet required three of the horses - in any order—to cross the finish line 1, 2 and 3rd.) I’m not a big bettor, and rarely make it to the track more than twice a year, but my dumb luck should cover all bets for the next twenty years. If you can believe it, there was even more to May. The garden was obliging, too.
I can’t recall a spring so lush. There wasn’t a hint of frost past the 2nd week in March (we can expect frost until early May). Record April rainfall was one for the books – over 14” (36 cm)—but the garden didn’t wash away. May brought a series of rocking thunderstorms but no damaging hail or tornadoes. There was nothing not to like about this May.
Culture & Society • Cut-Flower Trade • Gardening & Landscape • Secular Customs • Permalink