Flowers - Pick Your Poison - by Amky Stewart
Of the roughly four billion stems we buy each year, 78 percent are imported, mostly from Latin America. One impetus for moving cut flower production to countries like Colombia and allowing the flowers to be shipped to the United States tariff-free was a misguided hope that such projects would provide an alternative to coca production. While the drug war rages on, serious labor and environmental problems associated with floriculture have now moved south of the border. Imported flowers can't show any signs of bugs and fungus when they arrive at Miami International Airport for inspection. In their eagerness to make sure that their flowers pass muster, many growers in Latin America douse their crops in agricultural chemicals that are banned or severely restricted in Europe and the USA. On a flower farm in Ecuador, I saw workers dunk bunches of roses, blossom-first, into a barrel of fungicide just before shipment. The stench was so overpowering that I had to resist the urge to run outside for air. Chemicals dripped off the flowers, they sloshed on the floor and it seemed impossible that the workers—almost all women—could get through the day without getting covered in them, too.
In addition to the health hazards that such chemicals pose, the runoff of pesticides and fertilizers into streams and aquifers threatens already fragile water resources. This has prompted agencies like Canada's International Development Research Center to invest in long-term projects to study the extent to which these chemicals persist in the environment. All this for a flower?
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