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Colombia faces challenge of exporting 600 million flowers for Valentine's Day

Bogotá, Colombia Feb 12 (EFE) .- Colombia attends the finishing details for the most important date of the year for the floricultural sector: Valentine's Day, a celebration that requires an ambitious logistics and commercial operation to export about 600 million flowers, mainly to the United States.(Images: Juan Diego López)RESOURCE IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES BY ANDRES VALENCIA, MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, AND SOLAN AUGUSTO, PRESIDENT OF ASOCOLFLORES.1. "We had a very positive agenda with the sector that ended with the signing of this 2030 agenda in the afternoon, we strongly support the sector especially in campaigns to promote Colombian flowers abroad"2. "First you have to innovate, you have to have attractive varieties, that's essential, that's why the 2030 agenda that we signed today largely indicates that a cluster of plant-base material can be developed in Colombia and here we begin to develop varieties that have intellectual property rights, that have an owner and cannot be grown by just anybody, you have to pay for that, so novelty is a fundamental aspect. On the other hand, you have to have new mechanisms to sell to young people, the new generations that are going to be tomorrow's consumers and they are different, internet sales have grown a lot and we have to promote the emotional impact of flowers"