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Every day at six in the morning, Royal FloraHolland awakens like a transit station where habit has turned the extraordinary into routine. Barely touching the ground, millions of flowers arriving from every continent enter the intermediaries’ circuit, where their price and destination are decided without anyone needing to touch them. They are transient flowers, without a homeland, that within hours cease to be merchandise and become ornament, farewell, or celebration. In Aalsmeer, a few kilometers from Amsterdam, the 77.5 hectare complex houses the largest cut flower market on the planet, a logistics and commercial center as immense as it is transient.
At its core lies the auction, a digital system that dictates the rhythm of the day. With thousands of virtual buyers, it sets in motion the electric carts that zip through endless corridors loaded with flowers from all continents. The mosaic of colors dissolves in less than four hours thanks to the machine-like meticulousness of 3,500 workers who coordinate with hardly any communication. The logistical heart of the global flower trade beats each day in a sealed facility, lit by neon lights and with few skylights. Conditions are regulated to the millimeter to keep the fragile merchandise intact, which —by air and by road— is distributed within hours to markets across Europe.
The flower industry remains one of the economic motors of the Netherlands and, at the same time, a distinctive feature of its identity, even in the face of the relentless offshoring of production to other countries. Each day, hundreds of visitors walk the elevated catwalks of Royal FloraHolland to watch from above the choreography of its gigantic machinery. The guided tour includes a visit to the old auction room —now reduced to a decorative space and replaced by virtual systems— the chance to simulate a cart race, or to experience a bid from a worn analog podium.
But among the more than 23,000 species of plants and flowers that circulate through Royal FloraHolland each year, one still reigns over all. Of the 10.3 billion stems sold last year, 2.9 billion were roses, even though local production is now minor. In the year 2000, the Netherlands grew roses under 930 hectares of greenhouses, spread among 765 growers. Twenty-five years later, the area has fallen by more than 80% and over 90% of the growers have disappeared. National production isn’t yet residual, but it’s heading that way. This gradual offshoring has transformed the Netherlands’ role: from being a cultivating country it has become, above all, a logistical and commercial hub that redistributes to Europe the roses arriving primarily from Kenya and Ethiopia.
“If we keep doing exactly what we’re doing now for the next five years, I won’t be here. I like to innovate, to look for how we can do it better. But on one condition: that the market be fair”. Daniel van den Nouweland runs Marjoland from Waddinxveen, a few minutes from Aalsmeer, the largest rose nursery in Europe. Its sprawling 20 hectares of greenhouses function like a laboratory of innovation: machines equipped with artificial intelligence and tracking cameras sort up to 10,000 roses per hour, while a precision climate system coordinates humidity and temperature. Most of the 250 employees no longer work among the plants, but in front of screens, remotely controlling the process. From inside, it’s impossible to grasp the greenhouse’s enormity, where piped commercial music accompanies the unhurried production rhythm. By the entrance, ten vases are lined up with the varieties grown by the company. The most popular, Red Naomi, stands out next to another intensely orange variety named after his daughter, Novi. “She wanted it to be pink”, the director jokes.
Marjoland’s history is marked by the Van den Nouweland family. “It’s in my DNA. My father started in 1978 with a one-hectare greenhouse, first with cucumbers and then roses”, Daniel recalls. While most Dutch producers moved their operations to Kenya or Ethiopia, the family expanded step by step until in 2008 they consolidated a continuous 20-hectare plot. The same that sustains production today. “Between 1997 and 2005 we doubled the area every few years, but after the crisis energy and labor became more expensive. Now we have good profits and we want to maintain what we have”.
Van den Nouweland also once considered moving the company to Africa and toured plantations in Kenya to closely observe how those who had taken that step operate. The experience only reaffirmed his doubts. “Here we pay very high taxes on energy, while the jet fuel for planes that bring flowers from Africa isn’t taxed”, he points out. Added to that fiscal inequality are the labor differences: “For us the key is betting on quality, because the cheapest kilo of roses is always produced in Africa. I can’t compete on costs, only on quality”. But the decision to remain in the Netherlands is firm. The family weighed the quality of life in this European country, but another personal conviction also carried weight. “There, managing staff is very tough, and it’s not my style to treat employees with a heavy hand. I prefer a more flexible model: to surround myself with the right people and support them. I can do that here, but not in Kenya”.
From the greenhouses of Naivasha to the auctions of Amsterdam
Along the shores of Lake Naivasha, flower companies have woven over the years an immense mantle of polyethylene that wraps the shoreline like an artificial sea. The fresh water, the Rift Valley’s altitude, and the equatorial sun create a perfect microclimate where roses bloom all twelve months of the year. Ninety kilometers northwest of Nairobi, this region—guarded by private security—sustains a business of more than 4,500 hectares that has made Kenya Europe’s great flower nursery. In 2024 alone, the country exported 102,478 tons of cut flowers, 60% of which were roses, for a value of 72.09 billion Kenyan shillings (around 470 million euros).
Neema works at Kongoni River Farm, one of the Naivasha greenhouses with over 700 employees. She was born in Kakamega, a town in western Kenya, but she has been in various flower companies for more than fifteen years. “I came to Naivasha to visit my cousin and I got pregnant. I got married and was a housewife, but later I needed a job. That’s how I ended up in the flower companies”. Despite her experience in the sector, Neema —who prefers not to use her real name for fear of losing her job— is completely unaware of the destination of the roses she cuts for 7,200 KSh a month (about 58 US dollars).
Kongoni River Farm, part of the VP Group, is one of the giants of Kenya’s floriculture. The conglomerate not only grows flowers and vegetables, but also has its own logistics division, Freight Wings Ltd., registered in Kenya in 1998, from where it coordinates the export of about 550 tons of flowers and vegetables each week.
According to Neema, the unprotected use of pesticides has marked an entire generation of flower workers. “There are many people who were affected. You can’t work as long as I have without it taking a toll. Many people developed spinal problems and respiratory issues”, she recalls. Each farm has a clinic and a doctor who comes weekly, but that care serves the company’s interests more than the workers’. “The doctor is obliged to side with the company. He won’t acknowledge your ailments or symptoms because he wants to protect his contract with the farm”.
In the past, many people left their jobs due to medical problems. ‘I saw it all the time. People resigned simply for health reasons. But the laws have changed and now we have far fewer cases.’ Today, conditions have improved, at least formally: ‘Now they give us protective equipment that they didn’t provide before. In addition, importers visit nurseries at random to assess conditions, so they usually try to comply.’
“Modern slavery”. That is how Booker Omole, political activist and Secretary of the Kenyan Communist Party (CPM-K), describes the conditions on the Dutch floriculture farms in Naivasha: “Workers face extremely precarious conditions. They don’t have long-term fixed contracts and can’t even claim what a Dutch employee can, like a decent wage. In these companies, the minimum wage is quietly ignored. Labor laws have been quietly suppressed”, he denounces.
From the perspective of the Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), the growing dependence of countries like Kenya on supplying the European flower market is often framed through the discourse of “development aid” and supposedly beneficial foreign investment. However, warns its Executive Director, Chenai Mukumba, this narrative can serve as a pretext that legitimizes value extraction and the externalization of costs onto producing nations. “The European ‘aid’ narrative can be seen as a façade: it allows most of the value to be captured in Europe —through auctions, logistics, and retail— while countries like Kenya end up absorbing the costs”, Mukumba notes.
The clearest indicator to challenge that narrative, she adds, is to examine whether such “aid” truly contributes to reducing poverty and inequality in places like Kenya. “Effective assistance should strengthen the resilience and capacity of recipient countries to design and implement their own development strategies, not perpetuate dependency”, she emphasizes.
Mukumba further highlights that Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda collectively lose up to US$2.8 billion each year due to tax exemptions and incentives, according to a study by TJNA and ActionAid International. “These policies reduce the public revenues available for health, education, or social protection, meaning that it is the poorest citizens who end up shouldering the cost”, she explains.
Even so, their existence fuels a dangerous competition among countries: each offers greater tax advantages so as not to fall behind, eroding its own tax base and weakening the financing of essential public services. Mukumba describes this as a “race to the bottom” that sacrifices the future of local communities in exchange for attracting short-term investment.
Neema insists that she can only talk about the companies she has worked for, but despite the conditions she denounces, Kongoni River Farm, her current employer, is one of 37 flower growers in the country with Fairtrade Africa certification. There are around 220 flower farms operating in Kenya. ‘No certification scheme, including Fairtrade, can guarantee that there are no problems on their farms.’ Monique Peters-Jong is Senior Advisor on the flower sector at Fairtrade International. “We have always been aware of and spoken openly about the risks in global supply chains. The flower sector, in particular, poses several risks, and our rigorous standards, together with training, advice and programmatic support on the ground, help to address them”, she says.
From Tax Justice Network Africa, Chenai Mukumba believes that fair trade certification in the rose value chain presents both advantages and limitations. “While it can promote fairer remuneration, better working conditions, and more sustainable farming, it does not necessarily eliminate the asymmetries of global trade”, she cautions. According to the director, such certifications influence business and economic behavior by promoting fair prices and paying living wages, but she fears that certification may ultimately become “a whitewash of value capture and fiscal losses, especially if the benefits accrue primarily to multinationals or large exporters”.
FLOCERT, Fairtrade’s certification body, audits the farms periodically and can carry out surprise visits to check how they operate on a “typical day”. When it finds violations, it requires corrective measures and verifies compliance. If problems persist, sanctions can range from temporary suspension to permanent loss of certification.
Regarding the relocation of flower companies, Peters-Jong notes, “Moving flower companies to other countries began in the 1980s. At that time, costs were rising in the North and entrepreneurs were looking for new areas to grow flowers. Some ended up in Africa—particularly in Kenya—and others moved to southern Europe”. The advisor explains that “finding a good location to operate is what all companies do”. She asserts that many companies see a double opportunity in Kenya: to expand into international markets and at the same time support local economies with income and jobs that improve access to health and education. Nevertheless, Peters-Jong warns that “there are risks in operating in foreign countries”. That’s why she stresses that “the most important thing is to meet our rigorous standards, which include social, economic and environmental criteria aimed at leveling the playing field in global trade”.
For Omole, however, the diagnosis is clear: “The motto of multinationals is profit, not people. If they fail to achieve sustained profit growth in the imperial core, they cease to be patriotic even to their own countries and scour the globe for opportunities. That is what the Dutch transnational flower industry found: the possibility of relocating its operations, mainly to Kenya”.
“We are at a pivotal moment to reform the rules of the international tax game”, says Mukumba, referring to the recent proposal for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. “For years, these rules have been dictated by the OECD, with little participation from Africa. That has facilitated revenue loss, tax evasion, and has weakened our sovereignty”, she warns. In her view, a global agreement under the UN framework —with protocols to tax digital services and resolve tax disputes— “could usher in a fairer, more inclusive, and more effective architecture”. Only then, she argues, will it be possible to stop the “hemorrhage” of resources and level the playing field in the global flower trade.
The last Catalan rose grower
Joan’s phone won’t stop ringing. As Sant Jordi (St. George’s Day), Catalonia’s national holiday, approaches, the media don’t want to miss the story of the last Catalan rose producer. The farmer is a pragmatic man with rough hands and short sentences, who has no desire to be a flag-bearer. He prefers to talk about the cuttings arriving from the Netherlands, the constant humidity on the seafront, or the light that enters his 2,000-square-meter greenhouse, rather than indulge in the rhetoric of resistance.
He knows that the 20,000 roses he’ll be able to harvest for the April 23rd festival are a marginal sample of the seven million stems that will be sold that day. For that reason —and because of the resignation he feels toward the institutional neglect of Catalonia’s floriculture sector— he doesn’t even want to reveal his identity. “They use us to talk about the local rose, but we don’t want that. It’s hypocritical to promote Sant Jordi as a Catalan symbol while abandoning the producers. The symbol should be the local rose, but if there isn’t one, better to say nothing”. His flowers mix, unlabeled, with the millions arriving from Amsterdam, but especially from Ecuador and Colombia.
Joan Pons is one of three brothers at the helm of Flors Pons, the family nursery that survives in Santa Susanna, a stone’s throw from the Costa Brava. Years ago he was offered a move to Kenya to manage a rose greenhouse there. He chose to stay in Maresme, on the land his grandfather began cultivating seventy years ago with carnations and vegetables. First came gladioli, gerberas, lilies, and later roses—which would become the symbolic heart of the business.“There used to be many of us”, Joan recalls as he walks among the rows of his greenhouse. Forty years ago, in the Santa Susanna area of Maresme, there were around forty hectares of roses. “Now it’s just us, with barely two thousand square meters”. His voice blends pride and resignation. He knows that in the ’70s and ’80s Catalonia covered up to 80% of the demand for Sant Jordi. This year they only gathered around twenty thousand roses. “The cost is very high, and florists have gotten used to buying the rose from Ecuador or Colombia, which always comes out the same, like an eternal spring. They only want the local one for Sant Jordi”.
Joan knows the business like few others, not just because he has learned over the years, but because he lives it with intimate dedication. He describes his flowers with the same delicacy with which he touches them. Three weeks before the festival, the sepals are just beginning to open and he helps them with his fingers, as if guiding their growth. Despite this dedication, he speaks with a certain admiration of the automated processes of Dutch flower production. In Santa Susanna, by contrast, the work remains manual: the three brothers handle every task, from harvest to replacing the polyethylene covers, with the help of three workers from Gambia and Senegal.
Maresme was for decades a key enclave of the region’s horticulture. Its fields yielded flowers, fruits and vegetables that made the comarca an agricultural benchmark in Catalonia. That tradition, however, has blurred as urban growth and tourism have devoured the land, pushing agricultural operations into increasingly marginal spaces.
The Mediterranean coast’s microclimate still favors cultivation: warmer than inland, fewer frosts, milder winds, and water with low salinity that avoids the need for osmosis treatment. “It’s very good land. That’s why we’re still holding on”, Joan notes. But natural conditions are no longer enough. The lack of institutional support and the pressure from urban development have increasingly cornered agriculture, rendering it nearly residual. The landscape that in his childhood was fields of flowers has turned into blocks of apartments and tourist hotels. “Here in Santa Susanna, years ago farmland was expropriated to expand tourist areas. In the end they see us as a few growers who are in the way. The GDP comes from tourism and farming is misery. The day we have to import everything, we’ll realize the mistake”.
The Pons family carries on more out of stubbornness and love of the land than for profit. “We’re not getting rich. We get by. Ten of us work here and this is how we all make a living. By contrast, a hotel may have three hundred workers, but three people split the profits”, Joan compares. Santa Susanna is a town of barely 3,000 inhabitants that between May and October 2024 received 180,000 visitors. Despite the unsustainability of the situation, the plan is to continue expanding tourist accommodations and roadways to attract even more visitors.
The threat, however, is not only urban. There’s also the pressure of the global market. “National production is practically non-existent. People stopped growing because it isn’t profitable: the soils are depleted and the climate doesn’t help. With the impact of temperatures, practically all roses are grown in the equatorial zone”, explains Miquel Batlle, president of the Mercabarna-flor Wholesale Companies Association. Today, 68% of the roses that arrive for Sant Jordi come from Colombia, 22% from Ecuador and 10% from the Netherlands.
As Sant Jordi expands into an increasingly global celebration, the roots of its essential symbol are fading. In this scenario, the three Pons brothers keep alive a minimal production—almost invisible to the market and valued only a few days in April. They cling to the land more out of dignity than profit, as a silent gesture of resistance against institutional disregard and market transformation. “We’ll keep growing roses until we retire. After that, I don’t know what will happen”.
The highs and lows of Tabacundo (Ecuador), the rose capital of the world
On the way, the landscape dominated by arid mountains kicking up clouds of dust begins to fill with greenhouses. Tabacundo is a town of around 21,000 inhabitants in Pedro Moncayo canton, Pichincha province, 60 kilometers north of Quito, Ecuador, sitting at 2,870 meters above sea level. Its economy had been based on agriculture and cattle-raising, but since the 1980s it pivoted to rose production. Critical in that shift were the altitude, the mild climate and the availability of up to 12 hours of sunlight a day. But as noted in the report “Flowers of Evil: Floriculturists and Their Rapid Growth” by the Acción Ecológica organization, other factors included access to cheap labor and the relatively low investment required compared to other countries. The majority of workers earn the basic wage of $470 (while the cost of a basic family basket is $813), and cultivating one hectare of flowers in Ecuador costs $350,000, whereas, for example, in Israel it takes $600,000 and in the Netherlands $1,300,000.
Today Tabacundo is known as the “world capital of the rose”. According to a report for the first half of 2025 by Ecuador’s National Association of Flower Producers and Exporters (Expoflores), 75% of rose production is concentrated in Pichincha province, and of total national flower production, 77% are roses—which by the end of 2024 positioned Ecuador as the world’s third-largest exporter, after the Netherlands and Colombia. That year, for the first time, exports exceeded one billion dollars, “a very important milestone that shows the path forward”, says Alejandro Martínez, president of Expoflores, a private organization founded in 1984. The top three commercial destinations are the United States, the European Union and Kazakhstan.
As we approach Tabacundo’s town center, along the sides of the highway all the signs of a community given over to floriculture begin to appear: dilapidated greenhouses from companies that went bankrupt; modest stands offering 25-rose bouquets for a dollar; warehouses selling everything the industry needs—tractors, fumigation pumps, pesticides, tools and equipment, packing materials, lots of plastic.
It’s estimated that 4 to 5 million stems are produced daily in Tabacundo, across some 400 rose varieties. Among the large plantations, those of the transnational company Denmar stand out. It has over 250 hectares and employs more than 3,000 workers, while many small farms operate, in many cases, only with members of a single family. According to Forbes Ecuador, Denmar is the country’s second-highest revenue company with $63 million a year—about half of what the top company, Utopia Farms UTF, brings in with $106 million.
Deeper into the fields, not only is the landscape blanketed with greenhouses striking, but so is the acrid smell in the air from the intensive use of pesticides. According to the study “Exposure to Pesticides and Health Effects on Farm Owners and Workers in Latin America”, published in the journal JMIR Publications, constant exposure to fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides and herbicides is associated with multiple disorders in various systems, among them memory loss, cognitive decline, menstrual disorders, spontaneous abortions, lymphoma, prostate cancer, breast cancer, leukemia; in addition to respiratory and skin diseases. Furthermore, having to work 8 to 10 hours a day on your feet, with forced postures and repetitive movements, often leads to chronic back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome and rotator cuff injuries. It’s also common for the constant pressure to meet high productivity to cause work-related stress.
***
In the town center stands the headquarters of ASOTFLORPI (the Pichincha Flower Workers Association), founded in 2012. Marcia Lema, a 58-year-old woman—physically and figuratively strong and large, her hardened face softened by tender green eyes—is the president and founder. “I worked as a supervisor on a big plantation for 10 years”, Lema says. “There I saw a lot of people get sick and have trouble getting enrolled in social security. As I often say, it’s hidden slavery, which is why the idea of creating the association was born—to support our fellow workers”.
Marcia Lema’s life has been a chain of struggle and self-improvement. She left that farm where she was a supervisor after suffering a stroke, and since then has lived with heart problems and hypertension. At 45 she began studying law so she could defend flower workers. She studied in Quito and Venezuela, and graduated as a lawyer at 50. She has served as a citizen assembly member and as a representative of her canton’s social organizations, but her greatest struggle has focused on the hardships of the workers—a struggle that one day, after gaining experience in legal battles, led to an attempt on her life.
Currently about 2,500 workers are members of the association. More combative than it is well-structured, the association has received funding from international organizations, but its biggest income once came from a monthly contribution of $2.50 that some members used to make. Today everything is at risk—there are no more international funds and members no longer pay their dues. But Marcia Lema doesn’t lose heart. “That’s what keeps me going—being active—because if I stay between four walls, I get depressed and I fall”, she says.
***
Most of the complaints ASOTFLORPI handles have to do with the pressure some companies put on their employees to force them to resign. “They target people they consider older—40, 45 years old; people with health issues developed on the plantations—they make their lives impossible so they’ll quit”, Lema explains. “What they want is not to have to pay their health benefits, seniority entitlements, severance”.
Cases become more complex in instances of sudden dismissals. “Many times companies won’t admit they fired the workers, and they stall on the pending payments; that’s when the association steps in and takes legal action”, Lema says. “We only wait until the second hearing—if they don’t show up, we identify the assets they have to seize; we freeze accounts; we go all the way and sometimes, eventually, they decide to pay”.
ASOTFLORPI’s efforts include some emblematic cases. The standout is Rosinvar. The company was founded in 1986 and by 2014 was recognized as one of the most successful in Pedro Moncayo canton. According to the local magazine Líderes, it had 400 employees at that time. That year it won first prize at the Moscow International Flowers Expo for its long-stemmed flowers (between 50 and 100 centimeters, so coveted in Russia); the size of its blooms (6.2 centimeters, when the average is 5.4); the high petal count; the consistency of its colors (the most requested being the classic deep red of the Explorer and Freedom varieties); the quality of its foliage; and the 22 long days they last on average in a vase. Aleksandr Glebov, owner of the Russian company Biflorica and a Rosinvar client, said that “just as Coca-Cola exists for beverages, in Russia Rosinvar exists for roses”.
Three years later, Rosinvar declared bankruptcy. “There was a time when companies declared bankruptcy, kicked out the workers and didn’t take responsibility for anything”, Marcia Lema says. With ASOTFLORPI’s support, the workers formed a committee that later became a union, and they took over three of Rosinvar’s farms. It was around that time that Lema became the target of an attack. “We were in a car with a colleague to meet with workers occupying one of Rosinvar’s farms”, she remembers, “and suddenly a small blue car cut in front of us with two guys who shot at us, but thank God the gun jammed and no shot was fired”. Lema says she knows who was behind the attack, but prefers not to discuss it. “And so they’ve tried to silence us in different ways”.The study “Working Conditions and Labor Rights in Ecuadorian Floriculture“, conducted by the National Federation of Free Agro-industrial, Peasant and Indigenous Workers of Ecuador (FENACLE), reports a 60% non-compliance rate in Pedro Moncayo canton with respect to the right to unionize, enrollment in social security (IESS) and payment of the minimum wage. Several companies use temporary contracts—usually for three months—for periods of peak demand (Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and Christmas). The contracts can include IESS enrollment, the study notes, but the bureaucratic process takes so long that the contract ends before the enrollment is finalized. Among the most common grievances is also the lack of overtime pay. And something that particularly worries companies is the possible formation of unions. “Union organizations were allowed by companies at the start of floriculture in the ’90s. However, they were later harshly repressed”, the study adds.
“As in any other industry and anywhere on the planet, there are informal companies here that don’t follow the law”, acknowledges Alejandro Martínez, president of Expoflores. “But you can’t generalize. Every company is obliged to enroll its employees in IESS (social security) even if the contract is temporary. In the case of farms with FlorEcuador certification, enrollments are done the same day as hiring, but there may be informal companies—or even formally constituted ones—that try to evade the law”.
FlorEcuador certification is an Expoflores initiative launched 23 years ago to ensure social and environmental practices that meet international market requirements. “Most markets and importers worldwide demand certification—that the flower comes with real traceability proving you meet minimum social and environmental sustainability standards. That’s what we promote”, Martínez explains.
On the other hand, informality covers a broad spectrum, from tax evasion to potential involvement in illicit activities like drug trafficking, along with the more common issue: non-compliance with labor rights and social and environmental responsibilities, and the risk of phytosanitary problems due to insufficient quality control of flowers.
“The companies affiliated with Expoflores that obey the law cover almost 70% of the 5,900 hectares of production nationwide”, Martínez asserts, “and if you go to those farms, you’ll see that people feel good, they get their pay on time, they’re cared for, they eat well”. The informal operations would account for at least 20% of the industry “and that figure has been growing”, Martínez adds. He also considers it indisputable that workers have the right to organize and to raise complaints whenever companies flout any regulations.
Thus, in the case of Rosinvar, it was important for ASOTFLORPI that a union be formed. Finally, thanks to the legal action driven by the association, the company’s properties were sold off, and in 2020 some of the employees managed to “collect between $10,000 and $80,000 each in severance”, Lema says. Some of them used that money to set up their own small plantations.
***
Carmen García is 45 years old and since 2005 she has worked at three medium-sized companies, always as a classifier—the position in post-harvest where the quality of the flowers is checked and they’re organized according to their various characteristics.
Removing the leaves and thorns from the stem with a stripping tool, then sorting the stems by length, checking if they’re bent or damaged, infested or diseased: spiders, thrips, botrytis, powdery mildew. Flawless roses go for export; the imperfect ones stay for the domestic market. The classifiers write up reports on the anomalies they find, so that a supervising technician can determine which pesticide to apply more heavily to counteract them.
After sorting, the “embonchadoras” make bouquets of 25 flowers (bonches, as they’re called in the industry), and that’s how they go out for sale. Carmen García has worked as a classifier for 20 years, always on her feet. “It’s very tiring, especially in high season; your eyes blur, your hands go numb, and sometimes you might let a flower with a spider slip by, and then the supervisor comes and scolds you. The psychological pressure is very strong”, she says.
García’s main complaint is the lack of pay for the extended work. “In post-harvest there are no set hours; you know when you start but not when you finish. We’re supposed to work eight hours a day, with one hour off for lunch—that’s the only time we can sit—but we work 10 or more and they don’t pay a single hour extra. Yet if you miss a day they fine you $40″. If she could choose, if she had the means, Carmen would quit her job and start her own business. “I don’t know what, anything as long as I don’t have a boss yelling at me all the time”, she says.
María Cuyo, 43, has worked in floriculture since 2007 and she is currently Carmen García’s colleague at the same company. She is a bonch-maker, receiving the flowers her colleague sorts and assembling bonches, wrapping them with sheets of cardboard. She has a fissure in her right foot and both legs are covered in varicose veins. “It’s from so many hours we spend standing”, she says. Not everything, however, is hardship. María and her co-workers support each other to make the days more bearable. “We’re a small group, and even though they don’t pay overtime, we get through it together. Only when the engineer comes in a bad mood—then he hassles us all day”.
Mario Tangoa is 62. For 13 years he worked as a fumigator at three medium-sized companies. He retired five years ago. He used to spray a mix of two or three chemicals on the blocks of crops depending on what issues the roses had. In teams of three, they applied 1,000 liters of pesticides each day. He worked only four hours a day—from three to seven in the morning. “At that hour the bugs are asleep; you had to catch them sleeping”, he says. Shifts couldn’t be longer to avoid more exposure to the chemicals. “Even though they gave us all the equipment and made sure we were well protected, the stuff still got in”, Tangoa says. “At the end of the day you’d feel headaches, dizzy, but I didn’t have respiratory problems. Now that I’m older, I feel how it affects me whenever I catch a cold”.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed Segundo Fernández’s life. A construction worker by trade, he lost his job during that time, and at 57 had to turn to growing roses. On land near his home, in the San Juan Loma community close to Tabacundo, he started a 2,500-square-meter plantation where he works only with his wife. His operation has since become one of those small businesses registered under an individual’s name rather than as a floriculture company — just short of being informal, yet still part of the system. Doing so, however, comes at a cost. “Informal growers will hardly ever sell directly to an importer or wholesaler”, explains Alejandro Martínez of Expoflores. “Instead, they sell to intermediaries, who will likely strong-arm them to lower prices, won’t pay them on time or even never pay them. That does happen; it can’t be denied”.
In the low season, Fernández is paid 20 cents per stem. That is, he sells a bundle of 25 flowers for $5. “But we’ve been told that over there —in the United States— the people who receive the flowers pay one dollar per stem, and then they sell each stem for $10″, he says. During Valentine’s season, he gets 50 cents to $1 per stem, and likewise at the destination the price multiplies proportionally. In any case, the one who always receives the lowest payment is him. “You don’t earn much; you work to have your daily bread. The ones who make money are the intermediaries”.
Rodrigo Cachipuendo has better luck. He worked a long time as a crop supervisor on several large farms in Tabacundo, and ten years ago he started his own plantation in the parish of Cangahua, Cayambe canton, bordering Pedro Moncayo. It’s a family business on half a hectare, where he has 50,000 plants of about ten varieties. His wife is an expert in post-harvest and his son is in charge of sales. Their experience has allowed them to sell directly to importers and wholesalers. Many of their flowers go to Russia, which —since it went to war with Ukraine— has been getting its supply via Kazakhstan. “Yes, the business is profitable”, Cachipuendo says. “The important thing is to have steady orders. In high season we sell 50,000 stems a month and they pay us 40 cents per stem, but other buyers pay up to $1 per stem. With those earnings, you can live all year”.
The workday ends. Around five in the afternoon, the roads connecting the towns in this floriculture zone fill with workers who, backpacks on, walk toward the villages or wait by the roadside for the transport that will take them home. Before long, some greenhouses will turn on the red lights that stimulate flowering, and the mountain will look colonized. Tomorrow will be the same day all over again.
Flower growing in the western savannah (Colombia)
The Municipal Theatre of Facatativá (Colombia) turns on the stage lights. An ovation erupts from the audience —about 150 people—. Ten minutes pass as the nonagenarian Colombian documentary filmmaker Marta Rodríguez observes her audience. After 37 years, the film Amor, mujeres y flores (Love, Women and Flowers) has been restored and re-released. “Marta, how did you manage to film inside a greenhouse?” they ask her. “Often, you don’t have to say what you’re doing”, she replies.
Rosa Vera, 53, asks that her real name be protected. In the darkness of the theatre’s back row, she explains: “I have four years left before I can retire from the flora”. “An eternity”, she remarks. After 30 years of uninterrupted work, her upper limbs, from her shoulders to her fingers, suffer from various types of damage for which there is no cure.
Alba Gallego, 58, grabs the microphone: “This film is from 1988, and all that exploitation, poverty, and poor health among workers has not changed. Today it is worse”. Although she no longer works in the industry, her eight years of experience left her scarred for life, not only with knee problems, but also with several paramilitary threats due to her intense union activity.
Pedro Vidal has been working in the industry since he was 16. He is now 56 and waits with a stoicism bordering on bitterness for the six years he has left until retirement. He also asks that his name be withheld. He has had two shoulder surgeries, suffers from varicose veins and a chronic gastric problem after being poisoned, along with 150 other people, by eating contaminated food provided by the company to celebrate the end of 1988. “That night we filled the San Rafael Hospital”, he says with a smile.
His testimony is supported by the report Analysis of flower production costs in the department of Cundinamarca derived from occupational carcinogenic effects on workers in the sector, which warns that “in the specific case of flower cultivation, workers are exposed to carcinogens due to the handling of chemicals”. The report also notes that among the most common occupational diseases in the flower-growing sector are respiratory conditions and skin problems caused by exposure to pesticides and fertilisers.
Facatativá is located 44 kilometres west of Bogotá. The terrain is mostly flat with undulations that, except for a few hills and mountains, do not exceed 2,600 metres above sea level. In the 1970s, companies from the United States and Europe arrived in this fertile savannah to transform it into a mecca for flower production. Companies such as Jardínes de los Andes, Sunshine and Élite Flowers have now changed their names and formalised their operations in Colombia. It is on this land that some of the best roses, carnations and chrysanthemums in the world are grown.
The documentary brings together several testimonies, mainly from women, of people who abandoned their farming work to become, without knowing it, exploited and sick labourers. It also portrays the organisational processes and the struggle that these people led in the 1980s to obtain better social benefits. A struggle that continues today. The director exchanges opinions with her audience about the current state of affairs. Someone asserts that the new workforce comes either from indigenous people from the coast or from Venezuelan migrants “because we already know that it is not good to work there”.
“At the beginning of the year, there was a meeting between employers and workers to set the price of lunch”, says Rosa. “Last year it was $1,750 (0.38€) and they wanted to raise it to $1,950 (0.43€). We all thought it was too much of an increase and we made that clear, until they told us that if we kept complaining about the price, they would take away our catering service for good. That’s how they operate: with threats”.
“In 1996, there was a strike”, recalls Alba. “And the funny thing is that they fired tear gas at us, but it didn’t have the effect the police expected because my colleagues and I, who were there resisting, being exposed to worse poisons on a daily basis, had developed immunity. If you get on one of the buses that take flower workers to the farms, you can smell the chemicals. It sticks to your clothes, your skin, your eyes — and from there it gets into your organs”.
“All workers have four hours per month off for medical appointments”, explains Pedro. “But because of my seniority, I have three more. If I exceed that time, my salary is docked. With so many problems, we all end up juggling our free time and health so that we get our full pay. Also, after every public holiday, they extend our working day by 25 minutes. According to them, to balance out the weekly hours”.
Rosa and Pedro work for Jardines de los Andes, one of the largest companies in the area, which employs 4,000 people. They cut, remove buds, basket, pot and weed thousands of flowers every day: eight hours on Mondays and Tuesdays, 7.5 hours on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, and five hours on Saturdays. The union is made up of more women than men, and there are increasingly more outsourced or fixed-term contracts that imply the company’s total abdication of responsibility for workers’ social security.
In November, the fields are filled with guajiros, almost all of them Wayuu Indigenous people. The boom in flower production comes in February, for Valentine’s Day. Since companies already know that people here are not enthusiastic about this work, they travel there to recruit poor people with promises of transport, food, and accommodation. At first, they put them up in hotels, but later they began housing them in containers, leaving them there, crammed together, until harvest time. “These people work themselves to the bone for very little in return, and when their employment contract ends, many of them are left stranded, which has caused social problems in the village”, says Blanca Mora, 64, who retired from the industry after 44 years of work.
Last month, a 24-year-old worker was cutting stems when she suddenly started screaming. The trail of blood was shocking. She had lost a finger on one hand, but they did not let her leave immediately; she had to stay until the end of her shift. In the infirmary, they examined her and told her it was her fault for mishandling the equipment. The young woman did not have a direct contract with the company. Rosa says that new employees are constantly threatened. “If you don’t like it, leave, because there are a hundred people outside who want to work”, she recalls hearing.
Pedro says that while people are exploited, the land is too. “Before, this savannah was full of potato, corn, barley, vegetable and many other crops”, he explains. “Now almost everything has to do with flowers. I never saw my parents or grandparents buy yucca or carrots; they would just go out into the fields and come back not with a pound or two, but with whole arrobas (~25-pound sacks)”.
Rosa adds that water use has also become a form of abuse. “Imagine all the water there is around here — they use it all. Sometimes there are rationing measures or cuts, and they continue with their normal service while people are left without water for a whole day. To make matters worse, the land they use is already unusable, enclosed for so long without sunlight or oxygen and fumigated with those chemicals. Let’s not lie to ourselves: this land is already dead”. What they want, she says, is for the companies not to expand any further. “But that’s impossible. They buy at good prices, and people simply leave with their money. That’s another form of forced displacement, isn’t it?”
In February, the month when roses become most expensive due to high international demand, a bouquet of 24 stems grown in the Bogotá savannah can cost around $50,000 (11€) on the local market. A pittance compared to the price per stem in cities such as New York, Madrid or Paris, where they can sell for as much as 15€ each. A bouquet of 24 Colombian roses can therefore easily exceed 300€ in the global north roughly the monthly salary of workers like Rosa and Pedro.
Seventy-nine per cent of the national area dedicated to flower cultivation is concentrated in the neighbouring municipalities of Facatativá and Madrid. Fifty small, medium and large companies with an army of 40,000 workers occupy 5,407 hectares, the equivalent of 28,000 football pitches. Sixty-five per cent of the people working in the industry are women, and carpal tunnel syndrome is one of the most common illnesses, although everyone knows that it is cancer that causes the highest mortality rate: several of the leading voices in the documentary ‘Amor, mujeres y flores’ (Love, Women and Flowers) are no longer with us. Behind the beauty of each rose lies a withered life.
“Working with something as beautiful as flowers and behind their production so much darkness. We women who work with flowers leave our beauty in the crops for others to enjoy”, concludes Blanca.
It is no secret that love comes at a price, but what remains behind the scenes is that not a single penny from that chain reaches the pockets of those who, day after day, make possible one of humanity’s oldest expressions of affection: giving a rose to the one you love. That is why, since 2002, International Flower Workers’ Day has been celebrated in the savannah of Bogotá. It is 14 February, the same day that a rose is worth a thousand words, but much less than the effort and sacrifice used to produce it.
This investigation was made possible thanks to the support of Journalismfund Europe.
It was carried out in collaboration with journalists Oyunga Pala (Netherlands) and Darius Okolla (Kenya).
