Yesterday’s historic and largely bipartisan passage of three free trade trade bills by Congress was not quite celebrated here in Santa Barbara County, for a deal to help cut flower growers in Carpinteria compete with Colombian growers was not included as part of the bill.
As The Independent reported here last month, Carp’s growers — as well as all those in the rest of California and the United States — have seen their industry hammered by often inferior Colombian imports because, in part, the South American country’s growers are subsidized by money to fight the drug war. To help level the playing field, Rep. Lois Capps and the state’s growers — a vast majority of which are in Carpinteria, the country’s largest cut flower growing area — proposed an amendment to the bill that would have built a $15 million, 200,000-square-foot transportation depot in Oxnard that studies have shown would reduce shipping costs by 25 percent or more. But that, and every other amendment, was cut out of the bill due to the “delicate compromise” that was needed to get the bills passed. As such, Capps voted against the bill, and Carp’s growers are left hoping to find federal funding sometime in the near future.
“This agreement makes permanent trade preferences that have devastated California’s cut flower industry, which produces 80 percent of domestically grown flowers,” said Capps on the House of Representatives floor in her opposition speech this week. “This agreement continues millions of dollars in subsidies for Colombian flower growers, but provides no such support for our domestic growers. California’s growers have a plan to cut costs and compete globally, but they can’t do it alone. It’s only fair that our domestic flower growers get a little help from their government too.”
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Santa Barbara Independent