Virus throttles Florida’s lucrative ornamental plant industry
HOMESTEAD: The palm trees that line many US boulevards, the orchids sold in supermarkets, the bushes that form park hedges - many of these plants come from Florida. And sales have collapsed due to the coronavirus lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic has put a sudden halt to this year’s crop, throttling the industry just as it was reaching high season with the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere.
“This is the period that the hibiscus is blooming. If we don’t sell them, we’re going to have to eat it in our salad,” said Francisco Gonzalez, the owner of Primavera Nursery, a small nursery in Homestead, just south of Miami. Florida and California produce nearly half of all ornamental plants in the United States - plants sold to builders, landscapers, supermarkets, and Home Depots and Walmarts across the country. Traditionally March precisely when coronavirus lockdowns began in the US - is when American buyers begin to focus on landscaping and gardening. “The whole year we’ve been waiting for this moment and we’re faced with this calamity,” sighed Gonzalez, 46, a native of Guatemala. Across six hectares Primavera Nursery produces 70 different types of ornamental plants, including ficus, croton, clusia and heliconia, hardly essentials for those in lockdown across the US. “Sales for April are nearly 60 percent below where we should be,” said Gonzalez, who had invested money to expand production for this season. “We should be... about 125 percent above compared to last year,” he said.
Rampant unemployment
Gonzalez has cut working hours for his 11 employees, hoping to extend their jobs for two more weeks. But he fears he will have to let them go if the market doesn’t recover. “With this disease, the last thing that people are going to worry about is buying these kinds of plants,” said Antonio Tovar, general coordinator of the Farmworkers Association of Florida. “The whole market has collapsed.” As for ornamental plant growers, “90 percent of the workers have lost their job,” Tovar said. It is hard to know how many farmworkers have been affected in Florida because the vast majority are undocumented - an open secret in the agricultural world. These workers are off the books, with no access to unemployment benefits or the emergency federal aid check for employees. Since the coronavirus pandemic struck the US in mid-March some 22 million Americans have been left without a job.—AFP