13 Mar 2008
The Global Rose as Social Tool

Having spent a good portion of my childhood near the Rose City I'm just a tad familiar with the horticulture industry as it existed 40 years ago, and I can assure you that the globalization praised in this puff piece also has it's casualties.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to Google for all the subsidies, foreign aid and other government support that goes into growing roses for export in Kenya (or India). Suffice it to say you'll be reading for a while.

Curiously, depending on your choice of search terms, you'll also turn up numerous screeds against Western (American and European) agricultural subsidies, and how they're destroying Third World farmers.

If a rose by any other name smells as sweet, the stench of hypocrisy rankles as badly, no matter if it's called "development aid" or "farm subsidy".

The view persists that a rose is a rose is a rose. But that's so 20th century! In this new era a rose is a global product vested with the power to bring social and environmental change.

(link) [New York Times]

06:26 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link