‘Garlic town’ goes global

China’s “garlic town” sees bright business prospects after successfully standardizing production, optimizing the industrial chain, and introducing an insurance system.

China is home to over half of the world’s garlic production, while 70 percent of such exports were generated by Jinxiang, a county in east Shandong Province.

With an over 2,000-year history of garlic planting, the county ships its products to more than 160 countries and regions, including the US, Japan, the EU and Brazil.

The county’s average garlic production could reach 800,000 tons a year, with a storage capacity of two million tons and processing volume of over 1.1 million tons.

Thanks to standardized production and complete industrial chain, Jinxiang’s garlic industry is prospering, a local official said.

The official added that the county has established an operations manual for planting, harvesting, sales and processing of the garlic, greatly improving production efficiency.

In addition, the industrial chain has now reached more than 40 kinds of processed garlic products, including black garlic, garlic capsule with selenium, and garlic polysaccharide, the official added.

Jinxiang county established an international garlic trade center years ago, which was then labeled as the “Wall Street of garlic” by the media. But it went into liquidation as inadequate regulation had resulted in huge fluctuations in the price of garlic.

The county introduced a pilot insurance mechanism in 2015 to keep garlic prices from fluctuating. Now this insurance has basically covered the whole county, the government shoulders 80% of insurance costs.

Shao Hui, deputy director of the local price bureau, said that the aim of the insurance is to prevent losses for the farmers, enhance their ability to take market risks and stabilize the garlic market.