Garlic Continued from Page 13
garlic. He keeps a jar of the powdered product handy and adds some of that to his food, including his morning eggs. “I like to eat my product,” he said, adding that he thinks many underes- timate the amount of powdered garlic that is consumed. Collins said the garlic powder winds up in all sorts of foods as an ingredi- ent, including sauces, dressings and spice blends. Borba is on an advisory board for the National Garlic Festival and credits Peter DeYoung, its chief operating officer and CEO of the Fresno-based National Food Festivals Inc., with “creating something out of thin air.” Borba said he is pleased that sponsors this year included Christopher Ranch, which previously sponsored the Gilroy festival. DeYoung, a Fresno native, had an advertising agency that represented some agriculture clients, including the California Table Grape Commission. It was as he dealt with those clients that DeYoung learned something new about Fresno County. The place long known as the raisin capital of the world and the dominant almond producer has another title: America’s garlic king. (Dennis Pollock is a reporter in Fresno. He may be contacted at agcompollock@yahoo.com.)
Collins said he hopes to get 8½ tons per acre out of the field, which stretches as far as the eye can see. Challenges to grow a crop include the cost of the 28 inches of water the plants require each year. There are other challenges. Collins’ boss, Mark Borba, cites one of the themes he said was partly responsi- ble for a decline in garlic acreage in Santa Clara County, the former home to the Gilroy festival: white rot. He said the dis- ease there resulted in some farmers being unable to grow the town’s signature crop. Borba Farms has 1,900 acres of garlic, compared to 80 acres of plantings in the Gilroy area, Borba said. Collins knows the threat of white rot all too well and is working to mitigate the threat. He explained that sclerotia, which is about the size of a pin head or poppy seed, bears a pathogen that can survive in the soil for more than 20 years. He is chairman of the California Garlic and Onion Research Advisory Board. He warned that white rot can be spread from field to field on machinery and spoke of the danger of infected transplants. Researchers are trying to find fungicides to keep it at bay. They’re also trying to “trick” the patho-
A harvester frees garlic bulbs from the soil. In America’s top garlic region, the crop accounts for $400 million in revenue in Fresno County, ranking behind almonds, grapes and pistachios.
gen by applying materials in the field in the absence of onion or garlic, so that sclerotia germinate and cannot find an allium root. This causes them to die rath- er than lying dormant. Collins explained that garlic must be rotated with other crops and grown only in each field every four years. Rotation crops include tomatoes, cotton, lettuce and melons. “It requires a lot of open land,” Collins said.
That land abounds on the west side of Fresno County, where this garlic field sits outside of Five Points. But this time of year, something is planted in most of those fields. Collins said in most cases, garlic is planted by the buyer, who purchases the virus-free seed that must be grown out- side the area where it is to be planted. He said there is strong camaraderie among growers and processors. Collins doesn’t just like the smell of
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14 Ag Alert May 18, 2022
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