Talking About Colombia

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Today is a big day for the Colombian flower industry.

Colombia annually exports $1 billion dollars worth of flowers. In the last two weeks, in the prelude to Valentine’s Day, it collected 12 percent of its annual flower output.

Flowers account for about 70 percent of Colombian air exports to the US by volume. Avianca Taca Holding, owner of the country’s biggest airline, moves about 26 percent of Colombia’s international cargo market.

Buy Colombian flowers today. Flowers offer a good alternative to growing coca, the source crop for cocaine.

With a $1 billion renovation project at El Dorado and the approval of the Free Trade Agreement with the US, one can hope other alternatives to growing and exporting cocaine become available to Colombians.

Here, look at a photo essay of the Colombian flower industry published in The Toronto Star.