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The crash of the global flower trade

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Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#121

Post by Tuna-Fish »

turnipla wrote: post #115
gwbas1c wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not plant vegetables instead of flowers The world has more than enough food growing to feed everyone. It's a logistics problem. In this case, when everyone working to pick the plants and distribute the food makes everyone sick, the system fails.

> The world has more than enough food growing to feed everyone. That's quite a statement you made there, especially in the context of Africa.

> That's quite a statement you made there, especially in the context of Africa.

As the [dead] sibling states, it is absolutely true, and has been true since the maturing of the Green Revolution in the 70's. Famines since then have all been caused by war and politics, not by weather or crop failures.

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#122

Post by anigbrowl »

aaron695 wrote: post #36
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #3

Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and after all that effort... they have a shelf-life of a week. If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.

A carrot you eat and turn to literal shit. Flowers like you say lasts a week for multiple people. Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life. To say they are "they are not essential" is saying life itself is not essential, just eat powder and sit in a room if this is the case. I feel like what you are saying is you d…

And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.

I'm willing to bet that given the choice many of them would rather not engage in such toil, and the reason they're poor is because wages are kept so low that they have little opportunity to save enough to make such choices.

Nobody buys flowers because they are trying to better the lives of agricultural laborers. I always find myself doubting the sincerity of such appeals, which only seem to arise in discussions of externalities. Many years ago I worked at an industrial floristry company for about a year, doing the manual work of handling the flowers as they came in from abroad and putting them in storage or preparing them for sale. I liked the work OK but I didn't get up every day thinking 'thank heavens so many people love the flowers we sell.' The pay wasn't that great and when I found a better job I took it.

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#123

Post by code4tee »

It’s a tough market because there’s really no inventory. At least some produce can be kept in storage for a little while. When the flowers are ready they either need to be sold or they go bad.

Then of course all the “regulars” have stopped buying. In big cities like NYC the big office buildings usually all have fresh flowers deferred weekly for the lobby but that’s all stopped. Weddings, galas and other events are all canceled.

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#124

Post by floatrock »

robocat wrote: post #47
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #3

Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and after all that effort... they have a shelf-life of a week. If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.

> they are not essential If we only live for the essentials, what do we live for?

If we continue to live beyond our means, what's the point? It's like rats fighting for scraps onboard a sinking ship... sure, I'll fight for the bigger tastier crumb, but the ship's still going down. If it's not us that will drown, it's the next generation.

Alternative framing: rather than thinking of it as "subsisting on the minimum essentials", how do you build a legacy that will continue to outlive you in perpetuity?

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#125

Post by floatrock »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #3

Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and after all that effort... they have a shelf-life of a week. If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.

> [Image of Kenyan woman picking roses in a Kenyan greenhouse]

> The work is grueling, with long shifts in steamy greenhouses, and laborers earn as little as $70 a month, but it’s a steady paycheck in a country where those can be hard to come by.

By comparison, that monthly wage of $70 is less than a day of minimum wage in the US. That's why it's more efficient to make a global energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight network.

(That and the price of carbon pollution isn't priced into the supply chain)

That's the scale of globalization.

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#126

Post by somewhereoutth »

stoolpigeon wrote: post #77
empath75 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t help the people whose livelihoods are wiped out.

It may. I have an uncle who would never admit it but when his dairy farm finally went bankrupt he started getting a regular paycheck, vacation for the first time in his life and my cousins couldn't get off the farm fast enough. Sometimes being forced to something new can help people do things they wouldn't try otherwise.

This sounds a bit wrong under the circumstances, and is a somewhat flawed statement anyway, but I have often thought that "Failure closes just one door, Success closes all the others!"

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#127

Post by stronglikedan »

kzrdude wrote: post #69

It's easier to make stories about businesses than people, but I really think we need more people stories now. Rather than the flower trade having a downturn, what about all the people that planned weddings? A delayed wedding is apparently hardly a disaster, but what does it mean if nobody can get married for a half a year, what happens?

> people stories

Well, my neighbor owns a flower shop, and she doesn't know if she'll make it. She was giving away the flowers to the neighbors for a while, so they wouldn't just go to waste, but I suppose she's run out now. She's dipped into her savings, but she's not sure how long that will last. Her bank screwed her over on the first round of PPE, so let's see what the second brings. She wonders why she can't open to serve customers curbside, like so many other businesses with questionable essential-ness can. Even then, who knows who would buy flowers, but a few customers are better than zero customers, I suppose. A people story.

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#128

Post by jiveturkey »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #35

As an aside, I've worked at Flora Holland, the company (a cooperative owned by a hundred and then some growers) that orchestrates a lot of the logistics; the clip in the article with the carts is a small part of their transit halls. They start in the early morning with the flowers and plants coming out of cold storage and auction them off early on; before midday, the halls are quiet and empty again, hundreds if not t…

> It's a Dutch auction

literally

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#129

Post by kzrdude »

stronglikedan wrote: post #127
kzrdude wrote: post #69

It's easier to make stories about businesses than people, but I really think we need more people stories now. Rather than the flower trade having a downturn, what about all the people that planned weddings? A delayed wedding is apparently hardly a disaster, but what does it mean if nobody can get married for a half a year, what happens?

> people stories Well, my neighbor owns a flower shop, and she doesn't know if she'll make it. She was giving away the flowers to the neighbors for a while, so they wouldn't just go to waste, but I suppose she's run out now. She's dipped into her savings, but she's not sure how long that will last. Her bank screwed her over on the first round of PPE, so let's see what the second brings. She wonders why she can't open…

Thanks

Re: The crash of the global flower trade

#130

Post by zaroth »

Fnoord wrote: post #74
kzrdude wrote: post #69

It's easier to make stories about businesses than people, but I really think we need more people stories now. Rather than the flower trade having a downturn, what about all the people that planned weddings? A delayed wedding is apparently hardly a disaster, but what does it mean if nobody can get married for a half a year, what happens?

Does it matter that people can(not) get married? It is just a contract and a festivity. If you plan for something big, and it gets cancelled, that does suck, but all kind of things get/got cancelled. There are much worse problems. People became and become homeless, unemployed, ill.

What a bizarrely callous calculus.

Or course it matters. And the sum total of all that suffering, disruption, destruction is quite a lot to get your head around.

Weddings canceled in the US leading to massive supply line disruptions, and ultimately, starving families in Africa.

I think it all matters a bit. That you can think of a worse problem is hardly consoling.

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