From roses to ranunculus, from tulips to lilies, from carnations to gerberas, over one Italian in two (52%) who gives gifts for Valentine's Day has chosen this year to donate plants and flowers, also to support Italian agriculture which is a leader in floriculture.
This is what emerges from the online survey conducted by the website www.coldiretti.it on the favorite gifts for Valentine's Day.
The floral gift is therefore the most popular, so much so that it is widely preferred, Coldiretti highlights, compared to chocolates (30%), clothing (13%) and jewelery (5%).
Flowers win because, underlines Coldiretti, "they allow you to express, with class, imagination and reasonable prices, your feelings without significantly affecting your budget, and are more welcome than chocolates which risk compromising the hard 'work' of these weeks to get back into shape after the Christmas holidays".
Valentine's Day is traditionally, recalls the confederation, "among the most important moments of the national horticultural sector which today is worth 3.14 billion euros (1.4 billion for flowers and ornamental plants alone) and, with related activities, guarantees 200 thousand places , with 45 thousand hectares of land cultivated by 17,000 companies".
"A sector today - explains Coldiretti - grappling with climatic difficulties, between bad weather and drought and, above all, the explosion of production costs, which have more than doubled due to the increases in energy prices which affect the entire supply chain".
Also weighing heavily, he concludes, is "the unfair competition from abroad with imports of plants and flowers which in 2023 reached the value of almost 900 million euros, up 33% compared to the previous year, according to Coldiretti projections on Istat data".
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