A Picture is Worth...Tulips in Holland
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 05. 7.08
AP Spiegel Online
From Amy Stewart's Flower Confidential:
- The famous Dutch flower auction at Aalsmeer handles 19 million flowers per day.
- Americans spend $1.98 billion on flowers and plants for Mother’s Day.
- 78% of all cut flowers sold in the United States are imported, primarily from Latin America. This amounts to about 2.9 billion imported stems, most of them coming from Colombia and Ecuador.
- A typical wage on an Ecuadorian flower farm is $150 per month. Wages represent less than four cents for every rose sold.
via ::Pruned
Learn About Roses
::The TH Interview: John Nevado, President of Nevado Roses Ecuador
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I've grown tulips in Texas, surely they can be grown well somewhere in the US to save the fuel (and expense) of shipping them.
Wow i can only imagine how much food you could buy with 1.98 billion dollars...you could feed alot of starving people :(