Last night I dreamed
The strangest dream

Assuredly, February is the wasteland and the cruelest month, not April.  Not just for them whose love lies over the ocean,  but for the many laborers who grow these floral tokens of love that people exchange on Valentine's  Day -- designated as Cupid's, celebrating couplehood, union and romantic love.

I dreamed, of you
Wrapping hyacinth chain
Around my heart  

I write of the cut-flower trade.  How much will you pay for those flowers you will buy to give to your love?  Will you think of the growers when your love smiles into your eyes?  Will you ask your florist for fair trade or certified/labeled flowers?  Will you know enough to do so? Will you ask that your florist provide a certificate of farming practices and look for the Fairtrade or VeriFlora labeling?  If you don't ask, the change won't be incorporated.

Calling me
Their flower child,
Your flower girl

The cut-flower trade is economically indispensable to the national economies of Kenya, Colombia, Netherlands and Israel, Ecuador, Uganda. All of them feed the increasing demands of markets in Japan, USA and Europe.   More countries are joining the cut-flower growing association of nations. Cut-flower production has environmental, social and economic consequences on the nations involved in the trade.  Growers move into areas where host nations are giving tax incentives for them to establish flower growing farms.  Most of the labor is female and many abuses have been documented.  The corporations who grow cut-flowers pollute the water and the land with the use of pesticides inside greenhouses which results in deteriorating health of people and their ecology.

Hyacinth girl

In Kenya, Lake Naivasha is literally being polluted and drained dry.    More insidiously, the growers are selling their flowers at the flower auctions in the Amsterdam so as to bypass the labeling.  This way, people buying the flowers think they are buy flowers from the Netherlands instead of Lake Naivasha.

Hued
Petal skinned
Smooth and scented

So this is how it works:  a country wanting to attract a cut-flower growing company will offer strong tax incentives. The neighboring nation, also wanting said growers in their home turf will offer another deal which undercuts the tax incentive offered by the first country.  A race to the bottom.  Once they get to the bottom, they skirmish with each other to see who can offer even more.  The growers take the one who offered the most. In the mean time, the govt of the selected nation is unable, in the long run, to provide basic human and infrastructural support for its own people.

Unfurling, from a bud
By your breath
in a word

Further considerations for growers to move the industry to the southern nations include a warmer climate which provides a longer growing season and more flower production.  Another reason to move to these areas  -- cheap land - readily available in that the acreage was once used for growing food has been converted into growing flowers exclusively.  The hard work is done mostly by a female labor pool.  Furthermore, governmental tax incentives to entice/invite the cut-flower industry into a country  has facilitated not only a race to the bottom but also produced a strong skirmish at the bottom with each country vying to outdo the other in terms of nation-bleeding tax incentives to woo the flower.  Nations give more and more in tax incentives and do so at a loss to their national economies and the growers don't invest in the localities where they have based their flower growing business and instead sell abroad and never share profits by improving the lives of the people who toiled the labor.

Hyacinth

Added to that, swaths of acreage has been taken away from agriculture and food cultivation and being switched to growing blooms for the European/Japanese/US market. Also, more people are moving to the flower growing regions in search of employment.  So, areas - like, around Bogota and Lake Naivasha, which once had locally owned farms for growing food, villages and communities are being disrupted, uprooted and overrun beyond capacity and food is no longer being grown there.

My skin tattooed,
With your finger whorls.
Mouth shaped.
Imprinting
My flower self


On top of that.  Agricultural chemicals and pesticides are sprayed by local workers who have not been trained in proper usage of such chemicals and don't have the appropriate protective gear.  They develop health issues as do their children.    Most flower workers are women and they are discouraged from joining unions, are discriminated against if they get pregnant, have to take a pregnancy test before they are hired, and employers will not pay for maternity leave.  Pesticides are sprayed inside the greenhouses.  The work is very hard.

I feel Hyacinth.
Am.

Growing flowers in East Africa and Latin America have made flowers available and inexpensive for the European/American/Japanese  consumer.  There are more flower outlets now  ---  flowers are available in every grocery store, big departments stores and at the florists.  Flower growers and sellers  in the US have been hurt.  As evidenced by occurrences like the planned downsizing of the San Francisco Flower Market.

Next year in Maui,
I will be your Plumeria girl. 

However, change is upon  the horizon as more and more green cut-flower growers join the trade, changing practices.  Local, independent growers who have roots in the area and are adopting eco/labor friendly ways of growing  cut-flowers. Be sure to watch the viddie!

Or a Rose
Jasmin d'Espagne
Jonquill or Iris
Fleur d'oranger
Alysse or Immortelle

Change, being the operative word has also made inroads into the lexicon of flower growers in Kenya.  They are starting to phase out certain practices and the use of such vile chemicals as methyl-bromide which is a fumigant and has the added bite of ozone depletion.

Honeysuckle
Pomegranate Flower
Belle de Jour
Forsythia

Hey, you could buy your Valentine a Fairtrade bouquet and take them out for beer!!  What a novel idea, combining two food groups! 

Flower language for
Their flower child.
A flower girl,
Yours.




[Valentine's Day is for bad poetry. Like, seriously bad poetry.  Come on!   ;)  Give yours too!!]