Cut-Flower Business in Full Bloom

Stepping into the climate-controlled bubble nurturing one of his Valentine’s Day crops, grower Fred Van Wingerden looked out across the rows of flowers he laid out last fall, now blossoming into a patchwork of purple, pink and champagne.

For the past few months, he has watched this portion of his lisianthus crop sprout from stubby green shoots to elegant blooms, pampering them along the way with just enough sun and just enough shade to make sure they would open at just the right time.

Now, with the big day closing in, he turned up the heat last week in the greenhouse to push the holiday flowers to their peak so they can be picked, packaged and shipped to wholesalers across the country over the next two weeks.

“We do gear up for Valentine’s Day, but we concentrate on producing 52 weeks out of the year,” said Van Wingerden, owner of Oxnard-based Pyramid Flowers, one of the largest cut-flower producers in Ventura County.

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“This is more than a job, it’s a lifestyle,” he said. “You have to be enthusiastic about your work and what you’re busy with.”

These little blooms are big business for local flower growers like Van Wingerden.

While growers are gearing up now to meet Valentine’s Day demands, in recent years their industry has blossomed by providing a year-round source of specialty flowers to customers across the country.

Diversifying over the past decade to grow everything from Technicolor tulips to willowy snapdragons, local farmers have taken advantage of one of the best microclimates in the world to beat back a wave of foreign competition and carve out a niche in the cut-flower industry.

In fact, growers hauled in a record harvest in 1997, ringing up $43.5 million in gross sales, more than twice the amount recorded just five years earlier. While cut flowers still lag far behind the county’s top agricultural moneymakers, no industry has experienced more sales growth in recent years.

The same trends hold true across the state, where flower growers reported a record $387 million in sales last year.

“Our growers have done a better job in the last few years of growing a wider range of products, making it easier to expand their customer base,” said Lee Murphy, president of the Watsonville-based California Cut Flower Commission. “A lot of growers have made the commitment, made the investment and are producing more.”

Nowhere is that more true than Ventura County.

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The local industry has grown up quietly in the shadow of the region’s more celebrated crops, with farmers generally setting up shop along the back roads that stripe the fertile fields of the Oxnard Plain and other greenbelt areas. There they have erected giant glass greenhouses and shade structures, and have planted orderly rows of flowers that are ablaze much of the year in colors so brilliant they defy description.

Near Santa Paula, flower grower Min Yamaguchi has seen the industry change firsthand. In the business for nearly three decades, he started growing for the retail market and eventually shifted to the wholesale trade when he wanted to expand his operation.

His big crop used to be baby’s breath. But he was forced to change about five years ago when Colombia, Ecuador and other foreign growers started undercutting the market. Now he grows about a dozen varieties on his 30-acre ranch, specializing in the long-stemmed snapdragon.

“We had no choice, we had to diversify,” said Yamaguchi, 58, the son of a Salinas Valley lettuce farmer. “You’ve got to hang in there and try to do your best.”

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So far his best has been pretty good. Like most other flower growers, he refuses to discuss annual sales. But he is a member of the cut-flower commission, an exclusive association of 165 growers across the state who report more than $250,000 a year in gross sales.

Yamaguchi said he expects the local industry to remain strong, having now fended off the surge in foreign competition. But of course, when you’re a farmer, there’s always a new battle waiting around the corner.

“You don’t even have to go to Vegas,” he said. “Every day is a gamble.”

Indeed, the industry has plenty of natural obstacles. There are the usual concerns about too much rain or drought. Last month many growers spent several sleepless nights battling a severe freeze.

And there is the ongoing battle over pesticide use, especially applications of methyl bromide. The potent pest killer is used to cleanse the soil of insects and weeds before planting, but environmentalists and public health advocates have long fought to ban the chemical, which is toxic to humans even in small doses.

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While unable to pinpoint any specific problems in the cut-flower industry, farm-worker advocates expressed general concerns about pesticide applications, especially in enclosed areas such as greenhouses.

“Without getting into any great detail, I think it’s important to note that for enclosed operations, the risk of pesticide-related poisonings probably increases,” said Santos Gomez, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance in Oxnard. The poverty law firm has joined a coalition of environmental groups in a campaign to reduce pesticide-related health risks to farm workers.

“I’m not one to say let’s put farmers out of business,” Gomez said. “But we are here to say that they need to make sure that workers are not unnecessarily exposed to dangerous conditions.”

Oxnard flower grower Wim Zwinkels, a native of the Netherlands who specializes in tulips and other Dutch blooms, said such concerns are off base. He said often those who rail about pesticide problems have no idea how limited chemical use is in the cut-flower industry.

“People are working really hard to get safer products, but at the same time there has never been a serious accident in our industry,” he said. “These same environmental people, I wonder how they would react if you touched their livelihood. I think there is already a lot of middle ground, but you will never be able to satisfy the extreme.”

In the meantime, Zwinkels is doing his best to satisfy his customers. Born into a family that has farmed tulips in the Netherlands since 1849, he came to the United States two decades ago to tap the American market.

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From his Pleasant Valley Flowers company, established 11 years ago at an old lemon ranch just southeast of Oxnard, he has succeeded in doing just that, creating the opportunity for the flowers to find their way into bouquets and flower arrangements across the country.

While his operation runs year-round and includes other flowers, such as lilies and larkspur, about now he is swimming in tulips: His work force of about 100 permanent employees is busy harvesting some 400,000 to 500,000 bulbs this time of year.

“I like to grow things that are expensive or different,” he said. “That gives you already some market protection.”

In addition to the shift toward growing more diverse products, Zwinkels said a push toward consolidation--with large flower companies buying up smaller ones--has also helped shape the industry in recent years.

He said he believes both forces were blessings in disguise, pushing cut-flower growers to expand into markets they can now claim as their own.

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“I think it’s all good for the industry,” he said. “I’m convinced we’re going to see strong growth over the next 10 to 15 years.”

Fred Van Wingerden wants to be at the cutting edge of that growth. And in many ways he already is. At his processing plant off Victoria Avenue in Oxnard, for example, he has introduced an innovative system that allows flowers to be packed in water and arrive to his customers almost as fresh as the day they were picked.

Aiming for growth of 20% to 25% a year, his business has expanded to nearly five times its original size since 1991, when he founded Pyramid Flowers. He has plans to expand again this summer, increasing plantings of his main product, lisianthus.

“We’re fairly aggressive and progressive flower growers,” said Van Wingerden, who also grew up in a family of flower growers from the Netherlands. “We like to be trendsetters, to be leaders in our industry. We intend to attack the market aggressively, not sit back and be complacent.”

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For now the market is focused on Valentine’s Day, with his workers scrambling to harvest 100,000 to 150,000 bunches of all the varieties he grows, roughly 10 stems to the bunch.

Van Wingerden doubled his plantings for the day for lovers, which also happens to fall on his birthday.

But that’s nothing compared to what he’ll harvest for the period that runs from Mother’s Day through springtime graduations, where plantings will triple if not quadruple.

Holidays and special occasions aside, he said the most important part about production is to have good quality product available all year long.

“People throughout the country are talking about California again as the leader in this industry,” he said.

“And I think we’re only going to get stronger as we go on. I know I’ve still got a lot of things I want to do before I retire.”

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Flower Power

The cut-flower industry in Ventura County is one of the fastest-growing cash crops in the region, doubling in value since 1989. The county is the fourth-largest cut-flower producer in the state behind San Diego, Santa Barbara and San Mateo counties.

Value in millions: 43.5

Source: Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner