Sunday, February 15, 2015

German Valentine's Day article: Roses are way too cheap

Leave it to a well meaning German journalist and a complicit editor to slap readers of Zeit Online with this Valentine's Day headline:

Roses are way too cheap

The article is a rather nice interview with an author/activist about the international trade of roses. We learn, for example, that Kenya has been a major producer of roses for Europe but that competition from cheaper and less regulated neighbor Ethiopia has caused some firms to move there.

We learn that Germany's most venerated houses of roses have all production facilities outside of the country.

And we learn that the producer in Kenya or elsewhere gets some 19 cents a rose, of which less than 2 go to the workers, while a rose sells upwards of 3 Euros in German shops.

Forget the pesticides and the environmental aspects, what are we looking at? The standard explanation is: It is cheaper and more efficient to produce roses elsewhere, it's the free market at work.

This is true for many industrial products, from mobile phones to cars to power plants, but is it true for agriculture in relation to mild climate Northern countries?

Bananas, sure, Coffee, of course, tomatoes, well, for Ireland, yes, but plants that grow here like weed?

Walk around any small town in our neck of the hills, and you see more roses than you could ever want. Just not in the middle of February, so there is a climate aspect to growing roses here.

But in summer, your market roses still come from other countries. 

They surely cannot be produced more cheaply in Kenya, because I spend five minutes per bush to trim them in winter and another five minutes to spray them with tobacco tea when the mites start multiplying in Spring.

So, if growing them is cheaper in my garden, what is happening?

The old folks here in the hills still remember the big fruit trucks in summer and fall as if it had been only a few years ago. Wait, it has been only 30 or so years ago that trucks would come and leave a stack of pallets and baskets at the village co-op representative to be picked up full a week later.

The villagers would harvest plums, for example, from the orchards behind the houses, or from the fruit trees dotting meadows and pastures, take the to the collection point and be paid a few cents a pound after inspection and weighing.

In cash.

I used to make some money picking a bucket or two of cherries which the town grocery store would then sell to customers, says a German friend. When it was a bad year for cherries, the store would either buy them from a big vendor or simply have none. Of course, we did not use pesticides, so that was one worry less for the owner.

Are we saying that for some produce, the supply chain and the government are to blame for the fact that it is imported today?

To a large extent, yes.

The cost of the product is only one element of business, the management of suppliers is another, as demonstrated by the plum harvest organization and the cherries.

The government was more than happy with the development because it, too, benefited. First, the flow of money was more easily controlled, improving tax revenues. Second, regulations, like testing for pesticide residues could be expanded. 

And with a booming industrial economy, farm workers or part time farmers could be absorbed into that sector instead of becoming unemployed.

At some point, though, the situation changed. The further afield production went, the less control the government had over pesticides and taxes. When yo go from, say 1000 domestic producers to 10, it looks great. When these 10 move their production into another country with lax regulations, what do you do?

You have helped create not just a lobby by concentrating the money previously divided between 1000 producers in the hands of 10. You very likely have created a cartel because 10 people can easily fix prices over then phone, whereas 1000 need to leave a paper trail.

In Europe, you pursue EU wide standards, playing catch up and against bigger lobbying power.

You end up with some insane regulations, a grand total of five varieties of apples and supermarket chickens with a 60% contamination rate for campylobacter and other assorted nasties.

And in the meantime, you have raised a generation of children that believes fish actually grows in squares or has fingers. Without the Turkish run Kebab houses and Chinese takeout, half of modern day Germany would likely be malnourished or try to eat raw potatos.

There are very few exceptions to the modern war of the roses, one in Germany being bee keeping, which is still a small scale affair in this country.

If you feel like a new career, bee keeping in Germany might be right for you. There are generous government subsidies for bee startups.

It may be a coincidence that the web page "Legal and Insurance" on our state bee keepers association site has been displaying - in German, of course, "This page is being updated. Please come back later."

Are roses way too cheap? Everything is too cheap, if you ask the right person.

Our own roses and your own food: priceless.

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