54 / SEEDWORLD.COM FEBRUARY 2019 From research to the auction block, the world of flowers isn’t for the faint of heart. Color theWorld ON LOCATION: The Netherlands M AYBE BEST KNOWN for its colorful tulip fields, the Netherlands is also home to the world’s largest flower and plant auction, Royal Flora Holland. Located in Aalsmeer, near the port city of Rotterdam and the Schiphol airport, Royal Flora Holland has flower sales of $2 billion annually with total annual sales of 4.7 billion euros. The first four to five months of the year really impact our year-end earnings, explains Erik Boland, one of the auctioneers. Things that happen in Kenya can affect our prices here … We always say no disaster is the biggest disaster because then we have low prices.” To see the facility at its peak, one must arrive in the early morning hours. It’s a logistics marvel: plants come, are assigned a lot, go up for auction and are moved out — all within a matter of 24 hours. With 35 auction clocks and two auction- eers per clock, things move fast. For perspective, in 2016 the cooperative moved 12.5 billion items, or 34 million items daily for the entire year. Royal Flora Holland is a cooperative of more than 4,000 growers, of which 615 are based abroad, that started more than 100 years ago to bring the region’s flower growers together, serving as a trading place. The farthest grower is located in Ecuador. Closer to home are bulb growers WAM Pennings and ornamental breeders Dümmen Orange. Founded in 1951, WAM Pennings is a second- generation family business, with the third gen- eration back in the mix, that farms 200 hectares of tulips, cannas and oxalis and exports to more than 60 countries. The family has invested in smart technology such as soil moisture meters to improve production and adopted biological and mechanical pest control as a means of reducing pesticide use. “Our challenge is to produce bulbs in the most sustainable way we can,” says Simon Pennings, owner and operator, adding that they are members of Planet Proof. “We are evaluated on our use of crop protectants and fertilizers and work to minimize water use and waste. “Here, we are basically farming the sea bot- toms,” adds Pennings, who says they harvest five to six hectares a day. At the beginning of the process and on a much different scale is Dümmen Orange, which witnessed a breakthrough in 2018. In collabo- ration with IribovSBW, it had been working to