February 13, 2019 • 37 mins
As Valentine's Day approaches, so to do the roses. Where do Valentine's bouquets come from? What's it like for women working in the flower industry? Tune in to learn more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph. Mom
never told you. In my high school, we had this
Valentine's Day rose tradition. It was sort of like the
(00:27):
Anonymous Rose program. Throughout the day, roses got delivered with
a printed anonymous message, and I think they were like
two dollars to send one. A white rose meant that
it came from a friend, and a red rose meant
that it came from someone that you were dating, or
that was interested in you some kind of romantic interest.
(00:49):
A secret admirer. They might say. Um, and I did
not really date in high school, but I did have
excellent friends. I'm very very fortunate. One Valentinie's Day, I
got a d aculous amount of red roses delivered to
me with messages like from your secret admirer, or I'm
superior to that other secret admirer, or don't listen to
(01:09):
those other secret admirers. It was hilarious. I loved it
because Valentine's Day, especially in school, could be really stressful
when you're single, or honestly even if you're not. But
in a different way, like those boxes in elementary school
where you put your Valentine's cards in them and not
getting a card. Was this really pressing concern? Kind of
(01:32):
like that over the years, I've never gotten flowers from
anyone I was in a relationship with. Now that I
say that, that sounds really bitter, but I'm not bitter
about it because they probably knew I would rather have
food or drinks. For some reason, I did date three
people that had birthdays on Valentine's Day. That was not
a requirement, just kept happening and that was stressful. But anyway,
(01:55):
this Valentine's Day, here's a classic episode about the flower industry.
Whatever you celebrate, Single Awareness Day, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day
meal above, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom
never told you from house Stop works dot com. Hello,
(02:19):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and may I also say Happy Valentine's Day. Eve. Wait,
thank you, You're welcome. Are you gonna get me anything? Um,
I'm gonna give you a podcast straight from the heart.
Oh yeah, well we better get started then. Yeah. Uh.
(02:40):
And today we're going to talk about flowers because it
is the typical Valentine's Day gift from one beloved to
another or just to a friend. My dad sometimes will
send me flowers on Valentine's Day, which is always a
kind gesture. Um. But valentine Stay also reminds me of
(03:01):
high school because I don't know how your school worked, Caroline,
but mine it was a really big deal, and it
was a big deal that made me probably unnecessarily so,
but it made me really uncomfortable because there was this
competitive edge too Valentine's Day because the whole week or
(03:24):
two beforehand, kids would go around whatever kind of like
class officers would go around and they would sell carnations
for a dollar that you could give to other classmates.
So obviously all little high school sweethearts would give each
other carnations and you would either get them in white
for friendship, pink for love, and read for passion. In
(03:49):
high school, yeah, and so you always kept your fingers
cross that your crush was going to give you a
red one, that there would be a random red rogue
or cardom scene. Yeah, random carnation, uh, sitting in your locker.
The most popular kids would have collected just a bundle
of carnations by the end of the day. So yeah,
(04:13):
I really those that kind of obvious competition where you
can count up your number of friends and lovers always
really put me on edge. So that's what I associate
valda'd si with, cheap carnations and high school angst. Interesting
I associated with buying a new shirt with a heart
(04:35):
on it every year, wearing it to school. Do you
wear Valentine's themed clothes? Not anymore, but now we um
in well know, I'm sorry. That was middle school and
middle school we had, we had dances, and so I
would always buy like a heart themed T shirt because
I was really cool like that. And now we just
have those celebrity montage movies that we can watch by
(05:00):
ourselves with the bottle. That's a terrible movie. Valentine's Day, obviously,
is one of the largest days in the floral industry,
seconded only by Mother's Day. And just to give a
hint of how we're going to turn this Valentine's bouquet
into a withered handful of terrifying facts, um, we know
(05:27):
the valand Tine's Day is really really booming for the
floral industry because women on the plantations in Africa and
South America harvesting all those flowers have been working up
to sixty hours a week in preparation for it. Some
of the flower farms in South America triple the number
of of workers, most of them women, leading up to
(05:47):
Valentine's Day. So yeah, January, February, March late, and you
know then leading up to Mother's Day, it's big business. Yeah.
Just I mean, if that doesn't doesn't warm your heart
for this romantic okay, Asian, but let's go back to
a simpler time. Yes, the Victorian era, so simple and
(06:08):
yet so repressed, and that's what leads us to floriography,
which is the language of flowers. And in the Victorian
area era, excuse me, it was really popular to give
flowers that had meaning. You know, you've all I feel
like everybody's heard about you know, different flowers have different meanings,
and you know you mentioned the different colors of carnations,
(06:30):
the same thing for roses. Different rose colors have meaning
everything from from sympathy and remembrance to love and passion. Well,
in the Victorian era, you know, emotions that couldn't be vocalized.
You know, you couldn't just walk up to somebody be
like I love you. I mean maybe you could if
you were like that, if you were very full award um.
(06:51):
But people tended to give their their their crush or
whatever um a bouquet that meant something, and everything from
the flowers themselves down to the way you handed the
bouquet over meant something. So the way you tied the bow,
the hand you used, and God forbid you handed the
bouquet over upside down, that was just what that meant,
(07:15):
the opposite of what the flowers were supposed to mean.
You give someone an opposite day bouquet, fairly, fairly opposite
day has been around a lot longer than I thought.
I mean, talk about salt in the wound, I know,
but okay, so so every you know, bouquets. The flowers
had a lot of meaning, and Beverly Seaton, in her
(07:35):
book The Language of Flowers History, talks about how home
manuals of the time illustrated very elaborate arrangements of cut flowers.
So if you were high falutin, if you were in
high society, you were expected to have a lot of
cut flowers in your home. But not just in vases,
not just going to the store and putting them in
a glass of water. Now you were expected to have
these elaborate arrangements because you were expected to either have
(07:57):
the um the help around your house to help you
arrange them, or you were expected to take the time
to do it yourself to have these beautiful floral arrangements
in your home. And this also wasn't just a product
of Western domesticity. It reminds me of ikebana, which is
the Japanese art of flower arranging, which is one of
the typical skills acquired by geishas. Yeah, it's it was
(08:20):
definitely uh also seen as a womanly pursuit. But I
want to know what some flowers mean. If you were
to give me a special bouquet, if I were to
give you an iris, it would mean that I had faith, hope,
and wisdom in you or hoped to impart that to you. Carnations,
which there's a lot of talk of carnations and sex
(08:41):
in the city, and we'll go into it, but carnations
symbolize love and fascination, and there's a difference between a
striped carnation and a solid one. But I can't recall that.
One of my favorite flowers is the gerber A daisy,
and there's you know, a million different colors those signify beauty, innocence,
and cheerfulness. Yeah, you're all three of those wrapped up
(09:02):
in a daisy, Caroline blushing. Um, it's actually the Gerbera
daisy is the fifth most popular flower in the world,
in the whole world, and according to literature, it was
discovered in eighty four by a Scotsman in South Africa,
even though I'm pretty sure other people had probably seen
(09:23):
the flower before. But yeah, the Gerbera daisy as we
know it today, and it's been bread and mixed, so
that that's why we have so many colors and orchids,
rare and delicate beauty roses of course, love and appreciation
and they range like I said, red is love, pink, admiration, etcetera, etcetera.
So the floral industry traces all the way back to
(09:45):
the seventeen and eighteenth century. Uh. It's starting off, not
surprisingly in the Netherlands with the development of greenhouses, and
that practice then is taken to the United States. Um.
And one fun fact about the you know, the Netherlands
are all known for their tulips, and tulip comes from
(10:07):
the Turkish word for durban. Really because it was initially
um taken from Central Asia and then across to Holland.
I do love a good tulip and I don't mean turban,
I mean tulip um. Yeah, the industry really grew in
America with the advent of air transport and refrigerated trucks.
So now you could take them much longer distances in
(10:29):
a shorter amount of time. You didn't have to worry
about them Wilton, because flowers pretty much have to be
kept around thirty four degrees basically right about freezing when
they're being transported. And in the mid nineteen sixties, you know,
we've got all the development of where where this industry
is moving. And in the mid nineteen sixties the first
carnation production started in Bogata, Columbia, an area that offered
great light and temperature, not to mention low production costs
(10:53):
compared with North America. UM and large scale US producers
are hard hit by all of the flowers that are
being imported, and the floral industry, like so many other
industries here in the States, has largely been outsourced. UM
California produces of the domestic flowers grown here, but it's
(11:18):
it's largely moved abroad, and UM one place that I
did not realize was such a major hub of the
international floral industry is Kenya. If you live in the EU,
if you're listening right now in the UK, hello, talking
directly to you. If you have. If you're looking right
(11:39):
now at a vase of flowers, British friends, and Irish
friends and Welsh ones too, chances are they came from Kenya. Now,
if Carolina not here in the States, we're looking at
some some flowers, some fresh cut well not so fresh
cut rosas they be coming from South America. But Kenya
supplies of all the flowers sold in the EU. Right.
(12:03):
And there's a lot of talk about as you can expect,
there's a lot of talk about the environmental impact of
importing all of these flowers. UM. But it's interesting that
um twelve thousand Kenyan roses that creates raising them, you know, whatever,
growing them, that creates two hundred pounds of carbon dioxide
(12:26):
released from from the growth of these roses. The equivalent
number of Dutch roses releases seventy seven thousand, one hundred
and sixty pounds of c O two because they require
all that artificial light, heat and cooling. Over the eight
to twelve week growing period, so you don't have the
hot sun that's constant in Kenya and in Colombia. So
(12:49):
while you're you're importing all these roses and you you
might think it's horrible for various reasons that we will
get into here shortly um. It actually releases less CEO
two into the atmosphere because they have to tinker with
that actual growing environment less um, which would outweigh them
the cost I guess of transporting it and producing them
(13:10):
and transporting them over um. And this is coming from
the Globe and mail in Canada imported twenty three point
five million dollars worth of roses from Columbia, and almost
a third of all cut flowers sold in Canada are
imported from Columbia, including fourteen point one million dollars worth
of carnations and nine point six million dollars worth of chrysanthemums.
(13:34):
And the government has incentivized this floral trade between Canada
and Columbia because their free trade agreement that they recently
signed removed a ten point five percent tariff on roses,
so it's even cheaper now for them to bring these
flowers way up uh the lands, way way up the landsonder,
(14:00):
but we we did the same thing in UM. The
US really was seeking to offset all the coca production
in Colombia, and so we thought, I mean, I don't
know what they thought, but they were like, hey, well,
let's just have them make flowers instead. And so we
suspended import duties on Colombian flowers. And this was in
(14:22):
and just just to show you what that did to
flower imports in the US, in one the US produced
one point to billion flowers and imported one hundred million,
and in two thousand three that totally reversed. The US
was producing two hundred million blooms and imported two billion.
That's according to the Smithsonian, who took a big look
(14:43):
at um the flower trade. And now, according to the
Society of American Florist, Columbia, not so surprisingly is the
number one import country of flowers to the United States,
comprising sixty of that aid, followed by Ecuador at six
in the Netherlands at six percent. And then we actually
(15:05):
get four percent of our flowers from from Canada. So
I wonder if Canada is somehow kidding some flowers from
Colombia and then marking them up and selling them to US.
You're saying that we're getting recycled Valentine Stay flowers. I
don't know, Canada, what's behind this? What's going on? Canadians?
Let us know, Um, there is. There is quite a
(15:25):
process in all of this. Um. It involves chemicals, lots
of transportation, and a lot of labor. This is from
the New Statesman, which describes the process and says that
flowers are typically harvested, de leafed, semi dehydrated in refrigeration units,
steeped in chemicals, packed in boxes, sometimes by machinery, and
(15:46):
sent in refrigerated trucks to the airport. That's already that's
already quite a lot of stuff. Yeah, and then once
they get to the supermarkets and floors where they're sold,
they are usually chemically rehydrated and in the weeks proceeding St.
Valent Times Day, Saint Valentine's Day, so proper, proper, because
that's how I am h and Mother's Day. Women on
(16:08):
the plantations in Africa and South America frequently work sixty
hours a week, like you said, So that's all part
of this huge I have never I'm so ignorant. I mean,
I I just haven't thought about it. You know when
you go to the grocery. I like to buy flowers
at the grocery store all the time. I never thought
of this huge, long process. And so that's why I
think it's important to talk about stuff like this, because
(16:28):
something so simple as just buying a bunch of daisies
while you're getting your grocery shopping done, there's a lot.
There's a lot behind that, just like there is with
your food. Of course. Well, I'm thinking about them going
through the process of being semi dehydrated and then chemically rehydrated.
That blows my mind. Yeah, it's because they've found this
great growing location with all this sunlight and constant temperature.
(16:49):
But then they have to get out to all the
people who want to spend the money on it. And
Americans and Europeans been just millions of dollars every year
on flowers, which are mostly just to feel good purchase.
It's like eat it, but you know it's helping somebody.
And that's the big question of it, is it is
it really helping someone um? Or are we because of
(17:10):
this luxury purchase? Are we destroying the environment and perpetuating
low wage um industries that treat women unfairly and we
will get to the bottom of this um. This is
in Scientific Americans. Stewart or of the World Wildlife Fund
International sums it up this way. He and this is
(17:31):
talking specifically about Kenya and Lake Naivasha, which is where
a lot of those flower farms are located around. He says,
it's one of the most perfect places to grow flowers
at a high altitude with plenty of water and sunshine.
And flower farms employ people and generate income great, excellent,
but they're also big water and pesticide users. Right, And
(17:57):
like you said, Kristen, Kenya supplies percent of Europe's cut flowers.
That's that's a very large chunk. And the best are
sold to flourish through Dutch auctions and then not so
perfect end up in European supermarkets. So you know, same
thing with me buying daisies at the grocery store Gerbera
Daisies to be exact, Yes, beauty and innocence at the
(18:28):
Assyrian farm on Lake Naivasha. H. This is from Scientific American.
Also Roses, they talk about the the environmental impact and
what companies are seeking to do to offset some of
this impact. Roses are now grown with geothermal waste heat
to save energy, and no roses are raised within a
third of a mile of the lake to prevent pesticide
(18:48):
runoff from reaching it. But it hasn't always been like this. Um.
There were some alarm bills that were raised in two
thousand three which were largely attributed to a special report
in the Guardian new paper about worker conditions, and it
was specifically conditions for female workers that make up a
bulk of that labor force. Yeah, the Guardian made public
(19:11):
concerns about chemical spraying, long working hours and harassment of
female workers who were working under male supervisors. And concerns
remain over wages today and whether the large flower companies
are paying their fair share of taxes. UM. But let's
look at two thousand nine as far as the lake
goes that supplies all of the water to these flower
(19:34):
farms in Kenya Um. In two thousand nine, a major
drought shrank the size of the lake two levels they
hadn't seen since the nineties. But that was then followed
by a major storm that washed sewage and possibly chemical
residue from the farms into the lake. So here you're
you're they're using all this water, but then all of
a sudden it's polluted, endangering all the ecosystems. And just
(19:56):
to give listeners an idea of how much like of
Russia has been affected not just because of the flower farming,
but also because of that drought in two thousand nine,
it has receded over one mile and Kenya is really
trying to revitalize that ecosystem while sustaining these flower farms,
(20:18):
which are so important. I want to say that the
floral industry is the fifth largest in Kenya. It's very
important for for their economy. And depending on what flower
farm you work at in Kenya you might have a
great situation. There are some farms that provide worker housing,
education for their children, playgrounds, UM benefits. UH, there are
(20:41):
some that are transitioning more to permanent employment instead of
using contract work, but that's obviously not true across the
board UM and so there's still a lot of concerns
about wages and fairness and UM female workers and the
things that they have to deal with. But UM the
environmental issues with the it has led a couple of
(21:02):
companies to start investing a lot of money and sustainability efforts,
and there's the company, Flamingo Homegrown UH does follow fair
trade standards UH and the company says that it has
slashed pesticide use, replaced contract positions with permanent ones like
I was just saying, and made efforts to actually train
and promote women's supervisors. But UM University of Lester ecologist
(21:25):
David Harper still has some concerns, and in February he
basically said that the UK's demand for fresh flowers was
bleeding Lake Naivasha dry, and he's urging the supermarkets that
are buying these flowers to take more responsibility by promoting
policies that would help conserve the lake's ecosystem. So he's
(21:45):
saying that the people who are selling you the flowers
in your own country need to be more responsible. Right,
people who are worried from the more environmental standpoint can
look out for flowers that are fair Trade certified, or
you can go local are and buy more native plants
that are native to your the ecosystems that you're living in.
(22:07):
Obviously you can buy plants from and flowers from local
greenhouses and other things like that. But let's let's turn
now to another part of the world in Columbia and
Ecuador have a very similar situation to the one in Kenya,
which is, like we said, the the environment, the growing
(22:27):
situation is perfect. It's on a it's on a savannah.
There's plenty of water and sunshine and constant temperatures. But
we've got the same issues with pollution, pesticides, female workers,
all of that. And I thought it was fascinating how
the Colombian floral trade got started. This is coming from
(22:48):
a report in the Smithsonian magazine, and it all began
because a guy named David Schiever wrote a term paper
in grad school in nineteen sixty seven suggesting that the
savanna near Bogatat was an ideal spot to grow flowers
to sell to the US because it had an excellent climate.
The flowers would take off, and they could apply assembly
(23:09):
lines and modern shipping practices to to get things going.
And boy, howdy was David Chiever right? Yeah? He he
and three partners started Flora America, which used assembly lines
and modern shipping. So right off the bat, they're like,
we're going to make the model tea of flowers, and
(23:29):
it really, it really took off, and now Columbia is
the second largest exporter of cut flowers behind only the Netherlands,
and it commands of the U S market, which you know,
or sixty five depending on where you're getting your where
you're getting your numbers between sixty five and seven. So
basically a lot lot flowers. Uh. And this employs more
(23:51):
than a hundred thousand people working in the greenhouses, and
the majority of folks who are trying to work there
have been women, many of whom are single mothers. And
this is where the you know, this issue of what
kind of female labor we are supporting when we're buying
all of these Valentine's Day Mother's Day flowers. Uh. Because
(24:12):
on the one hand, employment for single moms that sounds great,
it is needed. Economists have gone and said, hey, this
is a new form of job opportunities that would not
be there otherwise. Not necessarily a bad thing. But according
to the International Labor Rights Fund, the typical South American
flower picker um is unmarried, she's got an elementary school education,
(24:35):
and she has three or more children, and a lot
of times she's not making enough money to really support
herself and her family. Right women at the at the
farm MG consul tories were surveyed and they found that
most had previously worked on substance subsistence farms or as maids,
jobs that paid lower wages than in the flower industry.
(24:56):
But we have to ask, which is exactly the point
you raised, are these the right kind of jobs? Uh?
You know, it is wonderful that single mothers can have employment,
but if they're being exposed to pesticides and being hunched
over all day with the clippers, I mean, are we again,
It's it's kind of a toss up. They're getting employed,
they're getting paid, but it's putting their children in their
(25:18):
own health at risk. So for those sixty hour weeks
that they're working, um, in anticipation of Valentine's Day. Not
to be a total Valentine's Day down er, um, but
these women are making minimum wage. They're working obviously long hours,
and a lot of them will suffer repetitive stress injuries
with no treatment or time off, and if they do
(25:38):
try to get any kind of treatment, they will be
asked to not come up, come back. Um. And there
are also stories and this is from um that two
thousand three Guardian article that really raised alarm bells. And
things have gotten a little bit better. Um, But you know,
some women were saying that when inspections would happen to
(25:59):
make sure a working conditions were safe and equitable, the
supervisors would ask certain people to stay home so things
would would look more above board. Um. One of those
things that's not looking above board is that as recently
as the mid nineties, a Colombian sociologists found children as
young as nine working in the greenhouses on Saturdays, and
(26:22):
children eleven and up working forty six hour work weeks.
So it's not only um, you know, taking advantage of
women cheap labor from women, but also from children. Um.
But talking about that exposure to chemicals, UM, survey of
nine thousand flower workers found that they had been exposed
to as many as one hundred and twenty seven different chemicals,
(26:45):
mostly fungicides and pesticides. And this is echoed. The problems
that come from this have been echoed in several studies. Right, UM,
you might be thinking, oh, a one survey that's totally outdated.
Well here about how about this two thousand nine University
of Mexico study finding that women working in the flower
(27:06):
industry in Ecuador reported more pregnancy losses than among women
outside the industry, and the researchers linked that to the
need for an evaluation of the reproductive health effects of
employment in that specific industry linked to pesticide use. Right, yeah,
if you're going to have this population doing this work,
(27:28):
we should definitely take a look at how to make
it safer. Um At two thousand six study of female
flower workers in Ecuador. This was study. This study was
published in Pediatrics found that a pregnant woman's exposure to
pesticides was associated with the child's neurological impairment and higher
blood pressure later in life. And of course we know
that higher blood pressure can you know if if if
(27:51):
it stays, it can eventually lead to cardiovascular problems. And
in addition to uh, these kind of pesticide exposure ers
and those repetitive stress injuries, there were, according to the
Smithsonian magazine, also a lot of reports of sexual harassment
by male bosses. Um. But again, these are these are
(28:12):
issues that a lot of companies have tried to go
in and rectify, but largely because watchdog groups have been
formed to pay attention to these kind of working conditions, right,
And I mean as far as creating better work environments,
you know, we talked about several of the companies in
Kenya that are really seeking to be sustainable to help
(28:37):
their workers and the workers families. UM. According to that
Smithsonian article, the flower industry in Columbia created Floor Verde,
a voluntary certification program that requires participating farms to meet
targets for sustainable water use and follow internationally recognized safety
guidelines for chemical applications. So there are people really trying
(28:58):
to um improve the quality of their workers lives. And
going back to the situation in Kenya the Economist magazine
was talking about, but more the the the importance of
the floral industry and kind of an unstable economy over there,
and the report that the average monthly salary of eighty
dollars plus benefits is actually considered a good wage. UM.
(29:22):
So I guess that's why UM it was it was
challenging to weigh the pros and the cons of what's
going on in this industry, because whenever we trace back
a lot of the products that we take for granted,
these simple luxuries like a bouquet of flowers, a lot
of times it does trace back to people, um not
(29:43):
earning very much money. UH, And and that can be
I don't know, it's it's it's hard to justify in
your mind because you can contextualize it and say, well,
for those for those Kenyan women, that eighty dollars a
month is really great, But should we be pushing for
are somehow more for them? I don't know, higher wages
(30:05):
that are safety precautions, Um, yeah, taking more procross precautions,
excuse me, for pregnant women, right. And I think that's
why it's hardening to see that organizations like fair Trade
are going in they are, um, you know, you can
actually find those kind of certified bouquets or of course
(30:26):
if you want to, you can always go local and native. Yeah,
by by your your lovey dovy person a potted plant. Yeah.
Because the thing is, at the end of the day,
people like people who buy flowers. Now. Granted, this study
at Rutgers University in two thousand and six was funded
(30:47):
by the Society of American Florists. Okay, but they did
conclude that people perceive others based on the types of
gifts they give, and flower givers rose straight to the top.
We think of people who give flowers as making the
best impression, and they are considered more likable, friendly, and
(31:10):
emotionally intelligent. I love getting flowers. But it's funny because
apparently a lot of people out there think that guys
need help in this arena, because there are several everything
from flower websites, from from flower companies themselves over to
that website. The Art of Manliness, they've excited before, has
told you know, guys, you really you really need a
man up and buy some flowers for your lady. But
(31:32):
don't just buy carnations. You better buy some lily. Yeah,
And they suggest they do. They go over the meaning
of different flowers, and I think that it was the
Art of Manliness that suggested buying your lady friend one
of those manuals about the meaning of the Victorian manuals
on the meaning of flowers, making sure that you have
the same one because they weren't all the same. So
(31:53):
you don't want to offender and try to say that,
you know, like, oh, I think you're really dumb, but
you know, like I don't know what flower would symbol dumbness.
And he hands it to her upside down and oh,
gods in the bow is tied the wrong way, you know,
Just take take the pressure off and get her a
chia pet. Oh God, nothing says I love you like
a bearded potted plan exactly. That's what I say all
(32:17):
the time. I have that knitted on a pillow. In fact,
keep the expectations low, ladies, right, So, yeah, I want
to know who out there is getting flowers for someone
on Valentine's Day. And if you thought at all about
the big line of places that it has been, well,
I'm wondering now too, if we're accidentally dissuading people from
(32:41):
giving flowers to their beloved. Well, maybe they'll go to
a local florist, or maybe they'll make their own bouquet
out of construction vapor. Yeah, I don't know. Let's combine
the Martha Stewart podcast with this one. All you need
some dried macarony and and that's a good thing. So
(33:11):
hopefully you thought this podcast was a good thing, not
to be a total downer on Valentine's Day. Eve. Either way,
let us know your thoughts. Send us a Valentine how about? Yeah,
you know you can't send me flowers, I guess because
that might take too long, But you can send us
an E card. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com. Draw
(33:33):
us a flower in MS paint like that very high tech.
You can send it to Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com.
I repeat moms Stuff at Discovery dot com. I will
be awaiting your MS paint roses. Yes, and we would
like a guide of what each m S paint flower
(33:55):
you have drawn means. Yes, hopefully it is all love
and and dear man. Yeah, at least wait until after Balandia.
So I've got an email here to read from Tina,
And this is in response to our episode on gender
differences in exercise. And Tina is a soccer player, an
(34:18):
avid soccer player, and she brought up something that we
came across in our research for that podcast but did
not end up mentioning. In that episode, she writes, I
can speak for the sport I know best, which is soccer.
And after recently tearing my A c L and having
to undergo surgical reconstruction, I learned a lot about how
(34:39):
being a lady played into my injury. My surgeon told
me that women are actually up to eight times more
likely to tear their A c L in sport because
of our biomechanics and weight distribution. Men tend to have
stronger upper bodies, while women tend to carry their weight
in the hip and thigh region, and this means that
when a woman pivots or twists on her feet during
(34:59):
a there's a lot more torque in the ligaments on
the knee. This extra tension is what causes female soccer
players to have more ligament injuries. And I guess I'm
a living example of this. Because of this fact, my
physiotherapist has told me that most female varsity teams at
my university undergo some form of a seal and injury
prevention training sessions to build up certain stabilizing muscles in
(35:21):
their legs to counteract the torque on their ligaments. Ladies,
got torque? That sounds so bad? Put that on a pillow. Uh.
This this is from Janna. The subject line I'll let
it speak for itself. This Jim gender pandemonium. She says,
I'm a student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and
(35:42):
we've had a bit of crisis on our hands up here.
As students. We all have access to the gym on campus,
which has a specific freeweights room that is often crowded
by many guys. Well, a decision was made by the
gym to promote more females to get into this kind
of muscle toning workout, and so the gym began to
offer female only hours on on peaked times. Oh sure,
non peaked times. Well, it has been an uproar, she says.
(36:05):
I thought it was funny and even laugh loudly when
you said that boys are more upset when they miss
their workouts. Because it has been crazy, guys have written
our campus newspaper started a Facebook group in protest, calling
this an act of reverse sexism. Now, mind you, they
still have ninety two hours a week to have access
to the room. I think they are being kind of silly,
(36:27):
but each to their own I guess, I guess Jenna. Yeah,
I asked Jenna to keep us informed to see whether
or not the school caves to the Jinder Jim Gender pandemonium,
Jim Jim Boree pandemonium. I just picture these people running
around the gym with their hands in the air like, yeah,
I'm thinking of a dance marathon now. So on that
(36:50):
note again, our email addresses mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
If you have a letter or valentine to send our way,
or you can send us a Valentine up on the Facebooks.
We'd like that. Why don't you send us a Valentine
by liking us? That would be the best Valentine's present
you could possibly give to me and Caroline. We would
(37:10):
love you for that. And you can also follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast, and you can check
out the blog during the week. It is at how
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
(37:31):
possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Hey, this is Annie and you're listening to Steph. Mom
never told you. In my high school, we had this
Valentine's Day rose tradition. It was sort of like the
(00:27):
Anonymous Rose program. Throughout the day, roses got delivered with
a printed anonymous message, and I think they were like
two dollars to send one. A white rose meant that
it came from a friend, and a red rose meant
that it came from someone that you were dating, or
that was interested in you some kind of romantic interest.
(00:49):
A secret admirer. They might say. Um, and I did
not really date in high school, but I did have
excellent friends. I'm very very fortunate. One Valentinie's Day, I
got a d aculous amount of red roses delivered to
me with messages like from your secret admirer, or I'm
superior to that other secret admirer, or don't listen to
(01:09):
those other secret admirers. It was hilarious. I loved it
because Valentine's Day, especially in school, could be really stressful
when you're single, or honestly even if you're not. But
in a different way, like those boxes in elementary school
where you put your Valentine's cards in them and not
getting a card. Was this really pressing concern? Kind of
(01:32):
like that over the years, I've never gotten flowers from
anyone I was in a relationship with. Now that I
say that, that sounds really bitter, but I'm not bitter
about it because they probably knew I would rather have
food or drinks. For some reason, I did date three
people that had birthdays on Valentine's Day. That was not
a requirement, just kept happening and that was stressful. But anyway,
(01:55):
this Valentine's Day, here's a classic episode about the flower industry.
Whatever you celebrate, Single Awareness Day, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day
meal above, I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff Mom
never told you from house Stop works dot com. Hello,
(02:19):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline,
and may I also say Happy Valentine's Day. Eve. Wait,
thank you, You're welcome. Are you gonna get me anything? Um,
I'm gonna give you a podcast straight from the heart.
Oh yeah, well we better get started then. Yeah. Uh.
(02:40):
And today we're going to talk about flowers because it
is the typical Valentine's Day gift from one beloved to
another or just to a friend. My dad sometimes will
send me flowers on Valentine's Day, which is always a
kind gesture. Um. But valentine Stay also reminds me of
(03:01):
high school because I don't know how your school worked, Caroline,
but mine it was a really big deal, and it
was a big deal that made me probably unnecessarily so,
but it made me really uncomfortable because there was this
competitive edge too Valentine's Day because the whole week or
(03:24):
two beforehand, kids would go around whatever kind of like
class officers would go around and they would sell carnations
for a dollar that you could give to other classmates.
So obviously all little high school sweethearts would give each
other carnations and you would either get them in white
for friendship, pink for love, and read for passion. In
(03:49):
high school, yeah, and so you always kept your fingers
cross that your crush was going to give you a
red one, that there would be a random red rogue
or cardom scene. Yeah, random carnation, uh, sitting in your locker.
The most popular kids would have collected just a bundle
of carnations by the end of the day. So yeah,
(04:13):
I really those that kind of obvious competition where you
can count up your number of friends and lovers always
really put me on edge. So that's what I associate
valda'd si with, cheap carnations and high school angst. Interesting
I associated with buying a new shirt with a heart
(04:35):
on it every year, wearing it to school. Do you
wear Valentine's themed clothes? Not anymore, but now we um
in well know, I'm sorry. That was middle school and
middle school we had, we had dances, and so I
would always buy like a heart themed T shirt because
I was really cool like that. And now we just
have those celebrity montage movies that we can watch by
(05:00):
ourselves with the bottle. That's a terrible movie. Valentine's Day, obviously,
is one of the largest days in the floral industry,
seconded only by Mother's Day. And just to give a
hint of how we're going to turn this Valentine's bouquet
into a withered handful of terrifying facts, um, we know
(05:27):
the valand Tine's Day is really really booming for the
floral industry because women on the plantations in Africa and
South America harvesting all those flowers have been working up
to sixty hours a week in preparation for it. Some
of the flower farms in South America triple the number
of of workers, most of them women, leading up to
(05:47):
Valentine's Day. So yeah, January, February, March late, and you
know then leading up to Mother's Day, it's big business. Yeah.
Just I mean, if that doesn't doesn't warm your heart
for this romantic okay, Asian, but let's go back to
a simpler time. Yes, the Victorian era, so simple and
(06:08):
yet so repressed, and that's what leads us to floriography,
which is the language of flowers. And in the Victorian
area era, excuse me, it was really popular to give
flowers that had meaning. You know, you've all I feel
like everybody's heard about you know, different flowers have different meanings,
and you know you mentioned the different colors of carnations,
(06:30):
the same thing for roses. Different rose colors have meaning
everything from from sympathy and remembrance to love and passion. Well,
in the Victorian era, you know, emotions that couldn't be vocalized.
You know, you couldn't just walk up to somebody be
like I love you. I mean maybe you could if
you were like that, if you were very full award um.
(06:51):
But people tended to give their their their crush or
whatever um a bouquet that meant something, and everything from
the flowers themselves down to the way you handed the
bouquet over meant something. So the way you tied the bow,
the hand you used, and God forbid you handed the
bouquet over upside down, that was just what that meant,
(07:15):
the opposite of what the flowers were supposed to mean.
You give someone an opposite day bouquet, fairly, fairly opposite
day has been around a lot longer than I thought.
I mean, talk about salt in the wound, I know,
but okay, so so every you know, bouquets. The flowers
had a lot of meaning, and Beverly Seaton, in her
(07:35):
book The Language of Flowers History, talks about how home
manuals of the time illustrated very elaborate arrangements of cut flowers.
So if you were high falutin, if you were in
high society, you were expected to have a lot of
cut flowers in your home. But not just in vases,
not just going to the store and putting them in
a glass of water. Now you were expected to have
these elaborate arrangements because you were expected to either have
(07:57):
the um the help around your house to help you
arrange them, or you were expected to take the time
to do it yourself to have these beautiful floral arrangements
in your home. And this also wasn't just a product
of Western domesticity. It reminds me of ikebana, which is
the Japanese art of flower arranging, which is one of
the typical skills acquired by geishas. Yeah, it's it was
(08:20):
definitely uh also seen as a womanly pursuit. But I
want to know what some flowers mean. If you were
to give me a special bouquet, if I were to
give you an iris, it would mean that I had faith, hope,
and wisdom in you or hoped to impart that to you. Carnations,
which there's a lot of talk of carnations and sex
(08:41):
in the city, and we'll go into it, but carnations
symbolize love and fascination, and there's a difference between a
striped carnation and a solid one. But I can't recall that.
One of my favorite flowers is the gerber A daisy,
and there's you know, a million different colors those signify beauty, innocence,
and cheerfulness. Yeah, you're all three of those wrapped up
(09:02):
in a daisy, Caroline blushing. Um, it's actually the Gerbera
daisy is the fifth most popular flower in the world,
in the whole world, and according to literature, it was
discovered in eighty four by a Scotsman in South Africa,
even though I'm pretty sure other people had probably seen
(09:23):
the flower before. But yeah, the Gerbera daisy as we
know it today, and it's been bread and mixed, so
that that's why we have so many colors and orchids,
rare and delicate beauty roses of course, love and appreciation
and they range like I said, red is love, pink, admiration, etcetera, etcetera.
So the floral industry traces all the way back to
(09:45):
the seventeen and eighteenth century. Uh. It's starting off, not
surprisingly in the Netherlands with the development of greenhouses, and
that practice then is taken to the United States. Um.
And one fun fact about the you know, the Netherlands
are all known for their tulips, and tulip comes from
(10:07):
the Turkish word for durban. Really because it was initially
um taken from Central Asia and then across to Holland.
I do love a good tulip and I don't mean turban,
I mean tulip um. Yeah, the industry really grew in
America with the advent of air transport and refrigerated trucks.
So now you could take them much longer distances in
(10:29):
a shorter amount of time. You didn't have to worry
about them Wilton, because flowers pretty much have to be
kept around thirty four degrees basically right about freezing when
they're being transported. And in the mid nineteen sixties, you know,
we've got all the development of where where this industry
is moving. And in the mid nineteen sixties the first
carnation production started in Bogata, Columbia, an area that offered
great light and temperature, not to mention low production costs
(10:53):
compared with North America. UM and large scale US producers
are hard hit by all of the flowers that are
being imported, and the floral industry, like so many other
industries here in the States, has largely been outsourced. UM
California produces of the domestic flowers grown here, but it's
(11:18):
it's largely moved abroad, and UM one place that I
did not realize was such a major hub of the
international floral industry is Kenya. If you live in the EU,
if you're listening right now in the UK, hello, talking
directly to you. If you have. If you're looking right
(11:39):
now at a vase of flowers, British friends, and Irish
friends and Welsh ones too, chances are they came from Kenya. Now,
if Carolina not here in the States, we're looking at
some some flowers, some fresh cut well not so fresh
cut rosas they be coming from South America. But Kenya
supplies of all the flowers sold in the EU. Right.
(12:03):
And there's a lot of talk about as you can expect,
there's a lot of talk about the environmental impact of
importing all of these flowers. UM. But it's interesting that
um twelve thousand Kenyan roses that creates raising them, you know, whatever,
growing them, that creates two hundred pounds of carbon dioxide
(12:26):
released from from the growth of these roses. The equivalent
number of Dutch roses releases seventy seven thousand, one hundred
and sixty pounds of c O two because they require
all that artificial light, heat and cooling. Over the eight
to twelve week growing period, so you don't have the
hot sun that's constant in Kenya and in Colombia. So
(12:49):
while you're you're importing all these roses and you you
might think it's horrible for various reasons that we will
get into here shortly um. It actually releases less CEO
two into the atmosphere because they have to tinker with
that actual growing environment less um, which would outweigh them
the cost I guess of transporting it and producing them
(13:10):
and transporting them over um. And this is coming from
the Globe and mail in Canada imported twenty three point
five million dollars worth of roses from Columbia, and almost
a third of all cut flowers sold in Canada are
imported from Columbia, including fourteen point one million dollars worth
of carnations and nine point six million dollars worth of chrysanthemums.
(13:34):
And the government has incentivized this floral trade between Canada
and Columbia because their free trade agreement that they recently
signed removed a ten point five percent tariff on roses,
so it's even cheaper now for them to bring these
flowers way up uh the lands, way way up the landsonder,
(14:00):
but we we did the same thing in UM. The
US really was seeking to offset all the coca production
in Colombia, and so we thought, I mean, I don't
know what they thought, but they were like, hey, well,
let's just have them make flowers instead. And so we
suspended import duties on Colombian flowers. And this was in
(14:22):
and just just to show you what that did to
flower imports in the US, in one the US produced
one point to billion flowers and imported one hundred million,
and in two thousand three that totally reversed. The US
was producing two hundred million blooms and imported two billion.
That's according to the Smithsonian, who took a big look
(14:43):
at um the flower trade. And now, according to the
Society of American Florist, Columbia, not so surprisingly is the
number one import country of flowers to the United States,
comprising sixty of that aid, followed by Ecuador at six
in the Netherlands at six percent. And then we actually
(15:05):
get four percent of our flowers from from Canada. So
I wonder if Canada is somehow kidding some flowers from
Colombia and then marking them up and selling them to US.
You're saying that we're getting recycled Valentine Stay flowers. I
don't know, Canada, what's behind this? What's going on? Canadians?
Let us know, Um, there is. There is quite a
(15:25):
process in all of this. Um. It involves chemicals, lots
of transportation, and a lot of labor. This is from
the New Statesman, which describes the process and says that
flowers are typically harvested, de leafed, semi dehydrated in refrigeration units,
steeped in chemicals, packed in boxes, sometimes by machinery, and
(15:46):
sent in refrigerated trucks to the airport. That's already that's
already quite a lot of stuff. Yeah, and then once
they get to the supermarkets and floors where they're sold,
they are usually chemically rehydrated and in the weeks proceeding St.
Valent Times Day, Saint Valentine's Day, so proper, proper, because
that's how I am h and Mother's Day. Women on
(16:08):
the plantations in Africa and South America frequently work sixty
hours a week, like you said, So that's all part
of this huge I have never I'm so ignorant. I mean,
I I just haven't thought about it. You know when
you go to the grocery. I like to buy flowers
at the grocery store all the time. I never thought
of this huge, long process. And so that's why I
think it's important to talk about stuff like this, because
(16:28):
something so simple as just buying a bunch of daisies
while you're getting your grocery shopping done, there's a lot.
There's a lot behind that, just like there is with
your food. Of course. Well, I'm thinking about them going
through the process of being semi dehydrated and then chemically rehydrated.
That blows my mind. Yeah, it's because they've found this
great growing location with all this sunlight and constant temperature.
(16:49):
But then they have to get out to all the
people who want to spend the money on it. And
Americans and Europeans been just millions of dollars every year
on flowers, which are mostly just to feel good purchase.
It's like eat it, but you know it's helping somebody.
And that's the big question of it, is it is
it really helping someone um? Or are we because of
(17:10):
this luxury purchase? Are we destroying the environment and perpetuating
low wage um industries that treat women unfairly and we
will get to the bottom of this um. This is
in Scientific Americans. Stewart or of the World Wildlife Fund
International sums it up this way. He and this is
(17:31):
talking specifically about Kenya and Lake Naivasha, which is where
a lot of those flower farms are located around. He says,
it's one of the most perfect places to grow flowers
at a high altitude with plenty of water and sunshine.
And flower farms employ people and generate income great, excellent,
but they're also big water and pesticide users. Right, And
(17:57):
like you said, Kristen, Kenya supplies percent of Europe's cut flowers.
That's that's a very large chunk. And the best are
sold to flourish through Dutch auctions and then not so
perfect end up in European supermarkets. So you know, same
thing with me buying daisies at the grocery store Gerbera
Daisies to be exact, Yes, beauty and innocence at the
(18:28):
Assyrian farm on Lake Naivasha. H. This is from Scientific American.
Also Roses, they talk about the the environmental impact and
what companies are seeking to do to offset some of
this impact. Roses are now grown with geothermal waste heat
to save energy, and no roses are raised within a
third of a mile of the lake to prevent pesticide
(18:48):
runoff from reaching it. But it hasn't always been like this. Um.
There were some alarm bills that were raised in two
thousand three which were largely attributed to a special report
in the Guardian new paper about worker conditions, and it
was specifically conditions for female workers that make up a
bulk of that labor force. Yeah, the Guardian made public
(19:11):
concerns about chemical spraying, long working hours and harassment of
female workers who were working under male supervisors. And concerns
remain over wages today and whether the large flower companies
are paying their fair share of taxes. UM. But let's
look at two thousand nine as far as the lake
goes that supplies all of the water to these flower
(19:34):
farms in Kenya Um. In two thousand nine, a major
drought shrank the size of the lake two levels they
hadn't seen since the nineties. But that was then followed
by a major storm that washed sewage and possibly chemical
residue from the farms into the lake. So here you're
you're they're using all this water, but then all of
a sudden it's polluted, endangering all the ecosystems. And just
(19:56):
to give listeners an idea of how much like of
Russia has been affected not just because of the flower farming,
but also because of that drought in two thousand nine,
it has receded over one mile and Kenya is really
trying to revitalize that ecosystem while sustaining these flower farms,
(20:18):
which are so important. I want to say that the
floral industry is the fifth largest in Kenya. It's very
important for for their economy. And depending on what flower
farm you work at in Kenya you might have a
great situation. There are some farms that provide worker housing,
education for their children, playgrounds, UM benefits. UH, there are
(20:41):
some that are transitioning more to permanent employment instead of
using contract work, but that's obviously not true across the
board UM and so there's still a lot of concerns
about wages and fairness and UM female workers and the
things that they have to deal with. But UM the
environmental issues with the it has led a couple of
(21:02):
companies to start investing a lot of money and sustainability efforts,
and there's the company, Flamingo Homegrown UH does follow fair
trade standards UH and the company says that it has
slashed pesticide use, replaced contract positions with permanent ones like
I was just saying, and made efforts to actually train
and promote women's supervisors. But UM University of Lester ecologist
(21:25):
David Harper still has some concerns, and in February he
basically said that the UK's demand for fresh flowers was
bleeding Lake Naivasha dry, and he's urging the supermarkets that
are buying these flowers to take more responsibility by promoting
policies that would help conserve the lake's ecosystem. So he's
(21:45):
saying that the people who are selling you the flowers
in your own country need to be more responsible. Right,
people who are worried from the more environmental standpoint can
look out for flowers that are fair Trade certified, or
you can go local are and buy more native plants
that are native to your the ecosystems that you're living in.
(22:07):
Obviously you can buy plants from and flowers from local
greenhouses and other things like that. But let's let's turn
now to another part of the world in Columbia and
Ecuador have a very similar situation to the one in Kenya,
which is, like we said, the the environment, the growing
(22:27):
situation is perfect. It's on a it's on a savannah.
There's plenty of water and sunshine and constant temperatures. But
we've got the same issues with pollution, pesticides, female workers,
all of that. And I thought it was fascinating how
the Colombian floral trade got started. This is coming from
(22:48):
a report in the Smithsonian magazine, and it all began
because a guy named David Schiever wrote a term paper
in grad school in nineteen sixty seven suggesting that the
savanna near Bogatat was an ideal spot to grow flowers
to sell to the US because it had an excellent climate.
The flowers would take off, and they could apply assembly
(23:09):
lines and modern shipping practices to to get things going.
And boy, howdy was David Chiever right? Yeah? He he
and three partners started Flora America, which used assembly lines
and modern shipping. So right off the bat, they're like,
we're going to make the model tea of flowers, and
(23:29):
it really, it really took off, and now Columbia is
the second largest exporter of cut flowers behind only the Netherlands,
and it commands of the U S market, which you know,
or sixty five depending on where you're getting your where
you're getting your numbers between sixty five and seven. So
basically a lot lot flowers. Uh. And this employs more
(23:51):
than a hundred thousand people working in the greenhouses, and
the majority of folks who are trying to work there
have been women, many of whom are single mothers. And
this is where the you know, this issue of what
kind of female labor we are supporting when we're buying
all of these Valentine's Day Mother's Day flowers. Uh. Because
(24:12):
on the one hand, employment for single moms that sounds great,
it is needed. Economists have gone and said, hey, this
is a new form of job opportunities that would not
be there otherwise. Not necessarily a bad thing. But according
to the International Labor Rights Fund, the typical South American
flower picker um is unmarried, she's got an elementary school education,
(24:35):
and she has three or more children, and a lot
of times she's not making enough money to really support
herself and her family. Right women at the at the
farm MG consul tories were surveyed and they found that
most had previously worked on substance subsistence farms or as maids,
jobs that paid lower wages than in the flower industry.
(24:56):
But we have to ask, which is exactly the point
you raised, are these the right kind of jobs? Uh?
You know, it is wonderful that single mothers can have employment,
but if they're being exposed to pesticides and being hunched
over all day with the clippers, I mean, are we again,
It's it's kind of a toss up. They're getting employed,
they're getting paid, but it's putting their children in their
(25:18):
own health at risk. So for those sixty hour weeks
that they're working, um, in anticipation of Valentine's Day. Not
to be a total Valentine's Day down er, um, but
these women are making minimum wage. They're working obviously long hours,
and a lot of them will suffer repetitive stress injuries
with no treatment or time off, and if they do
(25:38):
try to get any kind of treatment, they will be
asked to not come up, come back. Um. And there
are also stories and this is from um that two
thousand three Guardian article that really raised alarm bells. And
things have gotten a little bit better. Um, But you know,
some women were saying that when inspections would happen to
(25:59):
make sure a working conditions were safe and equitable, the
supervisors would ask certain people to stay home so things
would would look more above board. Um. One of those
things that's not looking above board is that as recently
as the mid nineties, a Colombian sociologists found children as
young as nine working in the greenhouses on Saturdays, and
(26:22):
children eleven and up working forty six hour work weeks.
So it's not only um, you know, taking advantage of
women cheap labor from women, but also from children. Um.
But talking about that exposure to chemicals, UM, survey of
nine thousand flower workers found that they had been exposed
to as many as one hundred and twenty seven different chemicals,
(26:45):
mostly fungicides and pesticides. And this is echoed. The problems
that come from this have been echoed in several studies. Right, UM,
you might be thinking, oh, a one survey that's totally outdated.
Well here about how about this two thousand nine University
of Mexico study finding that women working in the flower
(27:06):
industry in Ecuador reported more pregnancy losses than among women
outside the industry, and the researchers linked that to the
need for an evaluation of the reproductive health effects of
employment in that specific industry linked to pesticide use. Right, yeah,
if you're going to have this population doing this work,
(27:28):
we should definitely take a look at how to make
it safer. Um At two thousand six study of female
flower workers in Ecuador. This was study. This study was
published in Pediatrics found that a pregnant woman's exposure to
pesticides was associated with the child's neurological impairment and higher
blood pressure later in life. And of course we know
that higher blood pressure can you know if if if
(27:51):
it stays, it can eventually lead to cardiovascular problems. And
in addition to uh, these kind of pesticide exposure ers
and those repetitive stress injuries, there were, according to the
Smithsonian magazine, also a lot of reports of sexual harassment
by male bosses. Um. But again, these are these are
(28:12):
issues that a lot of companies have tried to go
in and rectify, but largely because watchdog groups have been
formed to pay attention to these kind of working conditions, right,
And I mean as far as creating better work environments,
you know, we talked about several of the companies in
Kenya that are really seeking to be sustainable to help
(28:37):
their workers and the workers families. UM. According to that
Smithsonian article, the flower industry in Columbia created Floor Verde,
a voluntary certification program that requires participating farms to meet
targets for sustainable water use and follow internationally recognized safety
guidelines for chemical applications. So there are people really trying
(28:58):
to um improve the quality of their workers lives. And
going back to the situation in Kenya the Economist magazine
was talking about, but more the the the importance of
the floral industry and kind of an unstable economy over there,
and the report that the average monthly salary of eighty
dollars plus benefits is actually considered a good wage. UM.
(29:22):
So I guess that's why UM it was it was
challenging to weigh the pros and the cons of what's
going on in this industry, because whenever we trace back
a lot of the products that we take for granted,
these simple luxuries like a bouquet of flowers, a lot
of times it does trace back to people, um not
(29:43):
earning very much money. UH, And and that can be
I don't know, it's it's it's hard to justify in
your mind because you can contextualize it and say, well,
for those for those Kenyan women, that eighty dollars a
month is really great, But should we be pushing for
are somehow more for them? I don't know, higher wages
(30:05):
that are safety precautions, Um, yeah, taking more procross precautions,
excuse me, for pregnant women, right. And I think that's
why it's hardening to see that organizations like fair Trade
are going in they are, um, you know, you can
actually find those kind of certified bouquets or of course
(30:26):
if you want to, you can always go local and native. Yeah,
by by your your lovey dovy person a potted plant. Yeah.
Because the thing is, at the end of the day,
people like people who buy flowers. Now. Granted, this study
at Rutgers University in two thousand and six was funded
(30:47):
by the Society of American Florists. Okay, but they did
conclude that people perceive others based on the types of
gifts they give, and flower givers rose straight to the top.
We think of people who give flowers as making the
best impression, and they are considered more likable, friendly, and
(31:10):
emotionally intelligent. I love getting flowers. But it's funny because
apparently a lot of people out there think that guys
need help in this arena, because there are several everything
from flower websites, from from flower companies themselves over to
that website. The Art of Manliness, they've excited before, has
told you know, guys, you really you really need a
man up and buy some flowers for your lady. But
(31:32):
don't just buy carnations. You better buy some lily. Yeah,
And they suggest they do. They go over the meaning
of different flowers, and I think that it was the
Art of Manliness that suggested buying your lady friend one
of those manuals about the meaning of the Victorian manuals
on the meaning of flowers, making sure that you have
the same one because they weren't all the same. So
(31:53):
you don't want to offender and try to say that,
you know, like, oh, I think you're really dumb, but
you know, like I don't know what flower would symbol dumbness.
And he hands it to her upside down and oh,
gods in the bow is tied the wrong way, you know,
Just take take the pressure off and get her a
chia pet. Oh God, nothing says I love you like
a bearded potted plan exactly. That's what I say all
(32:17):
the time. I have that knitted on a pillow. In fact,
keep the expectations low, ladies, right, So, yeah, I want
to know who out there is getting flowers for someone
on Valentine's Day. And if you thought at all about
the big line of places that it has been, well,
I'm wondering now too, if we're accidentally dissuading people from
(32:41):
giving flowers to their beloved. Well, maybe they'll go to
a local florist, or maybe they'll make their own bouquet
out of construction vapor. Yeah, I don't know. Let's combine
the Martha Stewart podcast with this one. All you need
some dried macarony and and that's a good thing. So
(33:11):
hopefully you thought this podcast was a good thing, not
to be a total downer on Valentine's Day. Eve. Either way,
let us know your thoughts. Send us a Valentine how about? Yeah,
you know you can't send me flowers, I guess because
that might take too long, But you can send us
an E card. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com. Draw
(33:33):
us a flower in MS paint like that very high tech.
You can send it to Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com.
I repeat moms Stuff at Discovery dot com. I will
be awaiting your MS paint roses. Yes, and we would
like a guide of what each m S paint flower
(33:55):
you have drawn means. Yes, hopefully it is all love
and and dear man. Yeah, at least wait until after Balandia.
So I've got an email here to read from Tina,
And this is in response to our episode on gender
differences in exercise. And Tina is a soccer player, an
(34:18):
avid soccer player, and she brought up something that we
came across in our research for that podcast but did
not end up mentioning. In that episode, she writes, I
can speak for the sport I know best, which is soccer.
And after recently tearing my A c L and having
to undergo surgical reconstruction, I learned a lot about how
(34:39):
being a lady played into my injury. My surgeon told
me that women are actually up to eight times more
likely to tear their A c L in sport because
of our biomechanics and weight distribution. Men tend to have
stronger upper bodies, while women tend to carry their weight
in the hip and thigh region, and this means that
when a woman pivots or twists on her feet during
(34:59):
a there's a lot more torque in the ligaments on
the knee. This extra tension is what causes female soccer
players to have more ligament injuries. And I guess I'm
a living example of this. Because of this fact, my
physiotherapist has told me that most female varsity teams at
my university undergo some form of a seal and injury
prevention training sessions to build up certain stabilizing muscles in
(35:21):
their legs to counteract the torque on their ligaments. Ladies,
got torque? That sounds so bad? Put that on a pillow. Uh.
This this is from Janna. The subject line I'll let
it speak for itself. This Jim gender pandemonium. She says,
I'm a student at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, and
(35:42):
we've had a bit of crisis on our hands up here.
As students. We all have access to the gym on campus,
which has a specific freeweights room that is often crowded
by many guys. Well, a decision was made by the
gym to promote more females to get into this kind
of muscle toning workout, and so the gym began to
offer female only hours on on peaked times. Oh sure,
non peaked times. Well, it has been an uproar, she says.
(36:05):
I thought it was funny and even laugh loudly when
you said that boys are more upset when they miss
their workouts. Because it has been crazy, guys have written
our campus newspaper started a Facebook group in protest, calling
this an act of reverse sexism. Now, mind you, they
still have ninety two hours a week to have access
to the room. I think they are being kind of silly,
(36:27):
but each to their own I guess, I guess Jenna. Yeah,
I asked Jenna to keep us informed to see whether
or not the school caves to the Jinder Jim Gender pandemonium,
Jim Jim Boree pandemonium. I just picture these people running
around the gym with their hands in the air like, yeah,
I'm thinking of a dance marathon now. So on that
(36:50):
note again, our email addresses mom stuff at Discovery dot com.
If you have a letter or valentine to send our way,
or you can send us a Valentine up on the Facebooks.
We'd like that. Why don't you send us a Valentine
by liking us? That would be the best Valentine's present
you could possibly give to me and Caroline. We would
(37:10):
love you for that. And you can also follow us
on Twitter at Mom's Stuff Podcast, and you can check
out the blog during the week. It is at how
stuff works dot com. Be sure to check out our
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
(37:31):
possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes.
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com