U.S. flower growers fight to survive amid flood of imports

As she took a break on Monday from picking dahlias, zinnias and amaranths on her Jello Mold Farm in Mount Vernon, Wash., Diane Szukovathy wondered why, in her opinion, the federal government is working so hard to put other flower growers and her out of business by helping competitors thousands of miles away in the temperate regions of Colombia.

First came the international war on drugs, with the U.S. government spending millions since 1.999 to help poor Colombian farmers destroy their coca plants and replace them with flowers. 

Then Congress passed a free trade agreement with Colombia last year, making those blooms cheaper for Americans to buy.

With Colombian imports now accounting for three of every four cut flowers sold in the United States, domestic growers say they can’t compete with the planeloads of Colombian flowers that are flown in through Miami each day.

“It’s job robbing. I mean, it’s so bad. It’s so wrong,” said Szukovathy, 49, who’s run her farm in the Skagit River Valley, about an hour north of Seattle, for nearly 10 years. 

Those politics are such a mess. I don’t really feel like that’s my government, almost.

For small growers caught in the crossfire of global trade, it means the possible loss of an industry they love. 

For Americans, it means the possible loss of the simple notion of heading to the neighborhood florist to buy locally grown flowers for special friends or spouses or to decorate the graves of loved ones.

In Washington and California, two of the top-producing states for flowers used mainly in bouquets, growers are trying to fight back, but they fear they don’t have much time before their industry collapses.

For starters, they’re banding together by forming cooperatives that they hope will reduce their transportation costs and make it easier to deal with the expanding foreign competition. 

And they’re trying to push new buy American, buy local campaigns, hoping that consumers will think twice when they realize that their Valentine’s Day bouquets and nearly all the roses on the California’s Rose Parade floats are South American imports.

“My sense is that people don’t understand what we’re really up against, the Costco effect of flowers being shipped in by 747s each day, between seven and 10 a day and up to 35 on the holidays,” said Kasey Cronquist, the chief executive officer of the California Cut Flower Commission. 

It really puts us at a sizable disadvantage.

Growers say it’s a far cry from 20 or 30 years ago, when Americans could be reasonably confident that florists were selling local products.

Cronquist said that foreign nations, led by Colombia, now sell 82 percent of the cut flowers in the United States. 

And he said the U.S. flower industry was on its “last stand” and needed U.S. consumers to demand more locally grown flowers. 

He said flowers growers wanted to piggyback on the growing demand for locally grown food.

“We’re really trying to educate a group of people who are receptive to this message now, before it’s too late,” Cronquist said.

The booming flower imports from Colombia reflect growing demand from Americans, who’ll want even more as the economy recovers and consumers start piling up more non-essential purchases, said Jerry Haar, the associate dean and director of the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University.

The free trade agreement creates playing field for all countries in an equal way, companies must prepare and compete with efficiency and quality.