Pubdate: Fri, 04 Aug 2000
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190
Fax: (408) 271-3792
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: Lisa Vorderbrueggen, Contra Costa Times

COLOMBIAN ROSES SPELL TROUBLE FOR U.S. GROWERS

RICHMOND-GLENN Sugihara is closing the greenhouse doors on his family's
87-year-old cut-rose business.

His is the latest Bay Area nursery to fall victim to the influx of cheap
South American roses, an industry nurtured by the U.S. government to help
Colombia grow flowers instead of producing cocaine and heroin.

Sugihara's rose bushes will be torn out and the greenhouses -- some built by
Sugihara's grandfather in 1913 -- will be leased to Color Spot, the nation's
largest bedding plant grower.

``Emotionally, it has been a hard decision,'' said Sugihara, a
third-generation grower whose neighbors, the Fujis and Ninomiyas, leased to
Color Spot last year.

``But we have a substantial investment in our greenhouses, and with the
current trend of more imported roses coming into the U.S., we feel we can do
a lot better by leasing our property.''

America's war on drugs is not denting traffickers' profits, but rose growers
say it is killing their industry.

In the 1970s and '80s, Contra Costa County growers sold 22 million cut
blooms a year. In the past decade, the volume has dropped by half and the
number of nurseries has dwindled from eight to two.

``Rose growers are an endangered species,'' said Contra Costa County
Agricultural Commissioner Edward Meyer. ``It's sad because this comes at a
time when as a county and as a nation, we are trying to preserve agriculture
and our heritage.''

Plummeting figures

It is the same story across California, where the number of growers has
plummeted to 50 from 500 just 20 years ago.

California produces two-thirds of all domestic roses. Most are grown in four
coastal counties -- Monterey, Santa Clara, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz --
where roses thrive under warm skies and ocean-cooled nights.

``The rose industry is getting squashed by offshore competition and a strict
regulatory environment,'' said Lee Murphy, president of the California Cut
Flower commission. ``It's tough to be a rose grower these days.''

It has never been easy, of course, to be a farmer.

It was 1912 when Jujiro and Teru Sugihara -- Glenn Sugihara's
grandparents -- bought land on Brookside Drive in Richmond, built a
greenhouse and began growing carnations and roses.

Teru sorted and wrapped the flowers each day, and Jujiro took the long
journey by ferry to the San Francisco flower market to sell them.

They, their three sons and Sugihara Nursery weathered the Depression and
World War I.

The nursery even survived World War II, when the Sugiharas and their
neighboring Japanese-American rose growers were imprisoned in internment
camps.

Neighboring growers of Swiss ancestry, Francis and Carrie Aebi, looked after
the Sugiharas' and another Japanese growers' roses and greenhouses until the
families could return.

But an industry that weathered an economic shake-up and two world wars is
not thriving in the global economy.

South American growers pay workers a fraction of what U.S. laborers earn and
are subject to far fewer -- if any -- environmental laws regulating chemical
and pesticide use.

Andean Trade Act

The biggest blow, say rose growers, was the 1991 Andean Trade Preference
Act, which gives Colombian cut-flower producers duty-free access to U.S.
markets and saves growers from 5 percent to 7 percent on sales.

The act is designed to give growers an economic incentive to help offset the
lucrative illegal drug trade.

It has helped Colombia's cut-flower industry. According to industry reports,
six out of every 10 cut flowers sold in the United States were grown there.
It generates $580 million a year in sales and provides 150,000 jobs.

But Colombia's drug trade is flourishing, too.

According to Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to former
President Bush, annual Colombian cocaine production doubled from 1995 to
1999. And more than 90 percent of the cocaine and 70 percent of the heroin
consumed in the United States originated in Colombia.

Back home, it is the domestic rose growers who are losing money.

Not only are the overseas roses cheaper, but the public also demands
foreign-grown blooms because the climate and higher altitudes yield roses
with longer stems and bigger flowers.

Aebi, now 92 and retired, was among the first to predict serious trouble for
the rose industry.

He went to Colombia in the mid-1980s and saw acres and acres of roses.

``I saw a freight train coming right at us at high speed,'' he told his
family upon his return.

Aebi's daughter, Lina Hale, tried to fight.

She wrote letters and lobbied lawmakers. She testified before Congress in
1996 on behalf of 42 California growers.

``Nothing we've done has worked,'' Hale said. ``The U.S. government has used
us as the sacrificial lamb in its failed mission to curtail illegal drugs.''
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