Roses Are Red, Growers Are Blue at Interlopers : Floral market: Domestic producers must concentrate on quality and on types of flowers that cannot survive shipping from foreign countries. Valentine’s Day is industry’s “Christmas.”
All for love in the shape of a rose, men and women make summer days of winter nights in the snow-laden Taconic hills.
In an icy valley 20 miles west of Albany, on a seven-acre indoor farm, bathed in the amber glow of simulated sunshine, hybrid roses grow on 6-foot-tall bushes pampered in a computer-controlled atmosphere.
“This is Kardinal,” said greenhouse manager Phil Riccardi, 53, curling his chapped fingers delicately around a vibrant bud. “This is the most popular red. Very bright.”
Roses by any other name may smell sweeter--the mauve Lavande, for instance, fills a room with heady perfume--but the nearly odorless Kardinal, Royalty, Samantha and other reds rule for Valentine’s Day.
For Riccardi and his four brothers, and America’s 225 other growers of florists’ roses, Valentine’s Day is big business. According to industry figures, the holiday accounts for more sales, at higher prices, than any other day.
Wholesale prices for long-stemmed red roses typically double between mid-January and Feb. 14, from about 50 cents to more than $1 a stem.
The Riccardis, owners of the 66-year-old Henry J. Seagroatt Co., grow more than 4 million roses a year on 152,000 bushes in greenhouses started by their grandfather. In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day, they’ll cut about 300,000 velvety red buds.
“That one day accounts for 20% of our business,” said Al Riccardi, 51, Phil’s brother and president of the company, which also sells carnations and other imported flowers from its wholesale warehouse in Albany.
Americans spend $12.5 billion a year on floral products, according to the Floral Index, a trade group in Chicago. Sales of cut flowers have more than doubled over the last two decades.
But these are hard times for American growers. Many have thrown in the trowel, unable to make a profit in a market flooded with low-priced blossoms from Colombia and other countries.
“In the last 21 years, we’ve lost more than 5,000 growers,” said Dave Machtel, executive director of the Floral Trade Council in Haslett, Mich.
In 1971, more than 1.4 billion cut flowers, 4% of them imported, were sold in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1992, sales topped 3.4 billion blooms--73% imported.
Carnation growers have been hardest hit by global competition. The number of domestic growers dropped from 1,525 in 1971 to 139 in 1992. Imports now account for more than 84% of the market.
Rose growers have fared better, because roses don’t ship as well as carnations. The number of U.S. rose growers declined from 323 to 225 over the last 20 years. Imports now account for 55% of the 1.2 billion roses sold annually in the United States.
Eastern rose growers have been affected most by the imports. But in California, which produces 65% of domestic roses, growers are keeping an uneasy eye on the budding business in Mexico.
“My market has completely changed,” said Ron Enomoto, who grows roses in Half Moon Bay, Calif. “We used to ship to people back East. Now, that market’s been taken over by imports coming into Miami from Colombia.” He worries that imports from Mexico will take over Western markets as trade barriers fall under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Johna Beall, owner of Beall’s Roses in Seattle, grows roses on a 40-acre farm in Bogota, Colombia, where equatorial sunshine and moderate mountain temperatures provide perfect growing conditions. She sells 8 million roses a year in the United States, 1 million for Valentine’s Day.
Beall agrees with Floral Trade Council allegations that some Colombian growers are “dumping” roses in the United States at unfair prices. Growers who are staying afloat despite the flood of cheap flowers are those with the highest quality product and best marketing skills, Beall said.
“We have to continually work to produce a better product for less money,” Al Riccardi said. “We’ve expanded our greenhouses, we’ve computerized them, we’ve added lights. We choose the most productive varieties. We have to use energy very wisely.”
The Riccardis added a new complex of greenhouses to their first nine in the mid-’80s, doubling their growing space to 300,000 square feet. Double-layer acrylic glazing provides better insulation than the old glass, but it still takes 300,000 gallons of oil to keep winter temperatures in the 70s.
Soil has been replaced with a mixture of bark, peat moss, and rock wool, which is watered twice a day by pipelines injected with fertilizers.
Two-thousand 1,000-watt sodium vapor lights bathe the plants in golden light all night long and on cloudy days.
“We’re replacing sunlight with these lights,” said Al Riccardi, raising his voice above the hum of greenhouse fans, the clickety-clank of steam heating pipes and the clamor of the cutters’ rock radio. “These high-intensity lights have allowed us to double our winter production.”
A computer controls everything: lights, cooling vents, irrigation lines, heat, fertilizer. Even the air is engineered for maximum plant growth, with carbon dioxide increased to three times the level outdoors.
Plant pests and diseases are a problem, complicated by Environmental Protection Agency plans to ban or limit certain chemical sprays, Al Riccardi said. “This controlled atmosphere is ideal for fungus and insects as well as roses. Mildew is very difficult to control.”
In raised concrete beds 4 feet wide and 150 feet long, the roses form hedges 6 feet tall or more, supported by a network of steel wire. In shoulder-wide alleys between the beds, cutters search the walls of green for buds at just the right stage of color and size.
Cut roses with 26-inch stems are held in buckets of water in a refrigerated warehouse for shipment within a day of cutting.
“We can’t compete with Colombia on price, because labor there is so much cheaper and they don’t have our heating and electricity bills,” Al Riccardi said.
A poorly handled rose may hang its head and refuse to unfurl. Imports may be flown in out of water and held on docks and in warehouses for as much as a week before reaching consumers. But Seagroatt roses are trucked in water within a day of cutting to retail florists in eastern New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
They choose flowers that suffer in shipping. “The more perishable it is, the better we’ll be able to compete by offering quality,” Al Riccardi said. “We can sell our own alstroemeria for two to three times what we get for the South American stuff.”
