The Montreal Gazette, February 13th, 2003
The Montreal Gazette, February 13th, 2003
Behind the beauty and innocence of many of the millions of roses to be exchanged by Canadian lovers this Valentine's Day lies a different kind of story.
In Ecuador, which exported 13 million roses to Canada last year, workers suffer serious health problems because of rampant pesticide use in greenhouses, according to international agencies and local doctors.
Snow-capped volcanoes tower over the red tile roofs of Cayambe, a cobblestoned village of Quechuan Indians that was once famous for the cheeses and beef produced from its sprawling valley pastures.
Now the town is hemmed in by 600 hectares of plastic greenhouses that exploded onto the landscape after investors discovered the valley's perfect rose-growing conditions in the mid-'80s.
Thanks to volcanic soils, high altitudes and an overhead equatorial sun, roses here reach gargantuan proportions, with stems shooting up over one metre and bulbs swelling to the size of tennis balls.
But the rose boom, and subsequent land grab, has brought little prosperity to the Quechuan Indians whose communal systems of life have been disrupted and have few options now but to work in the greenhouses.
Toribio Valladares, the head of the Red Cross in Cayambe, has spent the last 15 years treating the bizarre medical conditions that he says are caused by pesticides used in the greenhouses, according to an investigation published in Mother Jones magazine.
But rose executives say health problems have been greatly exaggerated, especially as more companies clean up their act in response to "green label" programs in Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries.
Hernan Chiriboga heads Ecuador's flower association and has become the first rose grower in Ecuador to be certified organic by new United States Department of Agriculture standards. "We have not found - and I challenge anyone as president of Expoflores to give us - one proven problem that is the result of floriculture."
But studies indicate that many greenhouses in Ecuador are failing to protect their workers. The United Nation's International Labour Organization concluded in a study published in 2000 that 60 per cent of post-harvest workers suffered from headaches, blurred vision, muscular twitching and other pesticide-poisoning symptoms. The organization also found that children under age 18 - who make up more than one-fifth of the workforce - display signs of neurological damage at 22 per cent above average.
These are the same problems described by Valladares, who was once mayor of the town and says pesticides from the rose industry have poisoned the water supply and caused many health problems.
"First, there are skin rashes and a whole range of allergies and respiratory problems," Valladares said. "Many of these diseases have become chronic and untreatable with antibiotics."
But the most severe problems are birth defects, according to Valladares: "Children are born mentally retarded or with their fingers stuck together. "We see children born underweight, children who have definite problems with their central nervous systems."
Gino Descalze, a 17-year Citibank veteran who now runs the Flor Fiorentina rose farm, plays down the industry's problems and emphasizes its benefits for Ecuador's economy, contending, "Quito would be surrounded by slums if it weren't for the plantations."
Since Ecuador converted its economy to the U.S. dollar in 2000, the flower industry - valued at $300 million a year, according to Expoflores - has become one of its most important sources of revenue, along with exports of bananas and oil.
During the two-week Valentine's Day rush, rose plantations garner as much as 30 per cent of their annual revenue and employees work around-the-clock, despite daytime temperatures in the plastic greenhouses that climb above 43 degrees C.
Inside the large, tent-like structures, men move methodically between rows of flowers, checking for mould on the leaves and snipping the roses that are ready for shipment.
In the post-harvest room, women stand up to their ankles in rose petals and stripped foliage as they sort roses by the stem length and head size and arrange them in bunches of 25 for shipping.
After being dunked in preservatives, the roses are chilled and flown overnight to Miami, where they pass through customs and into the hands of brokers, wholesalers, florists and supermarkets.
Within four to five days, a dozen roses that cost less than $3 to produce in Ecuador will sell for between $69 and $89 in Canada on Valentine's Day. Rose workers' salaries range from $125 to $170 U.S. per month.
Public services of all kinds are stretched thin in Cayambe, where the population has doubled in less than a decade to 120,000 and tensions simmer between the Indians and 40,000 mostly black immigrants.
The solution to Cayambe's health and social crisis might be Germany's Flower Label Program and other "green labels" that now allow European consumers to buy roses from plantations where labour and environmental standards have been certified.
Those "good" roses are also available in Canada through a Montreal importer, Sierra Flowers Trading Ltd. About 20 per cent of its flowers are labelled eco-friendly, based on the German inspection program. But no such program exists in the United States, which buys nearly 70 per cent of Ecuador's rose crop.
"When programs like this start up, it's in reaction to a problem,'' said Jennifer Sparks for the Society of American Florists, the largest flower association in the United States. "At this point, there is not a problem."
But a group of villagers who invaded an empty field next to a greenhouse and now refuse to budge, think differently. "We are going to end up with our health ruined, our soil ruined and there still won't be work,'' said one defiant woman who hoed the soil as her two children played in the field. "Many of these rose executives want to treat us like our grandfathers in the times of slavery. We are not going to stand for that."
Rose Facts