The Rural Voice, 2005-08, Page 341
There is anywhere from nine to 1 I
per cent of the population that wants
to know who is producing their food,
he says. "When I go to a garlic
festival or a trade show or anywhere
where I'm involved with a consumer
you give them some of your product
and you get some feedback or you
get an email back from them.
I've also been in the game long
enough that there are people who
keep calling back year after year. I
guess that's what keeps me interested
— the people who understand that
the cheap garlic is not cheap
ultimately. They want to buy local
product and they're willing to pay
more than what they would at the
grocery store."
With the niches that are left
now that the main retail
markets are closed to local
garlic, marketing ends up being an
individual affair though there is some
co-operation among growers in
selling scapes, the seed pods that are
trimmed off the top of the maturing
garlic so the plant's strength will go
to growing its bulbs.
"I still sell garlic for a few
growers," he says. With this and
some brokering of other food
products Ham still makes his living
from garlic but he's a one-man
operation today.
There is some progress in the
industry. The garlic growers
association has received research
money for a clean seed project in
New Liskeard "hopefully over the
next couple of years we'll be be able
to produce cleaner seed garlic."
In some ways the smaller scale
has benefitted the industry, Ham
says. When Flat Creek and other
large producers were trying to
become large commercial operations
they were looking for more and more
mechanized ways to grow and
harvest garlic.
"We went from trying all sons of
machinery, all sons of labour saving
devises, to coming back to the point
where most of the garlic is undercut
and hand -clipped right in the field,"
he says. "We came to understand that
garlic is like an apple: it can be
bruised really easily. It needs to have
careful treatment. Any kind of knock
or bumping will eventually show up
as a bruise and become a place for
decay and it will eventually go bad.
---')ENN11 1 ,1-
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