As an aside, I've worked at Flora Holland, the company (a cooperative owned by a hundred and then some growers) that orchestrates a lot of the logistics; the clip in the article with the carts is a small part of their transit halls. They start in the early morning with the flowers and plants coming out of cold storage and auction them off early on; before midday, the halls are quiet and empty again, hundreds if not thousands of trucks full of carts and containers having been filled and sent off by then. Each and every day.
Besides the actual shipping of plants etc, one of their major logistical challenges is managing the hundreds of thousands of iron carts (pallet sized) and millions of plastic containers (where they put the actual flowers in), those all have codes and deposits to manage, and every day they have to calculate how many they need. (same with how many temps they need, they can vary the amount of people they employ by hundreds if not thousands per day. Highest amounts are around valentine's day and mother's day).
Software-wise it's also interesting. I can't mention much about their current day development, but one factoid is for example the auction hall itself. It's a Dutch auction (see wikipedia), so response times is crucial. It turns out that the exact position you're sitting in that hall already has an effect on the response time and whether you win or lose an auction. They tried to put it on the internet as well so the buyers could do it from home, but they couldn't solve the latency problem (at least not to the satisfaction of the buyers).
Nowadays though, less and less is sold via the auction, and less and less actually passes through the main venue; there's a lot more orders in advance (like shops ordering roses a year in advance for valentine's day), and there's a lot more direct grower-to-customer traffic.
Why does latency matter?
In a dutch auction, latency shouldn't matter at all. You can take bids in advance up to a deadline, or you can do multiple rounds of bidding.
Google ran their IPO as a Dutch auction, and latency didn't matter.
From Wikipedia, these markets use the “clock” variant, with the first bidder winning:
“Most commonly, it means an auction in which the auctioneer begins with a high asking price in the case of selling, and lowers it until some participant accepts the price, or it reaches a predetermined reserve price. This has also been called a clock auction or open-outcry descending-price auction. This type of auction shows the advantage of speed since a sale never requires more than one bid. It is strategically similar to a first-price sealed-bid auction.”
If there are 10 lots and eleven bidders the last bidder loses and has to go high. If you realize others are going high quick enough you can up your bid before someone else and thus not lose.
Even in a Dutch auction you are generally allowed to change your bid after you make it.
It’s a tough market because there’s really no inventory. At least some produce can be kept in storage for a little while. When the flowers are ready they either need to be sold or they go bad.
Then of course all the “regulars” have stopped buying. In big cities like NYC the big office buildings usually all have fresh flowers deferred weekly for the lobby but that’s all stopped. Weddings, galas and other events are all canceled.
>Currently, worldwide food production exceeds 2,750 kilocalories per person per day [15], which exceeds the amount required to feed the global population. Although these data account for farm-level waste, they do not include the estimated 20% household food waste [44]. Hence, currently available calories are likely to be about 2,200 kilocalories per person per day, which is sufficient for the world’s current population [23].
Right under that they note that our food groups are out of whack, but in terms of calories, we could feed everybody... we just don't. It's not just a problem of profit motives; as GP noted, distribution is a real issue. Many places with famine problems also have issues with government stability, and dropping crates of food from the sky just gives food to the people with guns and vehicles who can secure it. If you think about this problem from the point of view of a legitimately charitable entity with tons of cash, it's still not entirely clear how to end world hunger without either propping up small dictatorships or undermining local sovereignty. The last mile is a hard problem. Edit: and obviously, some people eat too much, and we throw away food because of weird profit motives. I'm not trying to downplay those causes of human misery, just trying to point out that there are other hard decisions to be made on the path to feeding all humans.
> That's quite a statement you made there, especially in the context of Africa.
As the [dead] sibling states, it is absolutely true, and has been true since the maturing of the Green Revolution in the 70's. Famines since then have all been caused by war and politics, not by weather or crop failures.
I can tell you that in the US, decorative plants are so much higher a cash crop than food that it would not be worthwhile.
Think of tobacco or marijuana vs. tomatoes...
On the other hand, some greenhouse businesses I know that do grow some food can be classified as essential businesses and stay open.
Actually there is an interesting optimization problem here. You are a greenhouse grower with a certain number of acres: which plants do you grow to maximize profits? You can grow the most profitable one, but then you don't have a very diverse stock, so you might not get as many buyers. On the other hand, many crops are expensive (in terms of seedling cost, greenhouse heating costs during the winter, opportunity costs because they take a lot time in the greenhouse).. You could sell planning software for this.
They already use software. I called a pecan orchard in the southern part of my state. When I asked when they would be ready to harvest they gave me a specific date. When questioned she said they take measurements of the nuts, a few other inputs, and their software gives them an ideal harvest date. They roasted the nuts themselves so they could give you a very accurate ship date early in the season.
There isn't a shortage of food. Farmers growing food are essential and doing what they did before. There are logistical issues. Restaurants order food differently than grocery stores so some supply chains are overfull while others are empty. Both are looking to the other for help but the setup makes it in efficient
It's easier to make stories about businesses than people, but I really think we need more people stories now.
Rather than the flower trade having a downturn, what about all the people that planned weddings? A delayed wedding is apparently hardly a disaster, but what does it mean if nobody can get married for a half a year, what happens?
I think in most jurisdictions it's possible to get legally married, just not be celebrated in the traditional way.
So wedding celebrations have been delayed by 6 months or a year, well so what?
It's such a small thing to focus on and worry about when almost the whole global economy has been put on pause. There's almost nothing that hasn't been affected, the inability to immediately celebrate in a traditional over-the-top way is of such a minor consequence in comparison.
Well, my neighbor owns a flower shop, and she doesn't know if she'll make it. She was giving away the flowers to the neighbors for a while, so they wouldn't just go to waste, but I suppose she's run out now. She's dipped into her savings, but she's not sure how long that will last. Her bank screwed her over on the first round of PPE, so let's see what the second brings. She wonders why she can't open to serve customers curbside, like so many other businesses with questionable essential-ness can. Even then, who knows who would buy flowers, but a few customers are better than zero customers, I suppose. A people story.
Does it matter that people can(not) get married? It is just a contract and a festivity. If you plan for something big, and it gets cancelled, that does suck, but all kind of things get/got cancelled. There are much worse problems. People became and become homeless, unemployed, ill.
Nothing happens. Wedding businesses will lose revenue in 2020. For everyone else it is just a bunch of delayed parties.
In NYS Cuomo issued an Executive Order allowing people to obtain a marriage license remotely and allowing clerks to perform ceremonies via video conference.
Cut flower export sounds like climate travesty; they are not essential, they are fragile (requiring energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight) and after all that effort... they have a shelf-life of a week.
If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.
> [Image of Kenyan woman picking roses in a Kenyan greenhouse]
> The work is grueling, with long shifts in steamy greenhouses, and laborers earn as little as $70 a month, but it’s a steady paycheck in a country where those can be hard to come by.
By comparison, that monthly wage of $70 is less than a day of minimum wage in the US. That's why it's more efficient to make a global energy-intensive cold chain logistics and air-freight network.
(That and the price of carbon pollution isn't priced into the supply chain)
The US saw it as a good alternative to the cocaine trade .. "To offer incentives for alternative crops, the US under the administration of President George HW Bush passed the Andean Trade Preference Act in 1991, which dropped duties on agricultural products like flowers for Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia."
You may need to enable your "showdead" option to see some of them. I'm not sure how I've said anything more uncivil and aggressive than calling people "incels", lingo that is more suited for Reddit and 4chan than HN.
I'm just baffled at how some people get so angry at someone for saying maybe we shouldn't be killing something.
That's not what they said and I was not aware I was replying to the same person, if indeed I was.
People going around and reductively deciding to morally posit that people who like flowers are morally repugnant should be assuredly told their opinion doesn't matter.
They called displaying cut flowers a
> bizarre and grotesque custom
And then went on to compare it with human slavery.
If you don't think that's ridiculous on a whole number of levels (some of which levels speak to the psychology of the person), you need to take a long hard look at yourself.
I would phrase it as "mispriced" as has much of the consumption that has occured for the last couple of hundred years. Seems the atmosphere is starting to call in the line of credit.
Thank you. This is quite worrisome to me personally, as my family lives on the south of Spain and a good deal of our livelihood is from olive farming. It feels like being tied to the railroad and watching a train barrel down toward you from the distance.
I don't agree about not essential. If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Music is not essential, and why can't everyone dress like Zuck etc.
In my country garlands for hindu ceremonies are big business. I guess that is as essential as it gets for cut flowers. However, these largely depend on local suppliers.
> someone will show up and say Music is not essential
Depends on your definition of essential, I'd argue 100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers. Food is essential, water is essential, medicine is essential, shelter is essential. Some tulips imported for 2000km away aren't. I mean, do we really have to debate this ?
If we go there, sooner or later, someone will show up and say Ketchup is essential.
100% of the world population would survive just fine without music or flowers
No they wouldn't, they'd get depressed and eventually become either withdrawn or violent. I'm not arguing for a wasteful and environmentally destructive flower trade, but against your notion that mere maintenance of the biological organism is sufficient. Universals like music and flowers serve an important role in social cohesion.
Can I decide what is essential to me and you decide what is essential to you? And then if there are not enough of me, maybe I have to pay more? And maybe if there are not enough of you, you pay more for those that provide those essentialities? Hm... This reminds me of something.
Up until someone decides that food is also not essential for the majority of the population and we will just need to drink some sort of universal soy and lentil based smoothie. :)
To be fair, even though it rings of a dystopian oppressive society, there might be a day where, due to impact of climate change, a lot of pleasures that we take for granted will be ultra regulated.
I just hope society gradually moves to a state where everything but the most essential of essential stuff is produced and consumed.
I think the problem is who gets to determine what is essential. One man's essential activity is another man's superfluous activity.
Music is a great example. Sure we could do without it, but life is for the living. Experiences are not essential to the physical functions of life but without them life would quickly become depressing, at which point, what are we protecting?
I am not an expert but I doubt it. Double poly tunnels are can keep in a decent amount of heat during the day, and at night most plants can take a decent dose of cold provided it's not frost. However I'm not an expert.
But is spending irreplaceable fossil fuel energy on what are basically short-lived ornaments rational? I'd say no.
It's likely the place where that energy is expended is not being taken into account. Injecting water vapour and combustion products from burning jet fuel high in the sky is probably a lot more harmful than just the amount of energy is being consumed.
The skies in summer here are criss-crossed with dispersed contrails. It might help a little with global warming by increasing the reflectance of the atmosphere but it's sure ugly.
It seems employing Western Europeans to plant and pick flowers in Western Europe would mean expensive flowers, and they've apparently calculated it's cheaper to let Kenyans plant, pick, ship the flowers to big Boeings, for pilots to burn fuel flying the Boeings to the Netherlands, and for the flowers to be distributed around W. Europe (and apparently USA) that way.
It' the same with people screaming why their country doesn't have their own PPE manufacturers; because in non-crisis times, the hospitals would buy from the lowest bidder, and those would be manufacturers with cheap developing country labor..
Well, I assume the article isn't covering the whole story (because otherwise it'd be a long story detracting from the point, so fair enough.) The Netherlands has a lot of greenhouses. I have no idea what the ratio of flowers to vegetables in them is though.
Yup. Humans collectively are responsible for a lot of unnecessary greenhouse gases just because they want to have a pretty wedding or a party.
I can understand the argument about money, economy, livelihood, etc., but IMHO some things ought to be regulated to avoid situations where a bunch of roses carry a non trivial amount of carbon footprint.
Wouldn't it be possible to use locally grown flowers?
Completely agree. At the same time this wouldn't be the focus of my ire, look at the risk impact of July and beef production - a nightmare and arguably also not essential as we have cheaper, more resource efficient and more nutritious options.
Flowers like you say lasts a week for multiple people. Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life.
To say they are "they are not essential" is saying life itself is not essential, just eat powder and sit in a room if this is the case.
I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should.
And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.
It sustains their life and thus serves an important purpose.
> Also unlike kitschy stuff you buy and just sits there forgotten, you appreciate them, you have to somewhat care for them, they add value to life.
Kitschy stuff is another ecological disaster, separately from cut flowers. People who appreciate flowers generally buy potted ones and care for them; cut plants are meant as gifts or decorations, and they get thrown away immediately (think of all the decorative flowers on social events) or after they wither (ain't nobody has time to care for the gift roses in the vase, or even notice them).
> I feel like what you are saying is you don't like flowers so no one else should.
I think GP is saying something else. They're taking a systems-level view. Flowers are cool, but we've created a system in which huge amount of energy is used to manufacture and ship around what amounts to reified mating signals, that could be manufactured and shipped locally instead. Now it would be fine in the era of free energy and matter replicators, but we're still in the era of scarcity and looming climate change. So it's fair to ask questions about unnecessary waste in the system.
Surely folks on HN understand that, if it was economically feasible to compete on this, then locally sourced flower start-ups would've already become a thing?
Yes shipping and storage seem wasteful, but there are economies of scale involved when centralizing production to areas with the right climate, with desirable soil qualities, with expertise in planting such flowers, etc.
To help local flower growers win out, we would need to increase the cost of shipping/storage/etc. (maybe because we think they are not properly pricing in externalities?). Then we're back in the realm of tariffs and protectionism, which is its own can of worms; personally, I think we can complicate our understanding of free trade, and reasonably choose to impose artificial costs/penalties when it comes to climate protection or environmental goals (as opposed to, propping up certain industries just because they're better at lobbying).
Consider that, it is cheaper/more-efficient for fisherman/crabmen in Alaska or the PNW to send their catch to China for processing (filleting, canning, etc.), before shipping it back to the US for retail. I always found that to be fascinating, that supply chains are such that, it's more economical to outsource the processing of seafood, than for the fisherman to dump their catch to a local processing facility that then sends it out for retail.
Economic efficiency and waste are not the same thing, unless you really are pricing in all the externalities. Also, while the concept of comparative advantage is elegant and powerful, excess fealty to it creates monocultures, much as too much sugar brings on diabetes.
And I really think it's callous for us to forget the "More than 150,000 people now toil on Kenyan flower farms, many of them women." These are the poorest of the poor, to take away what little they have is pretty thoughtless.
I'm willing to bet that given the choice many of them would rather not engage in such toil, and the reason they're poor is because wages are kept so low that they have little opportunity to save enough to make such choices.
Nobody buys flowers because they are trying to better the lives of agricultural laborers. I always find myself doubting the sincerity of such appeals, which only seem to arise in discussions of externalities. Many years ago I worked at an industrial floristry company for about a year, doing the manual work of handling the flowers as they came in from abroad and putting them in storage or preparing them for sale. I liked the work OK but I didn't get up every day thinking 'thank heavens so many people love the flowers we sell.' The pay wasn't that great and when I found a better job I took it.
If we continue to live beyond our means, what's the point? It's like rats fighting for scraps onboard a sinking ship... sure, I'll fight for the bigger tastier crumb, but the ship's still going down. If it's not us that will drown, it's the next generation.
Alternative framing: rather than thinking of it as "subsisting on the minimum essentials", how do you build a legacy that will continue to outlive you in perpetuity?
I don't even understand the whole cut flower thing. It's morbid.
You cultivate something that is living and beautiful. Then you kill it, and bring the corpse inside, to essentially observe the once-living thing's decay.
(And don't get me started on giving cut flowers as gifts. If your host is an animal lover, you don't pick up roadkill on your way over, either.)
Merely using words with shock value isn't going to help your case. Yes when you sneeze often in spring it's because of plant bukkake in your nose and when you eat saffron you are munching on plant dicks. What's your point?
I have learned that vivid imagery, when used sparingly, helps to drive the point through.
For the record: I have never liked cut flowers as a concept, and even find flower vase the second most useless household item that one can own. But as to your snark, I actually DO refer to the high-pollen times as plant-orgy season. Not all the time, but often enough.
Hiding the facts of something with sugar-coated words isn’t going to help your case. Yes most bizarre and grotesque customs continue as long as agree upon them without questioning their value. It was also perfectly fine to own people as property and throw virgins into volcanoes, once. What’s your point?
When has it ever been fine to throw virgins into volcanoes? And slavery has always been opposed by huge numbers of people, theses things have never been considered "fine" or comparable to having flowers in a vase.
Whilst I agree with your general point, some of what you said isn't quite right.
Human sacrifice has a long history. Though it was, as far as I'm aware, a rare and drastic thing to do. For example there were a few instances in classical Roman history when human slaves were sacrificed. This was done in very dire situations, think pandemic or important battle, and often in earlier Roman periods. It was also actually quite common in Aztec and Mayan, though in differing degrees. They didn't however use volcanoes
Also in these classical times human slavery was much more wide spread and accepted. It was a very different situation to modern and colonial slavery. Some examples of it being wide spread being helots in ancient Greece, and the slave economy of Rome. The influx of slaves in the gallic wars lead to the political upheaval that let Cesar come to power, with "cheap" labor taking work from Roman citizens.
To summarize, having flowers in a vase is completely normal, and likening it to slavery or human sacrifice is dumb. Also history is interesting!
Flowers are nature's billboards to promote pollination. I let a lot of trees and plants run wild around my home, partly because I enjoy looking at bees. Plants flower and then let the flowers die as soon as they've served their purpose; and the competition between plants for space and sunlight is also aggressive. If you let nature take its course, you have to get used to seeing lots of death as different plants kill each other off and run into the limits of their environment. Also, a lot of the real action is happening underground, where most of the nutrients are - sunlight and CO2 are only part of the equation, and for some plants being trimmed back is no more of a big deal than getting a haircut.
I get your point, but it's also a reflection of your own psychological state. People mostly like flowers to bring some nature into their home; they could also cultivate houseplants, but that's a lot more work and if you try cultivating multiple plants together they are likely to either kill each other or attract bugs. The transience of flowers isn't inherently morbid, for the same reason you can be vegetarian but still wear woolen clothes.
> If your host is an animal lover, you don't pick up roadkill on your way over, either.
It all comes down to the "plants don't have feelings/aren't really alive" bias we have.
Some people will go to great contorted lengths to justify the destruction of something, using words like tradition, aesthetics or honor and justice (like for war) or just "the way it has always been", and if you try to call them out on it, they'll get angry at you for trying to stop them from destroying something (as seen in the other comments here) :)
It's an attractive.view as it's easy to understand but ultimately simple view of the world which ignores a range of human experience. Similar to the case for not eating meat, or not going to war. Both of which are noble and good but are more complex deeper down.
As someone from the Netherlands and pro-EU, this kind of thinking is not helpful at all. My knee-jerk response to this statement is to say something like:
We have been saying that to Spain and Italy for years. Spain and Italy have been violating the stability pact for years, during the best economic times. And now, when the crisis hits, they want to use our money, the money we saved by increasing retirement age, increasing taxes, and cutting costs. Money that we really need to stimulate our own economy.
But that would just lead to more arguing which is not going to help anyone. What I will say is that the Dutch government immediately offered help, but offered it in donations and through the Emergency Stability Mechanism, which is precisely what was agreed upon previously. This help comes with conditions to make sure that Italy and Spain do not become dependent on Dutch support, but can actually take care of themselves in the future.
To say that means that 'The Netherlands' (as if everyone in the Netherlands, especially the people in the flower business is represented by our government) didn't care about people dying is an insult to the people hit by this.
In the end, the Dutch will have to deal with the mutualisation of dept if they choose to stay in the Eurozone. I believe it's pretty much unavoidable as both Germany and France seem to already have agreed on the matter:
Sure, that should really say the Dutch government - edited to say so, but the point stands - you should not generalise about entire nations being profligate, and you should not scapegoat certain groups of people as deserving of suffering.
The EU should be about solidarity, which includes economic solidarity. At its best it has pulled nations like Spain and Portugal from the brink of financial ruin after war/dictatorship to thriving democracies. At its worst it has consigned entire nations to collective punishment (Greece) just to play to domestic audiences in certain countries.
It's usually wrong to stigmatise groups as deserving of suffering and it is not in anybody's interest to do so.
Not really. The response from the Dutch government was that they did want to help, but did not want to hold the responsibility for paying back the loan from the countries. Which would have been the case with Eurobonds.
Instead, they wanted to help but had some financial reform obligations tied to it, which Italy and Spain were not happy with.
"Mr Hoekstra also infuriated some of his finance minister colleagues this week when he suggested that Brussels “investigate” why some economies did not have the fiscal headway to fight a downturn — a veiled dig at Italy and others for failing to reform in benign times. An EU diplomat quoted by Volkskrant described the slight as a “middle finger to the south”."
The point of the article is to trace the ramifications of the shutdown from Bloomberg's plausible audience all the way down the economic ladder to Kenyan flower workers making a couple grand per year. I suspect that the contrast is intentional.
The repercussions of the global economic depression we are entering are going to be long lasting and it’s not going to in any way bounce back in a few months or even a few years. A lot of industries are going to completely collapse.
E-commerce is booming, courier services are hiring, small mom and pop local retail is quickly embracing internet orders. In my country we are introducing parcelmats at scale and preparing for 'foodmats' or 'fridgemats'.
In general replacing cheap labor with automatisation to avoid human contact will be a thing. Retail, restaurants will look more like in Japan.
Local tourism seems like a sure bet as people probably won't trust claims there is no virus in places like Bali or Thailand. No to mention there will be no cheap flights for years to come.
All the WFH will be a huge opportunity for real-estate and construction very soon as people will start leaving dense urban areas.
Some countries in EU will reform farming and bring strategic production back home which will be huge kick to economy. And there will be unlimited funding for that a'la Marshall plan and Eisenhover era.
Local restaurants, florists, barbers, waiters - collateral damage.
It may. I have an uncle who would never admit it but when his dairy farm finally went bankrupt he started getting a regular paycheck, vacation for the first time in his life and my cousins couldn't get off the farm fast enough. Sometimes being forced to something new can help people do things they wouldn't try otherwise.
This sounds a bit wrong under the circumstances, and is a somewhat flawed statement anyway, but I have often thought that "Failure closes just one door, Success closes all the others!"
Besides the actual shipping of plants etc, one of their major logistical challenges is managing the hundreds of thousands of iron carts (pallet sized) and millions of plastic containers (where they put the actual flowers in), those all have codes and deposits to manage, and every day they have to calculate how many they need. (same with how many temps they need, they can vary the amount of people they employ by hundreds if not thousands per day. Highest amounts are around valentine's day and mother's day).
Software-wise it's also interesting. I can't mention much about their current day development, but one factoid is for example the auction hall itself. It's a Dutch auction (see wikipedia), so response times is crucial. It turns out that the exact position you're sitting in that hall already has an effect on the response time and whether you win or lose an auction. They tried to put it on the internet as well so the buyers could do it from home, but they couldn't solve the latency problem (at least not to the satisfaction of the buyers).
Nowadays though, less and less is sold via the auction, and less and less actually passes through the main venue; there's a lot more orders in advance (like shops ordering roses a year in advance for valentine's day), and there's a lot more direct grower-to-customer traffic.