The Colombian cut flower industry is one of the majordevelopment success stories of the last 20 years, growing from small beginnings in 1966 to the world's second largest exporter of cut flowers in 1980. This rapid development has made the cut flower industry a major contributor to the Colombian economy. Cut flowers are now the nation's leading nontraditional export and fourth largest earner of foreign exchange after coffee, petroleum, and bananas. The industry has also become a major employer of low-skill, largely female labor drawn from the low-income areas surrounding Bogota. In 1989, the industry employed more than 70,000 workers and generated another 50,000 jobs in such ancillary industries as packaging and transportation. Evolution of the Colombian cut flower industry illustrates how the market system enables a society to coordinate its economic activities in the most effective way. Historically, cut flower production moved from the eastern United States to the western and southern states and then to Colombia. In both cases, development of air transportation made markets accessible within hours from anywhere in the world. This freed growers to shift production to areas with favorable land and labor costs as well as good growing climate. The U.S. economy has also benefited from the employment opportunities created by the necessity to handle and care for the increased volume of flowers at the wholesale and retail level.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)