A rose by another name

Two other volunteers and I spent today working in a rose plantation. Rose production is one of the biggest industries here because of the ideal, regular climate but its kinda rocking the culture in a lot of ways. Heres the three main complaints:

1) Chemicals. To get huge roses, they use huge doses of fertilizer and pesticides which some apply at night and others just rotate greenhouses while folks are doing the fumigation thing. Its especially nasty because of the long hours folks work, theres no way to avoid a huge exposure to these toxins. Small anecdote - a flower plantation opened just up the hill from my host familys farm. Not a problem, except for they recommended feeding the animals plants that had been treated with all of these chemicals because it would make the animals larger (more meat) and produce more milk. This was true, but it was also true that after eating this stuff for a while, the milk and meat from these animals tasted like the toxins from the plantation. Not just funny, but tasted exactly like the chemicals. High dose. Creepy.

2) Water. These plantations use huge amounts of water. The U.S. and a lot of Western countries are strangely lucky to have as great of access to water as we have but the rest of the world isnt. So when you have a gravity-based irrigation system when water flows down the hill from farm to farm, with the flower plantations at the top of the hill, theyre in charge as to who gets water, how much and when. We couldnt water our tree saplings for a couple of days because even with a resevoir, the flow to refill the resevoir had been stopped. Also, these guys pay the same amount as community members for water access - something like a couple of dollars every three months. Kinda crappy when considering what theyre costing the communites.

3) Community breakdown. All communities in the campo (the country) require mingas or community work every so often (usually once every couple of weeks) for communal farming, irrigation maintenance etc. They also require weekly meetings to cover important issues. If a community member cant make it and cant find a replacement, they have to pay a fine. So what happens is all of these folks with flower jobs would much rather work in the plantations for those hours and pay a fine than miss work. So now lots of community stuff gets left by the wayside, and some councils have completely fallen apart because of lack of attendance.

Anyway, we worked in one of these places for a day and that was plenty. We got free lunch and a polite explanation of how every thing works and the benefits the workers get on top of hourly wage (which is crappy by the way). But during lunch we talked to some of the folks working there and everyone seemed slightly ashamed of working there, none of their families wanted them there. Just had a creepy vibe.

Anyway, this is where lots of flowers come from so maybe a homemade card or potted plant is a better gift for next time?