In South America, Colombian flowers have emerged as a stable and very marketable international cash crop, earning up to five times per acre what fruit crops yield. To meet the high aesthetic standards of the United States and European markets (the largest for cut flowers) and to kill insects possibly harbored in the plants, growers use any means at their disposal including banned and unregistered pesticides, synthetic growth hormones and fertilizers and an illiterate, unpaid workforce that is 60% women. (World Resources Institute).
Third World producers grow roses in sterilized soil in greenhouses fumigated as often as once a day with fungicides, insecticides, memoticides, and herbicides. One fifth of these chemicals are carcinogens or toxins that have been restricted for health reasons in the USA, and nearly two-thirds of Colombia's 75,000 flower workers suffer from maladies including nausea, impaired vision, conjunctivitis, rashes, asthma, miscarriages, stillbirths, congenital malformations associated with pesticide exposure. The first several weeks of the year can be particularly hazardous: workers spend up to 18 hours per day, seven days a week, in poorly ventilated greenhouses producing the more than 100 million pesticide-laden roses that Americans buy every February. (Harpers Magazine, February 2001).
Gardening is my hobby, my therapy. I spend many hours working in my garden but probably many more just contemplating how beautiful it is. I have the luxury of gardening for pleasure, not for income or livelihood. How fortunate I am that I can choose to garden organically and healthfully and to not use pesticides that would harm me or other living things. I heal myself and honor my choices when I reach out to honor women who are not so fortunate.
