From the Andes with Love (43/366)

Valentine's Day roses seen through the supermarket window

"This is an upscale neighborhood; the shop charges $150 for the flowers and the square green pottery vase it comes in.  If you were to price it out, you might find that the customer paid close to $5 for each 'Limbo' rose in the bouquet.  The florist bought the roses for $1.50 or $2 a stem, and that's a premium price that befits an upscale rose.  When that same flower left the farm on Monday and made its way down a dusty, eucalyptus-lined road toward the Pan-American Highway and on to Quito, it earned thirty cents for the grower who nurtured it along and prepared it for its long journey.  And what about the workers who cut the stem, stripped its leaves, graded it, packed it, and loaded it onto the truck?  Their wages represent less than four cents for every 'Limbo' sold."

"Usually we see ten to twelve flights a day from Colombia.  Around Valentine's Day, it might be forty flights.  You wonder why roses cost so much this year? I'll give you one reason.  With this many planes coming in every day, they've got to fly them back empty.  And fuel's not cheap these days." -Bunny Schreiber, Marketing Specialist, Miami Airport cargo division

Quotes from Amy Stewart, Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2007).