Valentines Day: say no to flowers?

Valentines Day is next Wednesday - the greeting card, chocolate and flower industries are working full out. If you're thinking of saying it with flowers, be careful what it is that you say. I love cut flowers but sadly flowers are the most pesticide-intensive crop and flower workers pay a heavy price.

Photo: Supermarket flowers purshased 2 weeks ago for 10p as they were so wilted - amazingly they perked up and have looked totally beautiful even as they fade

A study published by the Netherlands' Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment reported that Dutch floral workers are exposed to pesticide concentrations of up to 60 times the amount considered safe. The Netherlands also has heavily contaminated water and air in its flower-growing regions.

Some 10 years ago, there was a crisis in the U.S. involving the use of a fungicide marketed by DuPont as Benlate. It was a known carcinogen, widely used in greenhouses and people working with plants sprayed with this substance were getting sick. Total litigation costs associated with Benlate have so far cost DuPont an estimated US$1 billion dollars, causing them to withdraw it from the market in 2001.

There are hundreds of pesticides in use, legal and illegal, around the world. Flowers are also dipped in a brew of chemicals to ensure that they look authentically fresh and natural when they are delivered. As you will know if you've been reading this blog regularly, Greens have been campaigning long and hard in Europe to get legislation passed on this - see most recent press release. The hazards posed by these chemicals most directly affect the people working with them at a production level, but they also adversely effect the environment and those living in flower-growing areas. The Toxic Trail website claims there are some 25 million cases of pesticide poisoning a year, mostly in developing countries.

Floriculture is big business, bringing in five times as much cash per acre than fruit - indeed a couple of years ago I read sales of flowers and household plants had more than trebled in the past decade, now standing at £1.5bn annually - and observers of the market think it can grow much more. Like many other industries the supermarkets are muscling in - 25 years ago half of all purchases were made in florists' shops while the big stores had three to four per cent of the market. All that has changed. The major multiples now take over 65 per cent by value, with Tesco selling about a third of all blooms. Some supermarkets now have their own flower farms and can order on demand.

On St Valentine's Day so many of us around the world want red roses - a fresh product which is not in season in most countries. In Britain, the average daily spend on flowers of about £3m leaps to £40m for the day. Many of us have no idea about how these flowers are grown - indeed there is part of me that wished I didn't know - here is yet another example of our failing economic system. We need much more work to protect workers - and in any case what are we doing flying in flowers from countries like Columbia? Infact now only 15 per cent of flowers sold here are home-grown.

Locally grown organic flowers is one way forward - but not sure we'll find them in the snow outside - what else could we do? Maybe it is about rethinking how we celebrate these days which have exploded into celebrations of commercialism with much of their true meaning and significance being lost - see also my blog re Halloween on 1st November 2006. What else?

As noted flower workers work in often appalling conditions producing cut flowers for world markets. I've just seen that War on Want are asking that this Valentine's Day, peop give a gift with a difference and support the flower workers. Just £5 is enough to help their partner provide flower workers with the knowledge to avoid these risks and to fight for better working conditions. Click to find out how you can help:
http://www.waronwant.org/valentines