Why Local?

Take a minute to read the excerpt below from the “In the News” section of Ellen Frost’s flower newsletter and it will help you to understand a little bit more about why you may want to buy local flowers and support local flower farms…

“You've probably heard of Cocaine Bear, but do you know about the cocaine hippos? (Stick with me, there is a flower connection.) The hippos making the news recently are not addicted cocaine, and they should not be living in Columbia. They are a growing and threatening population descending from a few pets Pablo Escobar, the late notorious cocaine kingpin, imported to his ranch decades ago. These hippos are not the only strange problematic legacy of the Medellin Cartel. Pablo Escobar's endeavors in the '80s are also responsible for the proliferation of cheap, imported flowers and a dearth of domestically grown flowers that can compete on price in the US today.

 The cut flower business is a hyper-efficient $100 billion a year world-wide industry. Today, 80% of flowers sold in the US are grown in other countries! Almost all of those delicate, dying blooms come from a far off land. They are chemically preserved, packed, and shipped thousands of miles every day. Of all those imported flowers to the US, three-quarters come from Colombia.

 Aside from his posthumous work as hippo-daddy, Pablo Escobar is most infamous for founding and running the Medellin Cartel which supplied the US with 80% of all cocaine that came into the country in the 1980’s. The US government wanted to shut the party down. So, as part of the fight to stop the cartel from exporting nearly 100 tons of cocaine each month into the country, President George H.W. Bush enacted the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) in 1991. President George W. Bush continued the effort with the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA) in 2003.

 These acts remove import taxes and promote many commodities, including cut flowers, from Colombia and its neighbors. The ATPT and ATPDEA are intended to replace the cocaine business with legitimate business. Good idea, right? It has been working for some industries. But for cut flowers, the Andean trade acts made imported Columbian flowers way cheaper than American grown flowers. Columbian flowers have flooded our market which has put great pressure on American growers. Remember that 80% imported flower number I told you about, it was only 46% before the ATPA.

 So, you probably didn't think you would be reading about hippos and cocaine when you opened this email.”

Written by Ellen Frost of Local Color Flowers in Baltimore, MD. Her weekly emails are full of great information about flowers and interesting flower related things. You should sign up, we always learn a lot!