Gloomy spring hits Mother's Day flower inventory

By Caleb Hampton

April showers bring May flowers, the proverb goes, but California farmers with rain-soaked flower crops say there’s more to the equation.

Months of gloomy weather and historic storms and flooding have left growers with diminished inventory as they prepare for Mother’s Day, the cut-flower sector’s busiest time of year.

“We’ve had a rough time,” said Rene Van Wingerden, owner of Ocean Breeze Farms in Santa Barbara County. Over the past six months, the Carpinteria-based cut-flower farmer has seen his business dip by as much as 20%.

“We depend on sunshine,” he said. “That’s what makes us money, and we haven’t gotten our fair share of it, so our numbers are down.”

Van Wingerden isn’t alone. “It’s a bit crazy out there,” said Michael Mellano, CEO of Mellano & Co., a San Diego County cut-flower farm that is one of the state’s largest producers. “The excessive rain we’ve had and the unseasonably cool weather has really disrupted our normal production expectations.”

Sherry Sanbo, owner of Golden State Floral, a wholesale florist in Yolo County, said her California suppliers are unable to fill the same volume of orders as in years past.

“The biggest problem was the weather,” Sanbo said, referring to a series of atmospheric river storms in January and March that wreaked havoc on farms across the state.

“The rain in Half Moon Bay and Carpinteria, where they grow the flowers, did not help the situation at all,” she said.

Cut-flower farmers and wholesalers said standing water from heavy rainfall destroyed some flowers while the lack of sunshine stunted the growth of others, making the stems too short for the Mother’s Day bouquets being assembled this week in Sanbo’s West Sacramento warehouse.

“The rain came at a bad time,” Sanbo said.

The dark and stormy spring left farmers such as Mellano scrambling to fill Mother’s Day orders.

“A lot of the crops have been delayed. Some are coming in right at the last moment,” he said last week. “We’re trying to coordinate the logistics of having enough workers in the right place at the right time. But the reality is our opportunity for shipping the flowers is pretty much over, and now we’re focused more on the local market.”

For many in the sector, Mother’s Day typically attracts a significant portion of yearly sales.

“We sell flowers 52 weeks out of the year,” Van Wingerden said, “but Mother’s Day generates probably 10% of our yearly income.”

This year, growers who lost flowers in the storms or saw their crops come in too slowly could miss out on an important market opportunity. “We’ve got to make up for the losses from the last six months,” Van Wingerden said.

“Cut flowers are very much dependent on holiday cycles,” Mellano added. “The market drops off so much after Mother’s Day, there’s not really an opportunity to move the flowers, certainly not at the price points you are targeting.”

Farmers and florists gave a mixed forecast on demand for cut flowers this Mother’s Day. “I think our sales are going pretty well,” Mellano said. However, he added that they were nothing like last year, when demand for cut flowers neared an all-time high. “It has dropped off quite a bit,” he said.

Meanwhile, the warehouse at Golden State Floral hummed last week as employees received shipments and cut and hydrated the flowers. “We’re ramping up,” Sanbo said. “I think we’re busier this year than we were last year.”

Van Wingerden gave a similar report, saying the orders he has received this year were bigger than in prior years.

“It’s looking good,” he said, adding that he had to turn down requests from buyers who weren’t longtime customers.

On top of the weather challenges, which vary from season to season, cut-flower farmers in California continue to face long-term obstacles posed by the sector’s globalization.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Congress eliminated tariffs on agricultural products from four South American nations in an effort to bolster legitimate export businesses and create jobs outside the drug trade.

As a result, the cut-flower sector in Colombia and Ecuador flourished, and flower businesses in California, unable to compete with the lower-priced imports, cratered.

“We did very well for the first 20 years,” said Van Wingerden, who began growing cut flowers in California in 1973. “Then South America started growing flowers basically for nothing.”

Over the past three decades, the U.S. rose industry saw its production drop by 95%, falling from $545 million to less than $40 million. By 2015, the number of domestic rose growers declined from more than 200 to just 15.

Imports impacted other varieties, too. Van Wingerden, who quit rose production in the early 2000s, stopped growing chrysanthemums nearly a decade ago.

“It was costing us more (to grow them) than we were getting for them,” he said.

The Southern California farmer, who once shipped all over the country, has also cut back his distribution network as a result of imports, abandoning East Coast customers who are closer to Miami, the hub for South American imports.

Today, about 80% of all cut flowers sold in the U.S. are imported, primarily from Colombia and Ecuador.

“There are very few flower farmers left in California,” said Van Wingerden. “The industry has been decimated.”

As Mother’s Day approaches, he encouraged shoppers to buy locally grown flowers, pointing out that they have a much smaller carbon footprint than roses and carnations shipped in from Colombia on refrigerated cargo planes.

While they may now be few in number, there are still farmers in California fully committed to cultivating fresh cut flowers.

“It’s a challenge every day,” Van Wingerden said, “but I still love what I do.”

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)