U.S. flower power dwindling

I always find it interesting how we can let whole industries of small business people sink under the waves of global competition, and not even make a peep about it. A few years ago, China had slipped some lead paint into some the toys they made under license. So congress decided to pass laws requiring testing of the toys paint: save the children! The new law pretty much wiped out an army of small toy producers that did not have enough volume in sales to be able afford the testing or for that matter the likely paperwork headaches associated with it.

U.S. flower growers fight to survive amid flood of imports
Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy, 30 August 2012 (hat tip NC)

WASHINGTON — As she took a break on Monday from picking dahlias, zinnias and amaranths on her Jello Mold Farm in Mount Vernon, Wash., Diane Szukovathy wondered why, in her opinion, the federal government is working so hard to put other flower growers and her out of business by helping competitors thousands of miles away in the temperate regions of Colombia.

“It’s job robbing. I mean, it’s so bad. It’s so wrong,” said Szukovathy, 49, who’s run her farm in the Skagit River Valley, about an hour north of Seattle, for nearly 10 years. “Those politics are such a mess. I don’t really feel like that’s my government, almost.”

Growers say it’s a far cry from 20 or 30 years ago, when Americans could be reasonably confident that florists were selling local products.

Cronquist said that foreign nations, led by Colombia, now sell 82 percent of the cut flowers in the United States. And he said the U.S. flower industry was on its “last stand” and needed U.S. consumers to demand more locally grown flowers. He said flowers growers wanted to piggyback on the growing demand for locally grown food.

Your government is not interested in your best interests.  And given the lack of public interest in these types of cases, one suspects that mostly your fellow citizens don't care much either.