Colombia 2 10.1

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Country file

Flower TECH 2007, vol. 10/no. 1 www.HortiWorld.nl

Some 17,000 children under the age of seven join day care centres

which allows their mothers, who often head the household, to work

programs, it aims to cut the ‘violence

breeds violence’ cycle by training people

through a series of simple workshops on

how to defuse problems before they esca-

late, at home or work. Based on media-

tion, and by teaching negotiation skills,

the program became very popular, and

over 20,000 families have attended it. Now

with new USAID resources it aims at

50,000 families.

The list goes on with Continued

Education, School Reinforcement, and oth-

ers, in a total of US$ 20 million investedin 2005.”

Too good to be true?

All in all, by ‘acting locally’, a decisive step

has been taken in the right direction. Such

initiatives are a testimonial that the sector

has reached maturity and has more than

cold numbers to show for it.

The private sector is sharing the cost of

social progress with health, education, and

housing programs, areas where the govern-

ment alone has not been able to take care

in its entirety. Better-trained, fed and paid,

workers are naturally more productive in a

classical win-win situation, with further

gains for the environment and, finally, the

consumer as well. For profitable ornamen-tal sectors worldwide, this is a powerful

example of how much can be done when

there is a change of mind set.

Jairo Cadavid, Asocolflores communica-

tions director is growing familiar with the

sense of disbelief visitors experience upon

seeing a reality so different from its previ-

ous image and stereotypes. “We are an

open-door sector, and Asocolflores extendsits invitation to everyone who would like

to learn about us and our development”. n

Colombia’s Flower Power In spite of the weakening dollar,

Colombian flower exports

continue to grow and hope to

achieve an enviable US$ 1 billion.

By Mauricio C. Mathias

[email protected]

Already the main US flower sup-plier, and second largest exporter

worldwide, Colombia has

addressed several issues to arrive

where it´s at. Now, as part of the quest to

keep the growth momentum, technology

is being looked at closely. Even though

technology alone may not help growers

recoup margins lost to devaluation,

Ceniflores, a virtual research centre was

inaugurated by Asocolflores in 2004 to

address the growers’ need for know-how.

On the foreign front, the US Congress

approved a temporary renewal last

December to Colombia for the Andean

Trade Preferences Act (ATPA). This extends

the present tax-free entry of Colombian

goods into the US market; in the mean-

time it is expected that the Congresses of

both countries sanction Colombia’s defi-

nite entry into the Free Trade Agreement

(FTA). With that Colombia joins 15 other

countries in the Americas to sign bilateral

forms of the FTA.

Flower exports jumped up 29% in valuein 2005 alone, after an yearly average

growth of 5% in the previous years

between 1995 and 2004. According to

Ernesto Vélez, Asocolflores president of the

board of directors this “has been due to

productivity increases and production lag.

In 2005 we harvested expansions, replant-

ings and varietal changes undertaken by

growers two to three years before, and a

leveling off will probably take place in

2007”.

Flowers rank fourth among the seven

export ‘traditional commodities’ as listed

by the Colombian Ministry of Trade; with

in agricultural products it comes well

behind coffee, but earns twice as much as

bananas. Its social weight though is by far

more important, for these traditional crop

employ 1 and 0.8 workers/ha respectively

while with flowers it is 16.

Having exported US$ 906 million in

2005, with nearly 7,000 ha of floriculture

the Colombian flower sector employs

200,000 people directly - meaning thatalmost 1 million people derive their liveli

hood from flowers, in a country of 42 mi

lion people. Internally 700 flower farms

represent 300 companies that have the fo

lowing profile broken down by size and

export participation in the national total:

40 ¨big¨ companies (50+ hectares) export

50%, 60 ¨medium¨ (20+ hectares) export

25%, while 200 ¨Small¨ (- 20 hectares )

export 25%. Together they export their

flowers to 76 different countries.

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Country file

Flower TECH 2007, vol. 10/no. 1 1 www.HortiWorld.nl

came from: there was no need to spend

money replicating a physical infra-struc-

ture that was already there. What we did

then was to catalogue researchers and their

specialties, so now we have projects set up

with specialists at several Colombian uni-

versities, as well as with international

experts, without fixed costs.”

On the ‘demand’ side, Rebecca mentions

some of the projects. “One of them con-

cerns the effect of plant nutrition on the

occurrence of downy mildew, and that´s

been underway in partnership with CIAT(International Centre for Tropical

Agriculture). Another one is about flower

post-harvest, an international collabora-

tion with the University of Florida”.

Research results are subsequently present-

ed to growers in workshops. Two other

projects focus on precise entomological

classification, essential for checking quar-

antine pests. More information on their

research and publications can be seen at

www.ceniflores.org.

Interdependence with US

According to Ernesto Vélez, “the relative

importance of the flower trade for both the

US and Colombia can not be underesti-

mated. Not only do 60% of flowers sold in

the US come from Colombia, but the spe-cific share of some of the flowers in that

market can be as high as 98% for alstroe-

merias, 97% for carnations, 82% for mums

and poms and 70% for roses. From the

Colombian perspective, 85 % of their

flowers go the USA”.Involvement in the European market has

fluctuated around 15% of Colombian

flower exports, over the past five years,

with substantial growth in the UK and

Russian markets. n

The level of technology is steadily increasing backed by the

Colombian Centre for Innovation in Floriculture.

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Colombia 2 10.1