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[Editor's Note: Canadians love a fresh bouquet, and not only in springtime. Here in B.C., flower purchases are up by a fifth in the last four years, and most of those blooms come from far, far away. The majority of fresh flowers sold here are imported, often from developing countries where nursery conditions have attracted criticism for being hard on the environment and exploitive of workers. So-called 'fair-trade' certifications, modeled on programs that certify everything from indulgences like coffee and chocolate to raw materials like lumber, now claim to assure customers that certain bouquets can be good for the conscience as well as the morale. But do such labels really represent better practices where our flowers are grown? Supported by Tyee readers through a Tyee Fellowship, reporter Gabriela Perdomo has been checking out the high valleys of South America's Andes that produce more than half our imported flowers. Here is her fourth dispatch. (Read earlier reports here, here and here.)]
Spider mites are a rose's Public Enemy Number One. Barely as big as a sesame seed, they gather under the bush's leaves, sucking nourishment, and life, out its moist cells. The tiny predators reproduce quickly and can kill a rose plant in a matter of days. Within a month, a single mature female spider mite can populate a greenhouse with a million offspring. Still, Angela Ramirez refers to them as "those individuals." A biologist, Ramirez is in charge of breeding "good mites" -- tiny cannibals that feed off their vegetarian cousins.
Ramirez's "good" mites are grain-sized foot soldiers in an effort to reduce the use of pesticides at Elite Flower, one of the largest flower growers in Colombia. The project is part of a company-wide program to use fewer agrochemicals, including herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers. Elite is among several South American farms recently certified by the Rainforest Alliance for their sustainable agricultural practices. Rainforest, along with the competing Fairtrade label, is one of the seals of approval for good social or environmental practices you're most likely to see on flowers purchased in B.C. Now, I'd come to Colombia's prize flower-growing region to see what those labels represent on the ground.
