FACT: Each January, the U.S. imports 11 million roses a day.

THE NUMBERS: Top sources of roses, January 2023 –

Colombia	177 million stems
Ecuador	137 million stems
Guatemala	4 million stems
Ethiopia	2 million stems
Mexico	1 million stems
Kenya	0.4 million stems

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Geoffrey Chaucer’s 699-line Parliament of Fowls (1382) makes the first English-language link between flowers, romance, and Valentine’s Day. The relevant passage:

“I]n a launde, upon an hille of floures,
Was set this noble goddesse Nature;
Of braunches were hir halles and hir boures,
Y-wrought after hir craft and hir mesure;
Ne ther nas foul that cometh of engendrure,
That they ne were prest in hir presence,
To take hir doom and yeve hir audience.
For this was on seynt Valentynes day,
Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make.*

* “When every bird comes to choose his mate.”

Seven centuries later, the National Retail Federation guesses Americans will spend about $25.8 billion on Valentine gifts this year.  A tenth of the money, $2.5 billion, goes to flowers. Before this evening’s candles light up, here’s a quick look at the four-step network of agriculture and farm labor, truckers and and pilots, policy professionals and front-line civil service workers, and small businesses that get the long-stemmed reds from tropical farms to florist storefront to you:

Growing and Picking: Worldwide flower trade totals about $10 billion annually. The Dutch are the top importers, with Americans second at about $2 billion per year. Colombia was last year’s top U.S. source at $1.1 billion, followed by Ecuador at $500 million. U.S. domestic floriculture, a $6.5 billion industry, supplies about a quarter of U.S. flowers, and centers more on garden and potted plants than cut stems.

By bloom type, 2.7 billion roses accounted for half the value of U.S. imports. Colombia provides about 1.5 billion stems, grown on about 8600 hectares of farmland near Bogota and harvested by about 100,000 rural workers. Next door Ecuador’s 1.0 billion are not far behind. The remaining 200 million roses arrive variously from Guatemala, Mexico, Ethiopia, and Kenya; among other flowers, Thailand is the top orchid source and Costa Rica places near the top in lilies.

Transport: Roses arrive year-round, but the large import pulses in late January/early February and late April/early May — just before Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day — include about half of annual deliveries. The short life of a blossom means that flower trade is mainly an air cargo business.  Once picked and boxed, roses travel in chilled trucks from farms to El Dorado airport near Bogota and Mariscal Sucre in Ecuador, with most Valentine’s roses — about 90% — arriving at Miami International Airport via (according to USDA) 30-35 daily chartered wide-body flights. Likewise in early May, orchid farms around Bangkok connect via Tokyo to deliver most U.S. prom-night corsages.

Transit: Customs and Border Protection officers inspect the incoming flowers for phytosanitary health on arrival at Miami. CBP reports inspecting 1.23 billion flowers at the airport last year and intercepting 1,975 pests — mostly nursery-threatening thrips, moths, and caterpillars rather than customer-intimidating scorpions or tarantulas.

Policy: Though technically assigned a 6.5% tariff, most flowers arrive in the U.S. duty-free under free trade agreements and “preference” programs. The U.S.-Colombia FTA waives the tariff for roses (and chrysanthemums, lilies, etc), saving florists and their customers about $65 million a year. The African Growth and Opportunity does the same for Ethiopian and Kenyan blossoms. Florists buying Ecuadoran roses and Thai orchids, though, must wait for Congress to revive the Generalized System of Preferences to get the same benefit.

And last: Having landed at the airport about a week ago, flower shipments move by refrigerated truck or domestic cargo flight to wholesalers and warehouses. By Monday, they have reached the roughly 12,000 American florists (mostly small businesses, employing about 64,000 people this year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics); and from them to you.

So that’s the business side. Last word to Chaucer, also from the Parliament:

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,     / The life so short, the art so hard to learn.
Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,  / The attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp
The dredful Ioy, that alwey slit so yerne,       / The fearful joy, that ever slips away so fast
Al this mene I by love.                                   / By all this I mean love.

FURTHER READING

Chaucer’s Parlement of Foules:

The original Middle English; Seynt Valentyne shows up in lines 305-312.

A modern-English translation.

Chaucer was a trade professional as well as a romantic poet, having spent the years 1374-1386 tallying wool exports and wine tariff revenue as Richard II’s Controller of Customs. They paid him 10 pounds a year plus a gallon of wine per day, and he wrote the Parliament in off hours.  The U.K.’s National Archives looks at Chaucer’s trade policy career.

From flower-bed to florist: 

The Colombian Flower Growers Association, ASCOLFLORES, recalls its first U.S.-Colombia FTA shipment.

Air cargo firms manage Colombia-to-Miami charters.

Miami International Airport (2023) explains flower transit.

Customs and Border Protection on letting flowers in while keeping thrips out.

The National Retail Federation’s 2024 Valentine forecast.

V-Day stats from the Society of American Florists.

… and also from the SAF, an appeal for GSP reauthorization.

Elsewhere:

The Netherlands is the world’s largest flower buyer at about $5.4 billion a year, or half of the value of flower trade. Most of this transits the gigantic Aalsmeer flower market just outside Amsterdam, which serves as the center for European flower trade and the main market for growers in Kenya and Ethiopia. Royal Flora Holland has the facts and figures.

And last:

How did roses become the Valentine’s Day standard? It’s likely no one really knows, but one theory traces the tradition to a series of letters sent to U.K. friends in 1718 by Mary Wortley Montagu from the Ottoman court, and published in book form a half-century later in 1763. (The Ottoman nobility were rose and tulip enthusiasts; roses are Persian by origin.) Letter #42 records a ‘flower language’ in which seraglio ladies assigned emotional meanings to different flowers and luxury products, and used them to send coded notes to friends and outside admirers.  Nineteenth-century French and Brits then built this into a gigantic “flower language” (“floriography”); an 1819 book by Charlotte Delatour cataloged meanings for 713 flowers (including 29 separate rose varieties), nursery plants, and other garden products such as fruits and tree branches.

People with deep gardening expertise and memorization powers could use this to convey signals pretty far beyond modern candy-heart romance — all the way (at least to a modern eye) from “platonic affection” and “romantic love” to “alternative life-style” and “stalker”.  For example, while a generic rose means “love,” and a white rose means “I am worthy of you,” a dog rose conveys an eyebrow-raising “pleasure and pain” message, and a maiden blush rose a frankly menacing “if you lose me, you will find it out.”

The need to keep these hundreds of definitions straight, and to be very sure you know which rose is which, must have put amateurs at constant risk of embarrassing blunders and awkward misunderstandings.  Modern flower association lists are much shorter and PPI trade staff think it’s probably better that way. Some more examples from Delatour, though, for those interested:

Cypress branch:          “Death and eternal sorrow”
Daffodil:             “Deceitful hope”
Daisy:                 “Beauty and innocence”
“Grass-leaved goosefoot”     “I declare war against you”
Jasmine:             “Sensuality”
Meadow saffron:        “My best days are past”
Potato                “Benevolence”
White poppy            “Sleep”

Lady Mary’s Turkish Embassy Letters.  See Letter 42 for the flower language, also Letter 25 for brief nudity, Letter 9 for a rant against Viennese fashion (“monstrous and contrary to all reason”), and Letter 35 for pioneering vaccination advocacy.

Delatour’s original Artistic Language of Flowers.

And a modern essay on the origins and practice of floriography, with a list of known flower messages.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: U.S. Geological Survey: 33,000 tons of gold out there under the hills.

THE NUMBERS: Quantity of gold “above ground” worldwide – 

2024:	212,582 tons*
2000:	144,000 tons?
1950:	70,000 tons?
1900:	30,000 tons?
1500:	~5,000 – 15,000 tons?

* World Gold Council estimate.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Previewing the betrayals, the shattered dreams, and the body count as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre opens, author B. Traven has some look-homeward-angel, be-content-with-what-you’ve-got advice:

“The treasure which you think not worth taking trouble and pains to find, this one alone is the real treasure you are longing for all your life.”

Still: The August U.S. Geological Survey reports last week in its 2024 Gold Commodity Summary that as much as 33,000 tons of gold is lying around under rocks and hills in the U.S. alone. (Including 3,000 tons of currently recoverable reserves, 12,000 tons of known but currently unrecoverable ore, and another 18,000 tons of undiscovered lodes.)  This in turn is “only a small portion” of total global reserves. With a price this week above $2,000 per ounce, the U.S. share alone would be worth about $2.2 trillion.

Should you quit your job and buy a shovel?

The sages of economics join Traven in loudly saying “No!” Here’s 18th-century econ. pioneer Adam Smith condemning speculators, amateur treasure-hunters, and professionals alike as “destined to bankruptcy and ruin,” in the appropriately titled Chapter 11 of The Wealth of Nations: 

“Of all those expensive and uncertain projects which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new gold and silver mines. … [W]hen any person undertakes to work a new mine in Peru, he is universally looked upon as a man destined to bankruptcy and ruin, and is upon that account shunned and avoided by everybody.”

From another tradition entirely, 14th-century Tunisian polymath ibn Khaldun scornfully rejects persistent rumors that sixth-century Byzantines, or alternatively djinns and wizards, had buried huge lots of gems and precious metals in caves.  He says the only ones who get rich on gold are con men swanning about the Maghreb selling phony maps and shares in non-existent mines. As to their dupes:

“Trying to make money from buried treasure is not a natural way to make a living.  Many weak-minded persons hope to discover riches under the earth and profit from them … Their motive is their inability to earn money normally, through commerce, farming or crafts.  They trust instead that they can grow rich without effort or trouble.”

In practice, ibn Kh. may have been basically right about get-rich-quick dreamers, but Smith was off-base on professional mining. The World Gold Council (a trade association of 32 of the world’s big gold-mining companies) reports 4,899 tons of gold ‘used’ in 2023, the largest annual total they have on record. About two-fifths of this, 2,168 tons, went to jewelers; investors bought about the same amount, with 1,040 tons going to central banks and 1,190 to private buyers. The rest divides between 298 tons to tech businesses for semiconductor wire bonding, infrared sensors, thermal protection for aerospace technologies, photovoltaics and solar cells, reflective satellite mirrors, etc.; 40 tons or so to dentists, and the rest to miscellaneous buyers. The WGC says that 1,800 of the 4,899 tons came from recycling, and the other 3,100 tons from mines.

Therefore, Smith is incorrect and lots of professionals make money digging up gold. The Council’s figures imply that a third of all currently circulating gold has been dug up since 2000, and the total — “about 212,852 tonnes” by their count — rises about 1% each year.  Production is pretty diffuse by country: the Council and the USGS disagree slightly on totals, but concur that four countries produce more than 200 tons a year (China, Australia, Russia, and Canada), and another 10 or so are above 100 tons:  the U.S. at 170 tons (124 tons from Nevada, 20 from Alaska), joined by Burkina Faso, Ghana, Indonesia, Mali, Mexico, South Africa, and Uzbekistan.  USGS has the Peruvian mines Smith scoffed at 250 years ago producing 90 tons a year.  Gold trade comes to about $450 billion per year — not far behind the WTO’s figure of about $625 billion in iron and steel exports, and about 2% of world goods trade — as metal flows through the London Bullion Market, the slightly smaller New York, Zurich, and Tokyo exchanges, Swiss metal refineries and financial institutions, Indian and Hong Kong investor portfolios and so forth. Switzerland is the largest trader, often both importing and exporting $90 billion worth in a year.

Could you, realistically, get a bit of this? Well, there’s still lots more gold beneath the ground than above it. World “reserves” in the technical sense of “recoverable without loss under current technology and mining and other costs” are 3,000 tons in the U.S. and 59,000 tons worldwide; adding in veins and lodes too expensive to get at, and extrapolating the USGS’ figure for currently unrecoverable and unknown lodes in the U.S. to the world suggests a world total above half a million tons.

But even the ore everybody knows about is hard and expensive to dig up. As an extreme but illustrative example, the Mponeng mine near Johannesburg is a hole 4 kilometers deep. The World Gold Council puts the current AISC (“All-In Sustaining Cost,” the average cost of digging up an ounce of gold) at $1,276. This allows substantial profits given a $2,076/oz. market price, but you’d need lots of capital to keep going, as well as very high up-front capital for opening a mine. So even if you could find one of USGS’ 33,000 tons, it might not pay to try for it.

Still, even Traven is equivocal. If his first sentence tells you that you’ll regret trying, his second wistfully suggests that you might want to make one last try:

“The glittering treasure you are hunting for day and night lies buried on the other side of that hill yonder.” 

FURTHER READING

Data:

The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2024 gold report.

The U.S. Geological Survey has U.S. production, world production, trade, and price data for gold and eight-three other minerals — everything from platinum-group metals and gemstones through iron and tin and on to salt, gravel, and peat — from the early 20th century to 2023.

All the gold in the world: 

USGS says there are 59,000 tons of currently recoverable gold “reserves” worldwide underground, including the 3,000 tons in the U.S. Gold being resistant to tarnish, it stays around, except for the fraction hidden in booby-trapped tombs, buried in pirate chests, or dropped down manholes. The World Gold Council helpfully illustrates their “around 212,852 tonnes” estimate with a picture of a 212,000-ton solid gold cube 73 feet on each side. It would be worth about $15.5 trillion.  One ton of gold would be a cube with sides about 15″ long.

A counterpoint, attempting to estimate the total gold available to kings, sultans, pirates, merchants, &c. from 1492 to the present, guesses pre-1900 stocks were quite low.

The Swiss news service looks at Switzerland’s gold vortex, human rights compliance, money laundering, and policy.

And the Mponeng mine, deepest in the world.

Nothing new under the sun:

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah.

Smith’s Wealth of Nations.

Ibn Khaldun’s con men have modern descendants: the Nevada Mining Commission warns a gullible public to steer clear of get-rich-quick schemes and “dirt pile swindles.”

And last:

If you must — The U.S. Geological Survey has advice on where to go to find gold, and how to do it.

But be warned — B. Traven’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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