Confidential Flowers - 2007

A friend of mine bought me a signed copy of the new book, Flower Confidential, by Amy Stewart. I’d heard some talk about it from others in the industry who’d already read it, so I was prepared for the worst—that isn’t quite what I encountered.
Much like The Orchid Thief, the book is a lovely account of an outsider’s view of our industry. More importantly, it’s the view of a wealthy urban San Franciscan journalist. Now, the writer may argue with this “wealthy” characterization, but I could have just as easily made the argument that she’s ultra rich, as are all of the people reading this column. That’d be a relative term, not to other Americans or Europeans, but to the people in Third World countries who appear in the book. Ms. Stewart’s encounter with the rose production industry in Ecuador makes me think that this is her first encounter with Third World poverty.
I see this book as: “wealthy journalist meets world and finds it wanting.” The discovery of real entrenched poverty on such a wide scale is always a shock the first time around. It does not seem fair that we have so much and they have so little. Dear Ms. Stewart: The world is not fair. I am sorry this upsets your delicate sensibilities. Your unhappiness with the state of Third World workers is an indication of your high moral and ethical standards based on your upbringing and culture. I wish we could make everyone in the world as rich as we are right away, but we can’t. The best we can do is to help provide them with some sort of ladder that can, over time, improve their quality of life. Doing that within the constraints of an open world market is not so easy.
Ms. Stewart's second shock was to discover that artificial chemicals are used in the production of flowers. Zero tolerance from the USDA is something offshore producers have to live with. They must kill everything. Would we want the USDA to act any differently? No, I don’t think so.
I was pleased to see that a domestic producer was sort of the hero of the book. Lane has worked long and hard to achieve what his company has and he deserves great credit. The idea of biological controls is relatively young as a greenhouse science and the execution of this science requires a high level of training and expertise. This is why these best practices are going to happen in rich countries with well-educated populations first. We also have more capital to make the necessary investments in things like water catch and reuse systems. My company has invested huge amounts of money into these systems but not everyone can afford to. It’s difficult for us to impose our expensive solutions on people who don’t have the money. Ms. Stewart is completely right when she quotes best-practices growers saying these new systems usually result in higher quality at lower cost, but you have to know a lot to make them work.
Anna Ball wrote about the sustainability imperative in the January issue of Grower Talks. I kept thinking about what Anna said while reading Flower Confidential. It’s the direction all of us must go in as an industry, voluntarily or forced. Better to get way ahead of regulation than behind.
Perhaps I’m reacting a little emotionally to the criticisms of the flower industry because I sense the emotional bias in the words of Ms. Stewart. She may not always be right about the facts of the safety of traditional production. This can irritate professionals who know they’re doing things right even if it doesn’t quite meet Ms. Stewart’s elevated standards. On the other hand, her opinions are important because she’s our customer and we must please her. She represents a large and growing portion of the market that cares about where and how things are made.
We are the original green industry. It makes sense that we get even greener. While we’re converting all that CO\sub2\ to cellulose, we should be doing it in a more sustainable way. We can go beyond a zero footprint to a net positive effect on the planet if we’re willing to think and work hard enough. Amy Stewart did us a favor reminding us of this.