“This is basically the last stand for cut flower production in the United States,” says Kasey Cronquist, scanning the thigh-high stretch of lilies growing in a Carpinteria greenhouse. Over the last 20 years, he explained, half of the state’s cut flower farmers have gone out of business (from 500 down to 250), withered by an influx of cheap blooms imported from Colombia. Through government subsidies and overseas aid, the South American country cornered 75 percent of America’s cut flower market in that time and now threatens a total takeover.
Since four out of five American cut flowers are cultivated in California soil — with Carpinteria Valley as the country's top growing area — the fate of the industry hinges upon this last bastion of productivity. To save it, Cronquist, CEO of the California Cut Flower Commission, worked alongside industry experts and lawmakers for three years to come up with a practical solution to inefficient shipping, which is what's knocking growers out of the game. Currently, multiple carriers run hundreds of routes, and California nurseries haven't ever been able to coordinate the volumes necessary to generate economical rates.
Headed by Representative Lois Capps, a bi-partisan Congressional group is lobbying hard to include a clause in the forthcoming Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that would authorize the Department of Agriculture to build a $15 million, 200,000-square-foot transportation depot in Oxnard. The hub would consolidate loads and trips, and drop shipping costs by as much as 30 to 40 percent. Capps, who represents 40 flower growers, the most of any congressmember, has drafted a number of letters to trade representatives over the years in support of the facility, recently bringing the issue to the attention of President Barack Obama and urging him to keep domestic nurseries in mind.
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