2/03/10 THE GREAT CHINESE GARLIC PUZZLE

A SUNNY, CLOUDLESS WINTER DAY
GARLIC BULBS HANGING IN THE KITCHEN
Wednesday, 8:30 AM. 9 degrees, up from 2 degrees earlier. The NW wind is very light. The sky is cloudless and sunny, a gorgeous winter day. The barometer predicts partly cloudy skies. I heard a wind sled earlier and have not seen a ferry, but it looks as though the channel path was opened this morning.
Some days ago I was going to buy garlic at the Washburn IGA, and saw that it was “organic,” and from China. Now I would as soon believe in the Tooth Ferry as in Chinese organic anything. But the larger question for me was, why Chinese garlic in the first place? Don’t we grow enough garlic locally or in California, Texas or Florida to meet our needs? Garlic is not that difficult a crop to grow, although it takes some hand labor; but to ship it 10,000 miles or whatever? The produce guy didn’t know “why Chinese garlic”. I finally bought California garlic at the Food Co-Op in Ashland, but the question still nagged: why Chinese garlic in Wisconsin? I went to the Department of Agriculture web site and asked the question, why Chinese garlic? They haven’t answered. Now, I have no objection to free trade; but are the Chinese buying enough of our frozen chickens that we should buy their garlic? And, can it possibly be profitable for the Chinese to ship a commodity like garlic to the US of A, and make a profit (even if they use slave labor)? Then I thought, we must have a terrible garlic shortage and need to import it from China (price should not really be an issue here; our household for instance uses about two or three pounds of garlic a year, and U.S. garlic could be twice the price of Chinese garlic and still not be a significant budgetary factor). Then I thought: there has been a very stupid bureaucratic SNAFU that has dried up the Imperial Valley and has crippled California agriculture. But I don’t know if it has affected garlic, because the Secretary of Agriculture never answered my question. Looking up “garlic” in my 1929 Bailey’s Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture I found the answer. Uncharacteristically, it only has a paragraph or two on Allium sativum, garlic, and ends with the dismissive comment, “Garlic... is used primarily amongst the foreign population.” That’s it! We have to import Chinese garlic to satisfy the strange culinary tastes of all our illegal foreign immigrants! I believe I have discovered a new statistical tool for the Census Bureau and the Border Patrol, as it seems obvious to me that the scarcity of garlic, when represented as an S curve, is in direct proportion to illegal immigration. If I ever hear from the Secretary of Agriculture, I will apprise him of my theory.
Garlic is grown locally here, although evidently not in great amounts. But some enterprising farmer folk near Madison have picked up on the garlic shortage and have created a successful garlic business, Karen and Mike’s Wisconsin Grown Garlic. Visit them at wegrowgarlic.com.
They have helped me solve the great Chinese garlic puzzle.