The crash of the global flower trade
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
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.
Google ran their IPO as a Dutch auction, and latency didn't matter.
Even in a Dutch auction you are generally allowed to change your bid after you make it.
“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.”
IPOs are more like the sealed-bid variant.
literally
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.
The basic economics comes next.
If people needed them, the store wouldn't be closed as being a non-essential business.
Also to note: workers get $70/mo, while all other middle-men involved get more.
The world has more than enough food growing to feed everyone.
It's a logistics problem. In this case, when everyone working to pick the plants and distribute the food makes everyone sick, the system fails.
That's quite a statement you made there, especially in the context of Africa.
Sauce: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6198966/
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.
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.
If there was shortage of food, it's price would be up and farmers would plant food crops.
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.
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.
That's just as easily (or not!) answered the same as:
> So what about all the workers that cannot pay their mortgages now?
Or course it matters. And the sum total of all that suffering, disruption, destruction is quite a lot to get your head around.
Weddings canceled in the US leading to massive supply line disruptions, and ultimately, starving families in Africa.
I think it all matters a bit. That you can think of a worse problem is hardly consoling.
In NYS Cuomo issued an Executive Order allowing people to obtain a marriage license remotely and allowing clerks to perform ceremonies via video conference.
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.
If there is an industry that should be strictly localized, it's this one.
How's about a jet airplane that runs on cut flower waste? taps head
But is spending irreplaceable fossil fuel energy on what are basically short-lived ornaments rational? I'd say no.
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.
Surely solar power could help.
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..
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.)
:-)
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!
Why?
> bizarre and grotesque custom
And comparing it to slavery?
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.
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) :)
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.
But I do agree about local. I mean who doesn't want to walk by something like this everyday - https://scontent-yyz1-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t50.2886-16/93565...
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.
Few things are “essential”. But that’s hardly the point.
Anyways, is love essential?
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.
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.
The exporting surely is not essential.
I just hope society gradually moves to a state where everything but the most essential of essential stuff is produced and consumed.
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?
Welcome to civilisation. We do things than aren't survival focused.
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.
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.
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 only live for the essentials, what do we live for?
Until society self adjusts, to minimize the total carbon emissions per capita to a sustainable level, we might have to do with only essentials.
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?
It is why the Fed specifically segregates "durable goods" in inflation, GDP, and price indexes.
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?
So there's that.
> 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)
That's the scale of globalization.
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.