Alexandra Rose winners L-R - Best Impression (2nd Place) Bridal Piano (1st place), Patience (3d place)
Winner of Best Stand Design
2.65m roses - all stems natural!
Profl ora 2013 Proving Colombia is best
G
Mark your calendars now PROFLORA 2013
iven Medellin in Colombia has been named by The Wall Street Journal as the most innovative city in the world due to its recent advances in politics, education,
and social development, it’s no wonder it will host the 2015 edition of Profl ora, the biennial show that isn’t just the biggest showcase of fl owers in the Americas but a unique chance for Colombian growers to show off all that is good about its fl ower industry. Medellin sums up all the changes that have
happened in Colombia. Once known as the most violent city in the world due to the drug baron wars, Medellin, like Bogotá the capital, is now a thriving, modern and fast paced economic centre. It is also home to the second largest area of fl ower
production… one of the key exports of a country that has, at long last, not only shrugged off its dreadful image of a drug-raddled country to become one of, if not the, fastest growing Latin American countries but now has a GDP envied by many. And it is the fl ower industry that has helped the
country move forward. Because not only have the fl owers become a valuable export product; mainly into the USA and UK but increasingly to high value buyers
like the Russians and Japanese, it has also provided much needed work for both workers displaced by the crackdown on drug farms and the large number of single mothers who are the sole breadwinner and carers for a new generation of Colombians. Women who once would have struggled to fi nd
Bogotá, October 2nd - 4th
www.proflora.org.co
any work are now in a position of not only earning money but able to access an infrastructure of care and benefi ts that have enabled them to give their children education, homes and a chance to be part of the ever growing middle classes. Indeed children we saw in fl ower farm subsidised
nurseries on our fi rst trip to Colombia back in 2001 are now preparing to enter university and industry… a new generation of Colombians that without fl owers may not have seen the same opportunities. In fact so good is Florverde, the social and
environmental programme launched by Asocolfl ores, the association for Colombian growers, that the internationally respected Global Gap scheme has acknowledged it as one of the best in the world. The fl owers aren’t bad either! Production fi rst
started on the Sabana de Bogotá, a fertile area around the capital and, at 2600 metres
F&wb Autumn/Winter 2013
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