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Amid Celebration, Dark Horizons for Garlic Growers
Good Times, Dire Warnings at the Gilroy Garlic Festival
 Listen to Lisa Simeone's report
 View a photo essay of the Gilroy Garlic Festival
Aug. 19, 2001 -- Not far from California's Silicon Valley, about two hours' drive south of San Francisco, there's a small town with a big homegrown industry. It's not hard to find -- just follow your nose.
Gilroy, Calif. touts itself as the "Garlic Capital of America" and every year for the past 23 years it's hosted the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a three-day celebration of all things garlic.
Revelers wearing hats made from braided garlic and wearing t-shirts that read "Reek Out and Touch Someone" or "May the Stink Be With You" wander through beer and wine pavilions, craft booths and food tents. The food is the real star here -- garlic bread, calamari stir-fried with garlic, pasta with garlic sauce, even garlic ice cream.
But despite the abundance of the fragrant bulb at this wildly popular festival, some in the industry are warning that foreign imports could mean the end of garlic farming in Gilroy.
In the early 1990s, American garlic growers got the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) to impose a duty on imports of Chinese garlic after accusations the Chinese were flooding the market with cheap product. The economics are brutally simple: It costs Christopher Ranch, the nation's biggest grower, an average of $8 an hour for labor -- but in China, workers are typically paid $1 for an entire day's work.
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Don Christopher with garlic from the fertile fields near Gilroy in Central California.
Photo: Christopher Ranch
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Don Christopher founded his business in 1956 and today Christopher Ranch ships 60 million pounds of garlic a year. But he warns that the USITC duty won't last forever -- and he's trying to prepare as best he can.
"Someday, the way our country is going, we will no longer be in the garlic business," Christopher told NPR's Lisa Simeone. He adds that he's not against all imports, because his business needs to import garlic to process during the off-season. What American growers don't want is for the U.S. market to get saturated with cheap foreign garlic -- and China is the world's biggest producer.
Former Gilroy Mayor Don Gage sees an even darker future. "People don't like to admit that, but in the next 15 years, there isn't going to be any farming in Gilroy."
It's not all about economics -- Mother Nature has played her part in opening the door to more imports. Three years ago, California's garlic growing regions were devastated by a mold, giving foreign garlic a bigger foothold on the U.S. market.
Garlic-growing in California is at a crossroads -- global economic changes, soil depletion, the high cost of land -- all these forces are converging to make it difficult for the domestic garlic industry.
Web Resources:
Gilroy Garlic Festival official site
U.S. International Trade Commission official site
Chester Aaron Bio
Garlic Varieties List
Garlic Is Life Symposium in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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