As flower imports grow, local floral industry wilts

Despite the down economy, California still leads the nation in exports like technology, fruit, and dairy. The state is also the country’s number one exporter of cut flowers. But don’t let that ranking fool you – today, almost 80 percent of the cut flowers sold in the US are imported. That has california flower growers struggling to compete.

KALW’S Katie Jennings went to the San Francisco Flower Mart, the biggest of the five remaining flower markets in the country, to talk with growers about their changing business.

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NICK NEVE: These have probably been in the ground for about a week, see they're starting to grow already.

KATIE JENNINGS: Nick Neve is a rose grower, like his father before him and his grandfather before him. He lives and works on his family’s land in Petaluma.

NICK NEVE: There used to be over a hundred roses growers in California back in the ‘80s, ‘70s to ‘80s, that was the thing to do, that was where you made money in the flower industry with the roses if you had greenhouse space. And now there’s probably about 12 or 13 of us left.

The first thing you notice about the roses in the Neve’s greenhouses is that they don’t grow in the dirt. Instead, the roses sit in raised troughs off the ground. This system is called hydroponics—the troughs contain a mixture of materials that drain water quickly and evenly. And it basically means that Neve can grow more standardized roses: same size, same color, and, most importantly, the same amount every week.  

NEVE: Everything in the greenhouses is automated from the vents, the watering, the heat, the fan. We try to control everything as close as possible.

The Neve family didn’t always grow roses this way, but for the past 30 years, they’ve had no choice. Hydroponic growing is one of the only things that allows for small growers like Neve to compete with the import market.

NEVE: Most of the imports put everybody out of business, cheap product and stuff like that. And so there’s very few left. Everybody that’s left grows hydroponic, you get better quality, nicer head size, more production. So you pretty much have to these days.

California roses used to be everywhere. Until the 1970s, greenhouses covered the land in cities like Colma, Daly City and Mountain View. These days that space is full of office buildings and condos, which means that 79 percent of cut flowers in the United States are imported from countries in South America like Ecuador and Colombia.

NEVE: That’s the business. There’s not enough flower growers in California to supply California with flowers. Let alone the rest of the country.

Six days a week, Neve loads his roses into trucks and brings them to the San Francisco Flower Mart, one of the biggest flower distribution centers in the country. But, as a grower, he’s in the minority. 

ROY BORODKIN: That’s truly one of the biggest changes in the market over the years. There are less growers producing product to supply the market and more people, even some of the growers that were growing, have become wholesalers and subsidize the small crops that they do have along with the things that they buy.

Roy Borodkin runs Brannan Street Wholesale Florists, one of the largest stalls at the flower mart. Borodkin doesn’t produce his own product—he buys from local growers, but he also buys from abroad.

BORODKIN: We will take California product and imported product be able to blend it and generate mixed boxes of different foliages and flowers and ship them all over the US.

Work at the Flower Mart starts early. Really early. The market opens at 2 a.m. and by 3:30 a.m, it’s packed. Carts roll by loaded with flowers and foliage of all varieties. Bouquets are wrapped in newspaper and tied with string for the local buyers. Huge arrangements are packed in boxes and shipped off all around the country.

Willie Neve is behind the counter at Brannan Street Wholesale Florists ringing up customers.

Willie Neve is Nick Neve’s great uncle. He likes to say he was born into the flower business. His father emigrated from Italy in the 1920s and started growing carnations in Colma. He himself has been coming to the flower market since 1949, back when the market was located at 5th and Howard Street where the InterContinental Hotel sits today.

WILLIE NEVE: In 1949, the major flowers were carnations and roses, gladiola, and crysthatemums. Right now we must have about a thousand different variety of flowers.

But that variety has come at a price. Starting in the 1960s, Neve saw more flowers coming in from South America. His business couldn’t keep up, so he left the growing business for the wholesale business.

Meanwhile, though, his brothers and nephews continue the family tradition of growing.

Victor Neve is one of Willie’s nephews. He’s also Nick’s uncle.

VICTOR NEVE: I came here when my dad held my hand and kind of walked me through the market. But as a business person since about ’79. So about 31 years.

Victor Neve is a grower. He owns Lassen Ranch in Shasta County, and makes the five and a half hour drive to the market three days a week.

VICTOR NEVE: It’s changing, it’s starting to get away from the traditional “ma and pop” corporation where the mom and dad, or dad and kid, would come down to more bigger companies. But it still has that grower feel.

Neve says there are other challenges aside from the growing import market. There’s also the question of land. Now that Colma and Daly City are developed, there’s not a lot of space left for greenhouses.

VICTOR NEVE: The growers started selling out. Getting a pile of money and their kids went to school to be doctors and lawyers, that sort of thing, so nobody has been really coming into the business.

That may be the case for other growers, but the Neve family is unique – four generations later, in one form or another, they’re still in the business. Nick says there’s no secret to their success.

NICK NEVE: The flower business is a tough business, it’s a lot of work and if you love it, you love it, and if you don’t, you don’t.

For the Neve family, it’s still a labor of love.

In San Francisco, I’m Katie Jennings for Crosscurrents.