Humble Pie Farm

Greetings! Hope you're having a lovely week.

This spring, oh wait, it's summer now! is all about rain and wind in these parts. The resiliency of field flowers is really amazing. And here are some reasons you can feel really good about investing in our local, family flower farm. I wrote this post last year, apologies to our founding members for the repetition. I wanted to start with this post just because knowledge is power. And motivation and reinforcement.

Most of the cut flowers available at florists and grocery stores in the U.S. are imported from countries in South America.

“In 1971, the United States produced 1.2 billion blooms of major flowers and imported only 100 million. By 2003, the trade balance had reversed; the United States imported two billion major blooms and grew only 200 million."

Smithsonian Magazine published an article in 2011, “The Secret Behind Your Flowers”, which details the giant industry that has grown exponentially since the 1970s. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Most workers made the minimum wage, which is now about $250 per month…As recently as 1994, a Colombian sociologist found children as young as 9 working in greenhouses on Saturdays, and children 11 and up working 46-hour weeks in almost all areas of the farms. A 1981 survey of almost 9,000 flower workers by scientists from Colombia, France and Britain found that the work had exposed people to as many as 127 different chemicals, mostly fungicides and pesticides. (One incentive to use pesticides: the U.S. Department of Agriculture checks imported flowers for insects, but not for chemical residues.) A 1990 study by Colombia’s National Institute of Health (NIH) suggested that pregnant Colombian flower workers exposed to pesticides might have higher rates of miscarriages, premature births and babies with congenital defects. There's so much more to this, and if you'd like to read it, here’s the link!

Please, feel so good about your Humble Pie Farm membership! We do. Have a great week!