By Traci Waller

University Wire

Thinking about the origin of a dozen red roses – the quintessential no-brainer Valentine's Day gift – may put a damper on the holiday lovefest.

When the flowers arrive, a girl probably doesn't want to imagine their birth in Ecuador, where flowers are reared by masses of underpaid workers who suffer from immediate and long-term health problems stemming from pesticide exposure.

By Andrew Cawthorne and Jack Kimball

NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) - A rubbish-strewn alley in a slum on the edge of Lake Naivasha in Kenya's Rift Valley leads to the cramped block where Julie Masete lives.

The 26-year-old flower worker spends her days in a nearby field, surrounded by tens of thousands of roses blossoming just in time for the global Valentine's Day market.

Masete points to black spots on her feet and says the pesticides and fertilisers used at the flower farm she works on give her rashes two or three times a month.

Angry workers have downed tools at Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, owned by Bridgestone/Firestone, saying that wages are so low that children as young as seven years old are being forced to help their parents meet production quotas.

Staff at the million-acre plantation told IRIN that 6,000 workers had stopped work since Monday to demand improved living conditions and wages. The strikers comprised 4,000 casual workers who score the rubber trees’ bark to tap them of their latex sap, and 2,000 administrative and domestic staff.

California growers hope to compete with South America's low wages and steady sunshine.

From Associated Press

WATSONVILLE, Calif. - Along a fog-blanketed swath of coastline waiting to burst forth with vivid colors, there are signs of the yesterdays, todays and tomorrows of the flower industry.