Here are five things to know.
1. The U.S. imports most flowers from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Netherlands. More than 90 percent of imported flowers arrive through Miami International Airport, according to the United Postal Service.
2. In the two weeks leading up the Valentine’s Day, UPS added 34 temperature-controlled flights to deliver the 236,000 boxes of flowers expected to flow through the carrier’s network, according to Domingo Mendez, UPS’s cargo marketing manager for the Americas.
3. LATAM Cargo, a Chilean cargo carrier, transported more than 9,000 tons of flowers — or 16 million bouquets — worldwide in the past month, with 87 percent of the blooms sent to the U.S., according to the report.
4. The carrier owns a cold-storage warehouse at Miami International the size of five basketball courts. After reaching the airport, the flowers are stored in the warehouse while agriculture specialists from U.S. Customs and Border Protection examine them for any plant pests clinging to the stems, reports Miami Herald. They usually find about 1,800 pests.
5. Since roses are in such high demand for Valentine’s Day, farmers must increase their yields of the flower, which creates a need to hire more workers and allocate more resources along the supply chain, according to Christine Boldt, executive vice president of the Association of Floral Importers of Florida.
“There’s an additional cost all along the way,” she said, which is why roses are more expensive around Valentine’s Day, reports Miami Herald.
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