Human Flower Project
Cut-Flower Trade
Santiago, MEXICO
Cairo, EGYPT
Austin, Texas USA
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Flower Vendors: Keeping It Informal
It’s happened in San Antonio and San Francisco, and now in Istanbul; authorities are trying to get flower vendors to buy in and make their work official.
A boy makes flower garlands to sell on the street in Hyderabad, India
Photo: Sandy Ao
Within the heart of every self-proclaimed progressive, a dictator is lurking:
“You must not be poor. You WILL be clean and happy!”
For progressives, nothing’s crazier or more intolerable than people who won’t be “bettered.“ But the record shows that, despite 150 years of social science and persuasion, there are plenty of folks who don’t want to sign up for the program.
In the realm of commerce, this recalcitrance is called “the informal economy.” For obvious reasons, it includes the black market, but most of its participants are selling things that are perfectly legal – like flowers. They’re just operating outside the reach of officialdom and regulation.
Anybody who’s ever been paid in cash (or, alternatively, had to fill out pages of forms and file the pounds of paper that the “formal economy” demands) knows there are advantages to marginality. But there are disadvantages, too. Ask any undocumented worker who’s been cheated out of a day’s pay.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
A Florist with Prairie Aesthetics
Combining the grow-local ethic with a fondness for rangeland plants, Kimberly Hess will let Mother Nature handle inventory for her flower shop.
Kimberly Hess uses curly dock, a prairie wildflower, in arrangements. Her shop, soon to open in Fargo, ND, will feature the region’s wild plants, homegrown on her farm.
Photo: Sarah Kolberg, for the Grand Forks Herald
It’s a long way from the world’s renowned flower-growing regions—Lisse in the Netherlands or Medellin, Colombia—to Halstad, Minnesota. Nobody told Kimberly Hess that, though. She’s planning to open a flower shop in nearby Fargo, North Dakota, using the grasses and wildflowers that grow at her farm along the Red River.
Tu-Uyen Tran of the Grand Forks Herald wrote a fine feature story about Hess and her plans for Prairie Petals.
Halstad, pop. 622, is in far western Minnesota, a farming community settled by Norwegian immigrants. In fields of her own 150-acres and ditches through the surrounding countryside, Hess finds wild hemlock, sedge and lead plants, along with “purple prairie clovers and the violet flowers of the vervains, ignored or unseen by drivers roaring by on the asphalt.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
At the Very Minimum
A 22% hike in the minimum wage for agriculture workers in Kenya is half what the union wanted, and lots more than the industry expected.
Workers prepare roses for export in Kenya. The nation’s horticulture sector—flowers, fruits and vegetables—exports nearly $1 billion (USD) worth of produce per year.
Photo: via Business Daily
Global recession followed by ash-clouded air space have stricken Kenya’s flower industry, and the pain, of course, trickles down – most affecting those who grow, tend, and harvest the flowers.
The Central Organization of Trade Unions announced a 21 day strike in late April (just before Mothers Day) but agreed to call it off when an Industrial Court ruled the action illegal, calling for further negotiations.
Now after weeks of tough talk on both sides, some 100,000 flower workers have won a 22% pay raise. Sounds major!
Except that the union had been asking for a 50% increase in wages. Consider that inflation has raised the cost of living 7% in Kenya just this year. More to the point, consider the pay itself, not the raise.
The 22 per cent minimum wage pay increase “would see them earn between Sh4,773 and Sh5,581, up from the previous Sh4,300,” reports Business Daily. Those are Kenya shillings.
In other words, these ag workers will go from earning about $53, to making $59-$69 – PER MONTH.
Jane Ngige, CEO of the Kenya Flower Council, groaned, “Small farm owners will have a hard time coping with the increment backdated to July last year, they have no choice but to honour it.” Business Daily also reports that the Kenya’s growers are asking for a “stimulus package” from the government.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Transport Globally, Erupt Locally
Iceland’s volcano has sent a blast through the cut flower trade, disrupting not just flights but employment and festivity.
Workers at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, Kenya, prepare flowers for export.
Photo: BBC
On Friday, trucks bringing flowers to export from Kenya’s main international airport were being turned away. The cold storage facilities were already cram-packed. Ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano had drifted into European airspace, detaining both human and floral travelers.
“According to the Kenya Flower Council, 97% of all Kenya’s flower exports are sent to the European Union.”
The head of Kenya’s flower council, Jane Ngige, told the BBC that growers were losing $1.5 to $2 million per day. “We have to continue harvesting the flowers,” said Ngige. Even if blooms do make it out in the next several days, Ngige says, she’s concerned they won’t be salable. People can snooze in airports and survive on Lance crackers, for awhile anyway. Cut flowers aren’t so resilient.
Flights out of Europe have been cancelled, too, meaning that acres of blooms are stalled in the Netherlands. Yvonne Tang, a florist in Toronto who relies on weekly shipments from Holland, has been calling suppliers in South America to fill her many orders for “Administrative Professional’s Day” (a.k.a. Secretaries Day).
The flower trade, long gone global, answers an old philosophical question. If a volcano erupts in Iceland, will a receptionist frown in Toronto and a factory worker go without pay in the Rift Valley? Yes and yes.