Article: Bloom and bust: thinking of buying a St Valentine's day bouquet? Charles Orton-Jones examines the global trade in cut flowers and finds an industry struggling with emergent "super-growers", complex logistics and concerns about human and environmental costs.

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"The media never write about the flower industry," says Andrea Caldecourt, head of the Flowers & Plants Association (FPA). "Yet flowers are as important as the music industry or diet products to the UK economy. We don't mind about that, though, because it lets us get on with the job without any interruptions."

She has a point. The press doesn't seem interested in the industry. Which is odd, not only because of its scale--it's worth 2.2bn [pounds sterling] a year in the UK alone--but also because it's so Machiavellian. The Ethiopians are trying to out the Kenyans out of business, Dubai's oil billionaires are gunning for the Dutch ...

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