The flower growers of Colombia like to say their business is half agriculture, half logistics. It’s hardly a stretch, especially as they prepare for their biggest day of the year. For Colombia’s flower giants, Valentine’s Day alone accounts for 80 per cent of annual profit. “It’s huge,” says Augusto Solano Mejia, executive president of Asocolflores, the Association of Colombian Flower Exporters.
Colombia, the world’s second-largest flower exporter behind the Netherlands, ships about 650 million stems overseas for Valentine’s Day. Two-thirds are roses, the vast majority destined for the United States and Canada. In the weeks before Valentine’s, Colombia’s flower workers prepare the roses for shipment: snipping, sorting, dethorning and packing. Thorns are such an unwelcome feature that buyers place a genetic premium on varieties with fewer spikes.
Hue matters, too – in particular red, which makes up more than half of the Valentine’s roses exported by Colombia’s biggest companies. The current genetic champion of the Colombian-grown red rose is the German-bred Freedom variety, described as possessing a “true red” and “near perfect color.”
Once the flowers are packed, they are loaded onto trucks, which make 13,000 deliveries to airports in Bogota and Rionegro (traffic jams in Colombia can threaten to spoil Valentine’s in British Columbia). Narcotics police X-ray each box before workers put them onto more than 650 cargo flights, most destined for Miami. There, cargoes are loaded onto trucks and dispatched across the continent.
Read the complete article at www.theglobeandmail.com.