7 ms·

Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and a

Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and after all that effort... they have a shelf-life of a week. If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.

schemathings 6y ago
The US saw it as a good alternative to the cocaine trade .. "To offer incentives for alternative crops, the US under the administration of President George HW Bush passed the Andean Trade Preference Act in 1991, which dropped duties on agricultural products like flowers for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia." So there's that.
floatrock 6y ago
> [Image of Kenyan woman picking roses in a Kenyan greenhouse] > The work is grueling, with long shifts in steamy greenhouses, and laborers earn as little as $70 a month, but it’s a steady paycheck in a country where those can be hard to come by. By comparison, that monthly wage of $70 is less than a day of minimum wage in the US. That's why it's more efficient to make a global energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight network. (That and the price of carbon pollution isn't priced into the supply chain) That's the scale of globalization.
notechback 6y ago
Completely agree. At the same time this wouldn't be the focus of my ire, look at the risk impact of July and beef production - a nightmare and arguably also not essential as we have cheaper, more resource efficient and more nutritious options.
tonyedgecombe 6y ago
The argument I regularly hear is that there would be more energy spent heating local greenhouses than flying the flowers.
- netsharc 6y ago
  It seems employing Western Europeans to plant and pick flowers in Western Europe would mean expensive flowers, and they've apparently calculated it's cheaper to let Kenyans plant, pick, ship the flowers to big Boeings, for pilots to burn fuel flying the Boeings to the Netherlands, and for the flowers to be distributed around W. Europe (and apparently USA) that way. It' the same with people screaming why their country doesn't have their own PPE manufacturers; because in non-crisis times, the hospitals would buy from the lowest bidder, and those would be manufacturers with cheap developing country labor..
  - eythian 6y ago
    Well, I assume the article isn't covering the whole story (because otherwise it'd be a long story detracting from the point, so fair enough.) The Netherlands has a lot of greenhouses. I have no idea what the ratio of flowers to vegetables in them is though.
- vwcx 6y ago
  Source?
- furyg3 6y ago
  It’s possible to run a greenhouse with green energy. It’s not possible to do that with jet airplanes.
  - pampa 6y ago
    Or maybe we could reexamine the need for cut flowers out of season?
  - elwell 6y ago
    > not possible to do that with jet airplanes How's about a jet airplane that runs on cut flower waste? taps head
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  I am not an expert but I doubt it. Double poly tunnels are can keep in a decent amount of heat during the day, and at night most plants can take a decent dose of cold provided it's not frost. However I'm not an expert. But is spending irreplaceable fossil fuel energy on what are basically short-lived ornaments rational? I'd say no.
bostik 6y ago
I don't even understand the whole cut flower thing. It's morbid. You cultivate something that is living and beautiful. Then you kill it, and bring the corpse inside, to essentially observe the once-living thing's decay. (And don't get me started on giving cut flowers as gifts. If your host is an animal lover, you don't pick up roadkill on your way over, either.)
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Flowers are nature's billboards to promote pollination. I let a lot of trees and plants run wild around my home, partly because I enjoy looking at bees. Plants flower and then let the flowers die as soon as they've served their purpose; and the competition between plants for space and sunlight is also aggressive. If you let nature take its course, you have to get used to seeing lots of death as different plants kill each other off and run into the limits of their environment. Also, a lot of the real action is happening underground, where most of the nutrients are - sunlight and CO2 are only part of the equation, and for some plants being trimmed back is no more of a big deal than getting a haircut. I get your point, but it's also a reflection of your own psychological state. People mostly like flowers to bring some nature into their home; they could also cultivate houseplants, but that's a lot more work and if you try cultivating multiple plants together they are likely to either kill each other or attract bugs. The transience of flowers isn't inherently morbid, for the same reason you can be vegetarian but still wear woolen clothes.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  Merely using words with shock value isn't going to help your case. Yes when you sneeze often in spring it's because of plant bukkake in your nose and when you eat saffron you are munching on plant dicks. What's your point?
  - lifeisstillgood 6y ago
    Great, that saffron scented curry I was looking forward to after the lockdown just got scratched off my list. :-)
  - Razengan 6y ago
op03 6y ago
I don't agree about not essential. If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Music is not essential, and why can't everyone dress like Zuck etc. But I do agree about local. I mean who doesn't want to walk by something like this everyday - https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565685_552782985618482_6633792303790111783_n.mp4?_nc_ht=scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=l1ox7HpAMzkAX-ZlWiX&oe=5EA267E5&oh=bdee297aca83f623ee08c3f66fcc7598 https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565...
- lm28469 6y ago
  > someone will show up and say Music is not essential Depends on your definition of essential, I'd argue 100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers. Food is essential, water is essential, medicine is essential, shelter is essential. Some tulips imported for 2000km away aren't. I mean, do we really have to debate this ? If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Ketchup is essential.
  - mns 6y ago
    Up until someone decides that food is also not essential for the majority of the population and we will just need to drink some sort of universal soy and lentil based smoothie. :)
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers No they wouldn't, they'd get depressed and eventually become either withdrawn or violent. I'm not arguing for a wasteful and environmentally destructive flower trade, but against your notion that mere maintenance of the biological organism is sufficient. Universals like music and flowers serve an important role in social cohesion.
  - gherkinnn 6y ago
    If you’re only concerned about the lowest layer of Maslov’s pyramid, then you might be right. Few things are “essential”. But that’s hardly the point.
kumarvvr 6y ago
Yup. Humans collectively are responsible for a lot of unnecessary greenhouse gases just because they want to have a pretty wedding or a party. I can understand the argument about money, economy, livelihood, etc., but IMHO some things ought to be regulated to avoid situations where a bunch of roses carry a non trivial amount of carbon footprint. Wouldn't it be possible to use locally grown flowers?
easytiger 6y ago
> they are not essential Welcome to civilisation. We do things than aren't survival focused.
- Scapeghost 6y ago
  It would be nice if you remembered civility before making all your passive-aggressive jabs in the comments here, like calling someone "incel" for, what, saying that destroying flowers might be wrong? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22943627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22943627) What makes you so angry about arguing against destruction and waste?
  - easytiger 6y ago
    Are you quite serious?
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Your comment here is far more uncivil and aggressive than the one you're replying to.
    - Scapeghost 6y ago
      easytiger has multiple comments here attacking the same parent(s): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=easytiger https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=easytiger You may need to enable your "showdead" option to see some of them. I'm not sure how I've said anything more uncivil and aggressive than calling people "incels", lingo that is more suited for Reddit and 4chan than HN. I'm just baffled at how some people get so angry at someone for saying maybe we shouldn't be killing something.
      - easytiger 6y ago
        That's not what they said and I was not aware I was replying to the same person, if indeed I was. People going around and reductively deciding to morally posit that people who like flowers are morally repugnant should be assuredly told their opinion doesn't matter. They called displaying cut flowers a > bizarre and grotesque custom And then went on to compare it with human slavery. If you don't think that's ridiculous on a whole number of levels (some of which levels speak to the psychology of the person), you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
aaron695 6y ago
A carrot you eat and turn to literal shit. Flowers like you say lasts a week for multiple people. Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life. To say they are "they are not essential" is saying life itself is not essential, just eat powder and sit in a room if this is the case. I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should. And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless. I'm willing to bet that given the choice many of them would rather not engage in such toil, and the reason they're poor is because wages are kept so low that they have little opportunity to save enough to make such choices. Nobody buys flowers because they are trying to better the lives of agricultural laborers. I always find myself doubting the sincerity of such appeals, which only seem to arise in discussions of externalities. Many years ago I worked at an industrial floristry company for about a year, doing the manual work of handling the flowers as they came in from abroad and putting them in storage or preparing them for sale. I liked the work OK but I didn't get up every day thinking 'thank heavens so many people love the flowers we sell.' The pay wasn't that great and when I found a better job I took it.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > A carrot you eat and turn to literal shit. It sustains their life and thus serves an important purpose. > Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life. Kitschy stuff is another ecological disaster, separately from cut flowers. People who appreciate flowers generally buy potted ones and care for them; cut plants are meant as gifts or decorations, and they get thrown away immediately (think of all the decorative flowers on social events) or after they wither (ain't nobody has time to care for the gift roses in the vase, or even notice them). > I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should. I think GP is saying something else. They're taking a systems-level view. Flowers are cool, but we've created a system in which huge amount of energy is used to manufacture and ship around what amounts to reified mating signals, that could be manufactured and shipped locally instead. Now it would be fine in the era of free energy and matter replicators, but we're still in the era of scarcity and looming climate change. So it's fair to ask questions about unnecessary waste in the system.
robocat 6y ago
> they are not essential If we only live for the essentials, what do we live for?
- floatrock 6y ago
  If we continue to live beyond our means, what's the point? It's like rats fighting for scraps onboard a sinking ship... sure, I'll fight for the bigger tastier crumb, but the ship's still going down. If it's not us that will drown, it's the next generation. Alternative framing: rather than thinking of it as "subsisting on the minimum essentials", how do you build a legacy that will continue to outlive you in perpetuity?
- kumarvvr 6y ago
  That would be true if our carbon footprint is minimal, but that is not the case. Until society self adjusts, to minimize the total carbon emissions per capita to a sustainable level, we might have to do with only essentials.
  - sojournerc 6y ago
    Who determines what the essentials are?
    - adrianN 6y ago
      You price in the pollution and let the market decide.
verytrivial 6y ago
I would phrase it as "mispriced" as has much of the consumption that has occured for the last couple of hundred years. Seems the atmosphere is starting to call in the line of credit.
koheripbal 6y ago
While I don't disagree, this applies to a massive portion of all consumer goods and speaks to commercialism, in general. It is why the Fed specifically segregates "durable goods" in inflation, GDP, and price indexes.
ihaveajob 6y ago
They also propagate pests. The olive industry in Italy is being decimated and the flower trade is suspected to be at the root.
- anoraca 6y ago
  reference: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/deadly-olive-tree-disease-spreads-france https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/deadly-olive-t...
  - ihaveajob 6y ago
    Thank you. This is quite worrisome to me personally, as my family lives on the south of Spain and a good deal of our livelihood is from olive farming. It feels like being tied to the railroad and watching a train barrel down toward you from the distance.

schemathings 6y ago

The US saw it as a good alternative to the cocaine trade .. "To offer incentives for alternative crops, the US under the administration of President George HW Bush passed the Andean Trade Preference Act in 1991, which dropped duties on agricultural products like flowers for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia." So there's that.

floatrock 6y ago

> [Image of Kenyan woman picking roses in a Kenyan greenhouse] > The work is grueling, with long shifts in steamy greenhouses, and laborers earn as little as $70 a month, but it’s a steady paycheck in a country where those can be hard to come by. By comparison, that monthly wage of $70 is less than a day of minimum wage in the US. That's why it's more efficient to make a global energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight network. (That and the price of carbon pollution isn't priced into the supply chain) That's the scale of globalization.

notechback 6y ago

Completely agree. At the same time this wouldn't be the focus of my ire, look at the risk impact of July and beef production - a nightmare and arguably also not essential as we have cheaper, more resource efficient and more nutritious options.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

The argument I regularly hear is that there would be more energy spent heating local greenhouses than flying the flowers.

netsharc 6y ago
It seems employing Western Europeans to plant and pick flowers in Western Europe would mean expensive flowers, and they've apparently calculated it's cheaper to let Kenyans plant, pick, ship the flowers to big Boeings, for pilots to burn fuel flying the Boeings to the Netherlands, and for the flowers to be distributed around W. Europe (and apparently USA) that way. It' the same with people screaming why their country doesn't have their own PPE manufacturers; because in non-crisis times, the hospitals would buy from the lowest bidder, and those would be manufacturers with cheap developing country labor..
- eythian 6y ago
  Well, I assume the article isn't covering the whole story (because otherwise it'd be a long story detracting from the point, so fair enough.) The Netherlands has a lot of greenhouses. I have no idea what the ratio of flowers to vegetables in them is though.
vwcx 6y ago
Source?
furyg3 6y ago
It’s possible to run a greenhouse with green energy. It’s not possible to do that with jet airplanes.
- pampa 6y ago
  Or maybe we could reexamine the need for cut flowers out of season?
- elwell 6y ago
  > not possible to do that with jet airplanes How's about a jet airplane that runs on cut flower waste? taps head
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
I am not an expert but I doubt it. Double poly tunnels are can keep in a decent amount of heat during the day, and at night most plants can take a decent dose of cold provided it's not frost. However I'm not an expert. But is spending irreplaceable fossil fuel energy on what are basically short-lived ornaments rational? I'd say no.

bostik 6y ago

I don't even understand the whole cut flower thing. It's morbid. You cultivate something that is living and beautiful. Then you kill it, and bring the corpse inside, to essentially observe the once-living thing's decay. (And don't get me started on giving cut flowers as gifts. If your host is an animal lover, you don't pick up roadkill on your way over, either.)

anigbrowl 6y ago
Flowers are nature's billboards to promote pollination. I let a lot of trees and plants run wild around my home, partly because I enjoy looking at bees. Plants flower and then let the flowers die as soon as they've served their purpose; and the competition between plants for space and sunlight is also aggressive. If you let nature take its course, you have to get used to seeing lots of death as different plants kill each other off and run into the limits of their environment. Also, a lot of the real action is happening underground, where most of the nutrients are - sunlight and CO2 are only part of the equation, and for some plants being trimmed back is no more of a big deal than getting a haircut. I get your point, but it's also a reflection of your own psychological state. People mostly like flowers to bring some nature into their home; they could also cultivate houseplants, but that's a lot more work and if you try cultivating multiple plants together they are likely to either kill each other or attract bugs. The transience of flowers isn't inherently morbid, for the same reason you can be vegetarian but still wear woolen clothes.
kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
Merely using words with shock value isn't going to help your case. Yes when you sneeze often in spring it's because of plant bukkake in your nose and when you eat saffron you are munching on plant dicks. What's your point?
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  Great, that saffron scented curry I was looking forward to after the lockdown just got scratched off my list. :-)
- Razengan 6y ago

op03 6y ago

I don't agree about not essential. If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Music is not essential, and why can't everyone dress like Zuck etc. But I do agree about local. I mean who doesn't want to walk by something like this everyday - https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565685_552782985618482_6633792303790111783_n.mp4?_nc_ht=scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=l1ox7HpAMzkAX-ZlWiX&oe=5EA267E5&oh=bdee297aca83f623ee08c3f66fcc7598 https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565...

lm28469 6y ago
> someone will show up and say Music is not essential Depends on your definition of essential, I'd argue 100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers. Food is essential, water is essential, medicine is essential, shelter is essential. Some tulips imported for 2000km away aren't. I mean, do we really have to debate this ? If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Ketchup is essential.
- mns 6y ago
  Up until someone decides that food is also not essential for the majority of the population and we will just need to drink some sort of universal soy and lentil based smoothie. :)
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers No they wouldn't, they'd get depressed and eventually become either withdrawn or violent. I'm not arguing for a wasteful and environmentally destructive flower trade, but against your notion that mere maintenance of the biological organism is sufficient. Universals like music and flowers serve an important role in social cohesion.
- gherkinnn 6y ago
  If you’re only concerned about the lowest layer of Maslov’s pyramid, then you might be right. Few things are “essential”. But that’s hardly the point.

kumarvvr 6y ago

Yup. Humans collectively are responsible for a lot of unnecessary greenhouse gases just because they want to have a pretty wedding or a party. I can understand the argument about money, economy, livelihood, etc., but IMHO some things ought to be regulated to avoid situations where a bunch of roses carry a non trivial amount of carbon footprint. Wouldn't it be possible to use locally grown flowers?

easytiger 6y ago

> they are not essential Welcome to civilisation. We do things than aren't survival focused.

Scapeghost 6y ago
It would be nice if you remembered civility before making all your passive-aggressive jabs in the comments here, like calling someone "incel" for, what, saying that destroying flowers might be wrong? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22943627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22943627) What makes you so angry about arguing against destruction and waste?
- easytiger 6y ago
  Are you quite serious?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Your comment here is far more uncivil and aggressive than the one you're replying to.
  - Scapeghost 6y ago
    easytiger has multiple comments here attacking the same parent(s): https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=easytiger https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=easytiger You may need to enable your "showdead" option to see some of them. I'm not sure how I've said anything more uncivil and aggressive than calling people "incels", lingo that is more suited for Reddit and 4chan than HN. I'm just baffled at how some people get so angry at someone for saying maybe we shouldn't be killing something.
    - easytiger 6y ago
      That's not what they said and I was not aware I was replying to the same person, if indeed I was. People going around and reductively deciding to morally posit that people who like flowers are morally repugnant should be assuredly told their opinion doesn't matter. They called displaying cut flowers a > bizarre and grotesque custom And then went on to compare it with human slavery. If you don't think that's ridiculous on a whole number of levels (some of which levels speak to the psychology of the person), you need to take a long hard look at yourself.

aaron695 6y ago

A carrot you eat and turn to literal shit. Flowers like you say lasts a week for multiple people. Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life. To say they are "they are not essential" is saying life itself is not essential, just eat powder and sit in a room if this is the case. I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should. And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.

anigbrowl 6y ago
And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless. I'm willing to bet that given the choice many of them would rather not engage in such toil, and the reason they're poor is because wages are kept so low that they have little opportunity to save enough to make such choices. Nobody buys flowers because they are trying to better the lives of agricultural laborers. I always find myself doubting the sincerity of such appeals, which only seem to arise in discussions of externalities. Many years ago I worked at an industrial floristry company for about a year, doing the manual work of handling the flowers as they came in from abroad and putting them in storage or preparing them for sale. I liked the work OK but I didn't get up every day thinking 'thank heavens so many people love the flowers we sell.' The pay wasn't that great and when I found a better job I took it.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
> A carrot you eat and turn to literal shit. It sustains their life and thus serves an important purpose. > Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life. Kitschy stuff is another ecological disaster, separately from cut flowers. People who appreciate flowers generally buy potted ones and care for them; cut plants are meant as gifts or decorations, and they get thrown away immediately (think of all the decorative flowers on social events) or after they wither (ain't nobody has time to care for the gift roses in the vase, or even notice them). > I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should. I think GP is saying something else. They're taking a systems-level view. Flowers are cool, but we've created a system in which huge amount of energy is used to manufacture and ship around what amounts to reified mating signals, that could be manufactured and shipped locally instead. Now it would be fine in the era of free energy and matter replicators, but we're still in the era of scarcity and looming climate change. So it's fair to ask questions about unnecessary waste in the system.

robocat 6y ago

> they are not essential If we only live for the essentials, what do we live for?

floatrock 6y ago
If we continue to live beyond our means, what's the point? It's like rats fighting for scraps onboard a sinking ship... sure, I'll fight for the bigger tastier crumb, but the ship's still going down. If it's not us that will drown, it's the next generation. Alternative framing: rather than thinking of it as "subsisting on the minimum essentials", how do you build a legacy that will continue to outlive you in perpetuity?
kumarvvr 6y ago
That would be true if our carbon footprint is minimal, but that is not the case. Until society self adjusts, to minimize the total carbon emissions per capita to a sustainable level, we might have to do with only essentials.
- sojournerc 6y ago
  Who determines what the essentials are?
  - adrianN 6y ago
    You price in the pollution and let the market decide.

verytrivial 6y ago

I would phrase it as "mispriced" as has much of the consumption that has occured for the last couple of hundred years. Seems the atmosphere is starting to call in the line of credit.

koheripbal 6y ago

While I don't disagree, this applies to a massive portion of all consumer goods and speaks to commercialism, in general. It is why the Fed specifically segregates "durable goods" in inflation, GDP, and price indexes.

ihaveajob 6y ago

They also propagate pests. The olive industry in Italy is being decimated and the flower trade is suspected to be at the root.

anoraca 6y ago
reference: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/deadly-olive-tree-disease-spreads-france https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/09/deadly-olive-t...
- ihaveajob 6y ago
  Thank you. This is quite worrisome to me personally, as my family lives on the south of Spain and a good deal of our livelihood is from olive farming. It feels like being tied to the railroad and watching a train barrel down toward you from the distance.