Garlic prices held up remarkably well on the whole in 2013 in spite of the large volume of garlic imported from China. This year, the Chinese crop is expected to be down a little in volume, which should make for stronger markets in the United States, according to James (Jim) Provost, managing partner of I Love Produce LLC in Kelton, PA.

Provost had just returned from a trip to China when The Produce News talked to him July 24.

An earlier estimate was that the Chinese crop would be about 15 percent lighter than last year, he said. “Now that we are past the harvest point and garlic is starting to get into cold storage, we are getting a sense that the market is going to be a little bit short.”

Initial prices seem to bear that out. Since the start of the harvest, “prices have actually gone up 15 to 20 percent, so it looks like prices are strengthening, and I see that as being a long-term trend over this 2014-2015 garlic marketing season,” he said.

Jim ProvostThe market for garlic in China and the market for Chinese garlic in the United States are largely independent of each other, but they are in some ways connected, Provost said. “When the market looks lucrative here,” exporters will ship more product to the United States “to try to capitalize on that, and that extra supply temporarily brings the cost of Chinese garlic here to less than what you could actually buy it for and ship it f.o.b. China,” but that situation quickly corrects itself. “So there is an ebb and flow to that. Right now, because the [U.S.] market has been short and the prices of Chinese garlic are strong, I am anticipating” an influx of product resulting in “a temporary oversupply, and then a correction. That is quite typical.”

The United States is “one of the best markets for garlic in the world, especially for premium product,” he said. “So regardless of any kind of shortage or reduction in the total crop, the suppliers in China look to the U.S. as a very important market and one they are going to supply.”

The quality of the new crop Chinese garlic “is excellent, but the size is down a little bit,” partially accounting for the lower yields, he said. For peeled garlic, the smaller size “won’t matter, because once the bulbs are broken into cloves, there is no impact.” But with regard to the whole fresh market, “you are going to see less in the colossal range and more in the jumbo and super jumbo range, so it will be down a size or two from a normal crop.”

The new-crop Chinese garlic was just beginning to arrive in the United States, Provost said. At I Love Produce, “we got our first new crop peeled garlic last week.” The first new crop whole fresh garlic from China “will come in next week. It takes a little longer to cure the fresh garlic, and that is why it takes another week or two after the peeled.”

I Love Produce offers peeled garlic for foodservice in standard five-pound units, both in jars and in bags. For the whole fresh product, the standard pack is 30-pound boxes of bulk bulbs as well as a sleeve pack with 60 to 70 five-bulb sleeves in a 30-pound box. Those sleeves might sell “anywhere from 99 cents to $1.49 at retail,” Provost said.

“We like to run the five-count sleeve garlic — the five bulbs per bag — at 99 cents each, and I do have those promotions running with retailers right now,” he said.

In addition to the Chinese garlic, “we are currently marketing both Mexican and California new-crop garlic,” Provost said. “Mexico had good quality garlic early in the season, but they have had some rain, and I have seen some staining in the most recent arrival of product from Mexico.”

Current shipments of California garlic were excellent quality, he said. The garlic was “great, clean, and good size.”

I Love Produce expected to continue marketing California garlic until Argentina starts. Provost said he plans to take a trip to Argentina in January “to see how the garlic looks.”

Among the other commodities handled by I Love Produce is fresh ginger. The two often go hand in hand. The ginger “is often merchandised in the same area as the garlic” at retail. Like garlic, ginger has received “a lot of press for its health benefits,” Provost said. “In some ways, I can see ginger coming of age now like garlic did 20 years ago.”

China dominates the ginger market worldwide as it does the garlic market, but there are other sources of supply. As the industry in China has matured “and prices have stabilized, it has made room for other producers to enter the market,” Provost said.

I Love Produce has built “a really good relationship with suppliers in Peru,” he said. “I travel to Peru every year to work with our ginger producers, and it is one of the more remote places that I visit” when procuring products. The production area is located in the Amazon rain forest. To get there, “you have to fly to Lima, which is about a 10 hour flight,” then continue by bus another 12 hours from Lima “over a 15,000-foot mountain pass” with steep, winding roads. “It is not for the faint heated,” Provost said. Then, “you have to cross a river by raft” to get to the growing area. Trucks carrying the harvested ginger must come back across the same river, a tributary of the Amazon River, on the same raft to get to the GlobalGAP- and HACCP-certified facility where it is washed, graded and packed.