Carpinteria – Time to stop and smell the roses. There will soon be a bit of local color in the international spotlight.
Many Carpinteria growers are getting ready to send their flowers down to Pasadena for the popular Rose Parade. It's a yearly opportunity to help turn around an industry that has found itself slowly wilting away.
One of the local growers that will see its flowers in full bloom in Pasadena is Myriad Flowers. "Just to get our roses out there and just to be proud to say that our roses, our flowers are in the parade," says Manager Erik Van Wingerden.
But it is not as rosy as you might think, a parade known to promote all things California only uses a small portion of local buds. California Flowers used to make up a majority of all flowers sold in the United States, now it only makes up about 20% of all domestic sales. Flower growers point to free trade agreements as the reason the local flower industry is wilting, as well as millions of dollars of subsidies given to South American countries.
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