After several years of pilot testing, a plan to help streamline the inspection of cuttings coming in from offshore farms is going into effect this winter.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced that it's launching its new Offshore Greenhouse Certification Program (OGCP) for the 2021 season and will conduct annual certification visits in January, February and March to offshore greenhouse facilities that ship unrooted plant cuttings into the U.S. The purpose of the inspections is to reduce the frequency of inspections at U.S. plant inspection stations, helping to expedite clearance and entry of cuttings coming though U.S. ports of entry.

Participating cutting farms must meet the program’s minimum standards for greenhouse construction, security, production and sanitation, pest management, training, and recordkeeping (a description of which can be found in the Offshore Greenhouse Certification Program Framework). The inspections will take place annually to ensure that farms remain in compliance.

The program was started about five years ago by four young plant suppliers (Ball Horticultural Company, Dümmen Orange, Syngenta and Proven Winners) working in partnership with APHIS and facilitated by AmericanHort. Their goal was to address phytosanitary risks at the offshore production facility rather than the clunky process where rooting stations have to get every single incoming shipment inspected, cleared and paid for.



APHIS will physically visit and certify all interested offshore facilities before March 31, 2021. Participating facilities, not the taxpayers, pay the cost of these certification visits, including travel, salary, benefits and overtime. The facilities will provide these funds through a trust fund established through a signed cooperative services agreement. 

Jen Zurko wrote about it in the March issue of GrowerTalks. You can read that piece HERE.

Karelyn Cruz, APHIS’s Offshore Certification Specialist, says offshore facilities interested in participating can reach out to her at karelyn.cruz@usda.gov.

Ball Horticultural Company (for complete transparency, the parent company of Ball Publishing and my employer) has announced a new position: President of Ball Horticultural Company (BHC). Along with that comes four promotions.

Filling that new role of President of BHC will be Al Davidson, most recently the president of Ball Seed. Al will conduct the day-to-day management of the corporation, and supervise goals and strategies among the Ball business units. BHC is the umbrella corporation under which lives all the Ball divisions and joint venture, including Ball Seed, PanAmerican Seed, Ball FloraPlant, Darwin Perennials, Star Roses & Plants, Ball ColorLink, Ball Ingenuity, Ball Colegrave (UK), Ball Straathof (South Africa), Ball Australia and Ball Century (China). And, yes, Ball Publishing.


Clockwise from top left: Jacco Kuipers, Al Davidson and Anna Ball, Alan Rouse and Karl Batschke. The announcment was made to the Ball staff in the modern fashion: via Zoom.

Al has been with Ball for 33 years, starting with Ball Superior in Canada in 1987 (Al is Canadian; he grew up in his family’s greenhouse, where his dad specialized in seedling flats, “which were really plugs before plugs,” Al says.) In Ball Seed, Al has held the roles of Sales Manager, Director of Supplier Relations and, most recently, President. He also held the position of President of Ball FloraPlant.

Why create this new top-level position? I asked CEO and Chairman Anna Ball.

“Chris, the industry is growing very fast and we have lot of opportunities for growth,” she answered. “Strengthening the top team is an important way to assure that we can deliver on these growth opportunities.”

Filling the vacuum at Ball Seed created by Al’s promotion will be Ball CFO Alan Rouse. As CFO, Alan oversaw not only finance, but also IT, Human Resources and Seed Operations. Alan is a relative newcomer to Ball, having arrived from Mars (the pet food and candy giant) three years ago. Alan, originally from South Africa, has global finance and management experience, first with Gillette in South Africa and later with Mars in Africa, Russia and the U.S. Mars is also a family owned company, which is one of the reasons he joined Ball.

Filling Alan’s shoes as CFO will be Jacco Kuipers, a 25-year veteran of Ball, with stints in Finance, IT, Customer Service and most recently as General Manager of Darwin Perennials. Jacco, a Dutch native, comes from a finance and greenhouse background—his father had a small accounting and insurance firm and most of his clients were either flower growers or vegetable growers. Jacco’s first job was at age 11 in his uncle’s rose nursery. “Once I was in the greenhouse and once I was in the industry, I never looked back,” Jacco recalls.

Lastly, filling Jacco’s former GM position at Darwin Perennials will be Karl Batschke, a 15-year Ball veteran. Karl is a third-generation plantsman, having come from a family greenhouse business in Michigan. He recalls coming to Ball Seed Field Day as a child. Karl worked at Smith Gardens and Skagit in the Pacific Northwest and was GM for Oglevee Ltd. before joining Ball FloraPlant as a production manager. He has been Global Product Manager for Darwin since 2009, shortly after Ball’s acquisition of the company.

And what of Anna Ball? She remains CEO and Chairman of the Board. Says Anna, “Our industry is in a terrific position, with all sorts of growth opportunities. If we are going to handle the growth responsibly, we need to strengthen our top team. These moves do that. With Al as president, I will be able to devote more time to strategy, resource allocation, industry relations, the future of the company, and maintaining and strengthening our culture and family values.”

U.S. wholesalers and importers will no longer pay a 6.8% tariff on Ecuadorian roses, says the Society of American Florists (SAF). That will save the industry $15 million in the next year, says SAF—a number that will grow over time because the Competitive Need Limitation, the cap imposed on imported products benefitting from GSP, increases at a measured pace. The cap is in place to ensure that products benefitting from duty-free status don’t supplant domestic production. The elimination of the tariff puts Ecuador roses on an even playing field with other flower import countries like Colombia, which doesn't pay any duties.

The news did NOT please the California Cut Flower Commission, which put out a press release expressing “disappointment and concern” at the Trump Administration’s decision to remove long-standing duties on imports of cut roses from Ecuador.

“As a result of the decision, a 6.8% duty that has helped protect the U.S. industry from large volumes of low-priced imports of Ecuadorian fresh cut roses has been eliminated.”

Stated CCFC CEO Dave Pruitt, “The U.S. industry lost scores of growers over the past 30 years due to trade policies that encouraged imports of low-priced roses from Colombia and then Ecuador, with our industry going from over a hundred to less than 20 large-scale rose producers in the U.S. today. It’s both surprising and disappointing that this Administration, which prides itself on protecting American agriculture and workers, would choose to put our industry at further risk. This is especially the case given the catastrophic impact the ongoing pandemic has had on American rose growers.”


A farm of rose producer Mosflor in Ecuador.

Back to how the decision came about: SAF submitted a formal petition to the United States Trade Representative office in March asking for roses to be added to the Generalized System of Preferences, a program that eliminates tariffs on more than 5,000 products while helping developing countries grow their economies and deepen trade relations. The USTR recommended to the White House that roses be added to the GSP, and on October 30, the White House released its proclamation to modify duty-free treatment. Effective November 1, fresh cut roses will be part of the GSP. SAF worked with a coalition of other industry groups that supported the petition effort, including the Association of Floral Importers of Florida and Expoflores.

“In these challenging economic times, removing the tariff is welcome bottom-line relief to hard-hit segments of the U.S. floral industry,” says Kate Penn, CEO of SAF. “By eliminating this extra cost of doing business, the entire industry benefits.”

SAF says nearly 80% of cut flowers purchased in the U.S. are grown in other countries and almost 95% of those imported come from countries where relief from duties is applied.

“In the past, the import tax was either absorbed by our company or passed on to our retail customers,” says Bill LaFever, SAF chairman and president of Bill Doran Company in Rockford, Illinois. “Removing it will benefit the entire industry.” That tax equals about 2 cents per stem.

In response to concerns about the impact on domestic producers, SAF testified during GSP hearings that removing duty will not result in an increase in imported products because the U.S. currently imports an amount of Ecuadorian roses that almost equals the Competitive Need Limitation, or cap imposed on imported products benefitting from GSP. Additionally, Ecuador’s ability to increase production would be limited due to growing cycles of roses and land and infrastructure limitations. In addition, SAF testified that since U.S. rose growers represent such a small percentage of the U.S. rose market—an estimated 1.5%—the move will not harm the domestic rose production market.

CCFC opposed these requests, noting the long-term harm of growing imports from Ecuador, the already low import prices and the risk to the overall future of American growers that would result.

“Our commitment to growing roses right here in America—the official flower of our country—remains unwavering and unchanged,” said Erik Van Wingerden, Chief Executive Officer of Myriad Flowers International. “The decision to remove these duties is a setback to our industry, but for the sake of our businesses, our workers and our customers, we will continue to innovate and find ways to compete.

“We embrace our domestic growers and the wonderful products they grow,” said Ben Powell, president of Mayesh Wholesale, headquartered in Los Angeles, and one of the wholesalers who testified on behalf of SAF to the ITC. “We need them to be successful. But the disappearance of this import tax of roughly 2 cents per stem won’t change the playing field in roses. It will simply relieve our industry—which has enough challenge—of a significant and unnecessary tax on the supply chain, florists and, ultimately, on the consumer.”    

Which side are you on, pro tariff or no tariff? Weigh in and explain why HERE.

If you missed the special Fall River Ridge Report that I sent out last week, here's a quick recap: Flowers were steady, but pumpkins were way up.

Here is the full chart of data:

In a nutshell, fall decorating was up just one percentage point over 2019, to 66% vs. 65%. That equates to just four additional households that decorated out of 356. Still, up is better than down, especially in a pandemic year that could have gone either way.

But where we did find good news—great news, even—is the extent to which those decorators invested in agricultural products: 79% of them bought pumpkins, hay bales or corn stalks, up from 62% last year. That’s the second-highest percentage since I started this survey.



Alas, I wish the agricultural boost extended to OUR end of agriculture: live plant material. But as you can see, the number stayed exactly the same as last year: 34%. That still ties the highest percentage recorded and is well above the average of 28%, but one would always like to see it grow. We don’t jot down the specific genera we spot, but memory tells me it was probably 95% mums. We spotted very few cabbage/kale and even fewer mixed fall combinations. I recall one house that had a pair.

But back to pumpkins, corn and other agricultural products: I’m happy to see that, at 79%, it tied with the general catch-all category of “plastic décor,” always the number one category in my survey. That means that, for some reason, folks felt the urge to buy and maybe even carve a pumpkin this year. And it was pumpkins* because that by far was what we saw the most of, ag product-wise.

For the full River Ridge report, click HERE.

Next up: The River Ridge Holiday Decorating Survey. If winter greens are anything like fall decorations, they’ll be 1) popular, and 2) in short supply.

* I was reminded by Hortistician Marvin Miller that, according to the USDA, pumpkins are a horticultural specialty crop, not an agricultural crop, per se. I guess that makes sense, as they’re used for decoration, not food. Still, tomatoes may be a fruit, but you don’t put them in fruit salad. Also, the Supreme Court ruled in 1893 (Nix v. Hedden) that a tomato is a vegetable. So there.

We haven’t quite begun the 2020 poinsettia season (for me, that begins next Tuesday when I visit the Heimos poinsettia trial), but there’s already euphorbia news for 2021. I say euphorbia because Suntory doesn’t link its hybrid euphorbia Princettias to the other poinsettias in the market, even though they tend to be sold as pretty pink and white poinsettias.

Anyway, the news is more supply of Princettia! Now, in addition to cuttings coming from Dümmen Orange, you'll also be able to get Princettia cuttings from Vivero in Mexico and Beekenkamp in Ethiopia, says Marketing Director Delilah Onofrey. Dümmen Orange and Beekenkamp have been growing Princettia for some time now; Vivero is a new addition to the cutting network.



Why expand the availability? Strong demand, says Masashi Matsumura, executive general manager for Suntory Flowers. “We are very pleased with the growth in Princettia sales, driven by our Pure White variety and signature standout pinks. We feel the potential is even greater still and look forward to expanding the Princettia category through production and marketing partnerships.”

For more information about Princettia euphorbias, visit www.suntoryflowers.com.

The latest Ball Tech On Demand podcast is out: "Building a Pest & Disease Management Program" with Aaron Palmateer.

In this episode of Tech On Demand, brought to you by GrowerTalks, host Bill Calkins is joined by Aaron Palmateer, Senior Technical Representative with Bayer Ornamentals, to discuss the ins and outs of putting together a comprehensive pest and disease management program for your greenhouse.

The episode kicks off with an explanation of integrated pest management for pest and diseases before moving into the key components for a solid program. Once the basics are covered, Aaron shares specific strategies to build a program and ways to know exactly what you’re dealing with when it comes to your crop plan. The conversation wraps up with a discussion about the many variables that exist each season, and methods and protocols to follow to minimize the risk of introducing pest, diseases and weeds into a production environment.

Be sure to listen all the way to the end of this episode to learn about a new resource available from Bayer, a user-friendly Spanish language pest identification guide that’s sure to be a critical tool for all greenhouse operations.

Find all episodes at www.growertalks.com/TechOnDemand and subscribe on your favorite podcast player—iTunes, Spotify, Google and more.

If Al Davidson was still a Canadian grower, he’d be happy to know that he could now get RootShield PLUS+ Granules biological fungicide. The PLUS+ formulation contains an additional active ingredient: Trichoderma virens strain G-41. This AI broadens the disease spectrum to include Phytophthora and better control of hot-season Pythium, in addition to RootShield’s excellent prevention of Fusarium and Rhizoctonia.

With multiple modes of action, compatibility with most chemical and biological inputs, and the ability to deliver healthy root systems, RootShield PLUS+ G is an ideal component of any grower’s IPM program.

RootShield PLUS+ G is available in 4.53 kg, 18 kg, 227 kg and 453 kg size, has no REI restrictions and a 0-day PHI.

BioWorks is a founding member of the Biological Products Industry Alliance (BPIA) and also a proud sponsor of the AFE scholarship program, funding the BioWorks IPM/Sustainable Practices Scholarship. For more information, visit www.bioworksinc.com.

Paul Ecke III forwarded THIS STORY to me from the LA Times about a new TV show called “Full Bloom.” It’s a competition-style show pitting floral designers against one another and it premieres November 12 on HBO Max.

“It’s surprisingly relaxing,” said Wes Dening, partner of Eureka Productions and executive producer of its new show. “We thought we could tap into the creativity of arranging flowers, but after watching a lot of people arranging flowers on YouTube, we were sucked in after 10 minutes and discovered it’s also very therapeutic, watching someone bring something beautiful to life.”

What’s funny is, Wes doesn't seem to acknowledge that there’s another show already out there, “The Big Flower Fight” on Netflix, which aired earlier this year (there’s no word yet on if there’ll be a second season). And way back in 2010, there was one called “The Arrangement” produced by World of Wonder, which also produces “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” and “MDL New York.” And they all get compared to “The Great British Bake-Off.” So flower competition shows aren't new.

Regardless, “Full Bloom” starts with 10 contestants who are given a series of solo and team challenges. At the end of the eighth episode the last designer standing is the winner of the $100,000 grand prize. The contestants aren't professional florists, but “people with a passion for flowers just starting their careers.”

Schentell Nunn, Spencer Falls and Kristen Alpaugh, contestants on HBO Max’s new show, “Full Bloom.”

The judges are big-name florists: Simon Lycett of London, whose A-list celebrity clients include the royal family; Elizabeth Cronin, owner and founder of the Asrai Garden floral shops in Chicago; and Maurice Harris of Bloom & Plume in Los Angeles, who hosted the talk show “Centerpiece” on the short-lived Quibi streaming service and was a floral designer on Beyoncé's visual album, “Black Is King.” Behind the scenes is a team of floral experts who create the challenges and advise what raw materials to provide, “so it’s not just made up by a bunch of television producers.”

Congratulations to our friend Al Gerace from Welby Gardens for being named one of three inductees to the 2021 class of the Colorado Agriculture Hall of Fame. Even more notable: Al is the first nursery and greenhouse representative to get the honor.

Al was nominated by the Colorado Nursery & Greenhouse Association as a business owner and “tireless advocate for industry organizations and improving the industry.” Al served as a Commissioner of Agriculture in Colorado from 2007 to 2016 and was Chair of the Agriculture Commission in 2015-2016.

Wrote CNGA on their Facebook page, “Al is always willing to share his time and expertise. He has achieved what many in the ag industry wish for—multiple generations working together in a sustainable ag operation that is flexible enough to change with the times, yet maintains family ties and traditions.”