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In this episode of Trint’s “A Photo A Story”, Jeff remembers a lighter story from his career. Discovering the source of the icon of love and romance, the Valentine’s rose. 

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The answer was Colombia, where Jeff traveled in 2006 to learn how this stable subtropical climate helps produce enough roses to pack stores across North America in time for February 14. He saw how Colombia is the biggest producer of roses in the world, growing more than 200 million a year. A well-oiled rose production machine that was thrilling to see. 

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Watch the video above or see Trint in action by viewing a read-only link of this transcript, with playback features to read-along with the video. Or if you’d just like the text, you’ll find Jeff’s story below.

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Jeff: Sometimes as a reporter, you get to go to these places and understand the actual mechanics of how things work and where they come from. And it's not only fascinating in the case of reporting on roses, it's really thrilling, it's beautiful. 

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Jeff: I was in Colombia in 2006 doing a series of stories, and it was before Valentine's Day. And so it was a perfect time to look at where do the roses come from? 

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Jeff: Well, Colombia is the largest producer of roses in the world. We went to a place called Flores El Tandil, just outside Bogota, where they grow 16 million roses a year. 

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Jeff: What's really interesting about the rose trade in Colombia is that, first of all, there is no better place to be a rose than that valley around Bogota. It's 8,000 ft above sea level. It's kind of like September in New York every month of the year. Because it's near the equator there's constant sun. And because it's high, the nights are cool and humid. The days are warm, but not too hot. 

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Jeff: Colombia produces a couple of hundred million roses a year, mostly for the American market. And what's interesting about the rose trade is that it really came out of the cocaine trade in Colombia in this effort to find employment that would divert people from coca production in the 1970s and 80s. It didn't exist really prior to that. And it's become this juggernaut. There's this huge economic engine in Colombia employing several hundred thousand people. 

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Jeff: One of the things that I found fascinating was that in order to meet the demand of Valentine's Day, they know what each, how long it takes each breed of rose to grow a stem, buds and then the buds to flower. And they can count back 100-120 days. They will trim back the rose bushes 120 days before Valentine's Day and they will watch them grow and flower. And then a few days before Valentine's Day, they'll start picking them when the flowers are just ready to open. 

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Jeff: And then see here, thousands of bouquets of roses for Valentines heading to Wal-Marts across the U.S. and all the Wal-Mart employees have to do is open the box and put them out for sale. They already have Wal-Mart's name on them, and they're already packaged. 

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Jeff: Just before Valentine's, there are about three dozen cargo planes a night flying from Bogota to Miami to distribute roses across the U.S. And that is the main conduit for those roses that you give your sweetheart. If you're an American and it's Valentine's Day. 

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