**forwarded message**
(excerpted from "Fleurs Du Mal" in Harper's)
Today, Columbia is the second largest producer of flowers
in the world, after Holland, and nearly half of the flowers
sold in the U.S. come from the Bogota savanna. There, most
people earn under $200 a month working on flower farms.
Ecuadoran farms sold 300 million roses to U.S importers in
1999 at an average price of 22 cents a stem and Colombian
carnations fetched a dime. Competition among poor countries
to sell flowers to rich ones has pushed supply up, prices
down. For typical bouquet costing $80 in the U.S., growers
would receive about $4, more than $3 of which would go to
overhead, like pesticides, seed, and Third World labor.
Because a single pest can get an entire shipment of roses
to the U.S. deported, Third World producers grow them in
sterilized soil in greenhouses fumigated as often as once
a day with fungicides, insecticides, and other chemicals
that are restricted in the U.S. as known carcinogens and
toxins. Nearly two-thirds of Columbia's 75,000 flower
workers suffer from illnesses associated with pesticide
exposure: nausea, impaired vision, rashes, asthma,
miscarriages, stillbirths, congenital malformations, etc.
Commercial floraculture consumes more water than many
Third World flower-growing regions can sustain. On the
Bogota savanna, the water table has fallen so low that
household taps run dry most of the week, and what water
remains is increasingly polluted by pesticides.
=================
RESIST THE URGE TO GIVE VALENTINE'S FLOWERS TO YOUR SWEETIE, YOUR
FAMILY, AND FRIENDS.
Instead, make a donation in their honor to one of the groups below, or
another one you choose. Then, tell them about it in a letter or card.
Can you imagine a more ethical way to illustrate love (and justice)?
- Jobs with Justice
http://www.jwj.org/
- Training for Change
http://www.trainingforchange.org/
- Global Trade Watch
http://www.tradewatch.org/
...or choose another organization if you wish.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Niala Maharaj and Donovan Hohn, "Fleurs Du Mal: Thorny truths about the
global flower trade," Harper's, Feb 2001, pp.66-67.
Tracey C. Rembert, "Dangerous beauty: Flower farms may threaten workers
and the environment," Monday, July 12, 1999, E/ The Environmental
Magazine.
http://www.enn.com/enn-features-archive/1999/07/071299/flowers_4270.asp
_The Game of the Rose: The Third World in the Global Flower Trade_
by Niala Maharaj and Gaston Dorren, Institute for Development Research,
Intl Books, 1996.
(in addition to listservs, 14 people were blind copied on this email)
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Dani Moore dani@unc.edu 919.962.1542
Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator
Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education (SCALE)
http://www.readwriteact.org/
"Um outro mundo e possivel." - Another world is possible.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
| Yahoo! Groups Sponsor |