Canadian Garlic Could Become An Endangered Species

Intro: Disappearing Canadian garlic
The Locavore Canada October 8, 2008

This afternoon I’ll be on CBC Radio’s Here & Now to talk about the disappearance of Canadian garlic. The industry has been wiped out by cheap imports–Chinese garlic sells for about a quarter of the cost of the Canadian bulbs. That’s bad news for those of us who like fresh garlic that actually has a taste since the Chinese imports tend to be bland, rubbery and often, in my experience, molding.

The good news is that the not-for-profit organization Seeds of Diversity is trying to preserve garlic here with its Great Canadian Garlic Collection. They have 130 volunteers across the country growing 58 different varieties of the stuff. It is important to keep growing garlic year after year because it is not grown from seed. If you want to preserve wheat for posterity, for example, you can freeze the seeds in a seed bank. But you can’t freeze garlic. If you don’t grow it every year, it is gone. Canadian garlics are also different from Asian garlics since the bulb responds to the soil, the climate and the latitude at which it is grown. ...

Welcome to Garlic Canada Inc.

... "We distribute our products in all over Canada. Ontario is our home province and we also market and distribute our products in Quebec, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg and Edmonton, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia." ...

Items: Pass the garlic, bud
Antonella Artuso Toronto Sun Canada January 25, 2010

There’s an easy trick to determine the age of a garlic bulb in a grocery store, says Ontario farmer Mark Wales. Toss it in the air. The longer it takes to land, the lighter and older the garlic. The hard part is trying to find garlic that hasn’t journeyed over 10,000 kilometres to that local grocery store. Wales, an Alymer-area farmer who switched from tobacco to pick-your-own garlic, fruit and veggies, says Ontario garlic producers are slowly rebuilding from the catastrophic year of 2001 when China began dumping garlic into the province for the wholesale price of 40 cents for just under half of a kilogram. What was once thought to be a possible alternative crop for struggling tobacco farmers suddenly wasn’t worth the cost of harvesting, and some Ontarians literally lost the farm, he said. ...

The federal and provincial governments could take more steps to help out farmers — making sure that the signs over produce in grocery stores properly identifies the source and type of food, enforcing tariffs and amending rules around food processing labelling, he said. “One of the biggest blocks is the grocery stores themselves... they wanted to buy Ontario garlic only if the price point was competitive with offshore garlic which it was not and that we could supply tractor trailer loads 12 months a year,” [Jackie Rowe, of The Garlic Box, in Hensall, near London] said. Ontario garlic is well worth the extra trouble it takes to find the product — much fresher and tastier than the imports, she said. “It’s just like wine — you’ll buy a $10 bottle of wine and a $20 bottle of wine and is it worth it? Yes, absolutely. Not only in the flavour but also in the nutritional profile,” she said. Testing done on Ontario grown garlic, a “hardneck” variety called Music, shows it has five times the level of a compound believed responsible for garlic’s healthy reputation than the offshore varieties, she said. Consumers should be asking their grocers to stock it when it’s in season, even if it costs a bit more, she said. “There’s so much bang for your buck in a bulb of Ontario garlic... you couldn’t buy medicine that good on the shelf.”

 

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