Admit it, it really sucks opening that bud of garlic and finding it’s rotted in the middle. Serves you right for buying “made in China.” Problem is, outside of farmers’ markets, the Ontario version of the coveted tangy bulb is mostly MIA.

With a hundred growers in the province, what’s the deal?

Get ready for a story about global trade and how clove addicts lost their groove.

Turns out garlic growers won a case at the Canadian International Trade Tribunal in 1997, and anti-dumping duties were levied on buds from China. Until 2007, that is.

After that, well, it gets complicated. According to Mark Wales, president of the Garlic Growers Association of Ontario, Chinese exporters have a pretty loose sense of geography. “Before the tariff, 11 million kilos of garlic were coming into the country from China every year. After, there was none from China. But magically, 11 million kilos came from Pakistan and the Philippines. It was the Chinese. In the same boxes. They just changed the country of origin.”

When the tariff came up for review, Wales says, the association told the feds in disgust, “You wouldn’t enforce the tariff. What’s the point of renewing it?”

At the Canadian Border Service Agency, Patrizia Giolti dices the issue differently. In the case of China, she says, “The CBSA did investigate issues involving circumvention [of duties] and took punitive measures where deemed appropriate.”

Wales, though, on behalf of 50 growers, is pretty firm that the government was either unwilling or incapable of enforcing its own tariff. Nowadays, he says, garlic is being dumped at 40¢ a pound, but locally, if it’s not going wholesale at $1.50 or more, it’s not worth growing, because of the finicky hand labour needed. “The Chinese have no regulations about what they put on the garlic, and the supermarkets don’t care.”

What to do? Warren Ham, the Garlic Growers’ anti-dumping director, suggests buying 5 to 10 pounds at once at a farmers’ market and storing it at room temperature, preferably in a dark place and on a braid. If the garlic god’s with you, it’ll last till March. 

“The chain stores want the cheap stuff, the garbage,” says Wales, “and that’s what they put on their shelves.” Over to us.