How The US' Biggest Garlic Producer Survived The Fall Of American Garlic | Big Business

Christopher ranch processes about 12 billion cloves of garlic a year making it the biggest producer in the United States workers clean peel and pack all of it at this massive Warehouse in Gilroy California as you can see there's not a vampire to be seen garlic ripens once a year and rots fast so workers have just a few weeks to dig it all up when it comes to garlic we have one shot and that's all going to be done by hand the company is one of the last us garlic producers most shut down when cheaper Chinese

garlic began flooding the market in the 1990s so how has Christopher ranch survived the influx of imported cheap garlic and how did it help turn what was once considered a niche ingredient into one of the most popular vegetables in the US Christopher ranch produces more than half of all garlic grown in the United States here its crops span an area about half the size of Manhattan in other words 1 billion bulbs of garlic that's Ken Christopher grandson of the original Christopher who gave the ranch its name in 1956 when he first started growing garlic on

just 10 acres garlic is an asexual plant it's essentially a clone of itself year after year you're going to be guaranteed to have the same flavor profile throughout the decades and so today we can enjoy the same Italian bold zesty flavor that my grandfather first selected 60 years ago they plant all of it in November bulbs grow underground over the span of 9 months once they're ready Farmers have about a month to dig everything up by hand machines would rip the Garlic's thin layers of skin making it harder to sell and quicker to rot there

simply is no automated process uh the hand selection process Remains the best they'll ripen between June and August so the company hires an extra 3,000 workers for just those few months American farmers often struggle to recruit people for this work so the ranch hires workers from Mexico on temporary agricultural visas one problem you're going to find with a lot of farmers in the area is labor how can we possibly get enough people to produce the food that Americans eat and it takes hundreds more hands at Giant warehouses like these to get produce like garlic store

ready it's critical to get it into one of these rooms as fast as we can did I get off the railing each one of 100 million pounds wherever they're grown in California all come home to here work ERS wheel it all in in these 2,000lb bins it's 90° in here heat loosens up the Skins so these scraps can fall off then the garlic goes onto this conveyor belt because garlic is a root crop sometimes you're going to have some staining all around the skins and it's our job to make it give that perfect appearance that

you're used to at the market Ken runs sales for the ranch and checks that all the bulbs look package pretty the crew's job is to go through and physically clean every single one of these bulbs every day workers inspect about 200,000 lb worth then machines sort the bulbs into seven groups depending on their size the smallest bulbs fall through these tight chains as the links get bigger they let in bigger bulbs you're going to have the largest bulbs coming here on the left lanes and if we go to the middle Lanes we'll have the middle

siiz bulbs and on the far right we're going to have the smallest bulbs that we're going to pack for our customers restaurants usually go for the big ones those have larger cloves they're easier to chop into finer pieces and give chefs more control over how garlicky their food tastes different customers require different kinds of garlic some customers want very large bulbs some customers want smaller bulbs and sleeves some customers want garlic and display tray some customers want their garlic and 30 lb boxes but only the smoothest cleanest Bowl bub s will make it into the

shipments that leave this Warehouse Christopher ranch says that's only about 60% of all the garlic they harvest the rest will get processed in another room but we'll get back to that another crew checks for any lingering dirty skin that might make the bulbs less valuable and then essentially the final part is they're just cleaning it and it goes into a box and this is going to be found in retailers starting next week about 5% of the garlic Christopher ranch produces leaves the going to Canada Japan Mexico or New Zealand All the Rest stays in the

US our business model split into retail food service and Industrial the company ships these boxes off to Major chains like Costco Kroger Trader Joe's and Safeway across all 50 states in some of our relationships with companies like Blue Apron they've mention that garlic is the one constant they have in every single box of product they ship out Nationwide on a typical day they'll fill seven semi trucks with garlic but things were different when Ken's grandfather started the company in 1956 when he only sold to a produce market in San Francisco when he started he was

almost a joke in town garlic was very much a niche crop a niche vegetable the kind of garlic that's popular in the US today was brought over by Spanish explorers in the 1500s but it wasn't until Italian immigrants came to California in the late 1800s that the crop found its home in Gilroy well in the 1950s it was mostly popular among immigrant communities that faced discrimination only Mee markets carried the vegetable and it stayed out of the mainstream for decades things started to change in the late ' 80s when American scientists confirmed the ingredient was

really good for you it contains a natural antibiotic called Allison which can help prent blood clots garlic became newsworthy and its popularity continued to grow so you take a whole garlic head like that and you know it takes a long time to take each clove off and peel it America's gotten a whole lot more diverse so as America's cultural palletes become more diverse garlics mve from being very side plate to being center plate in the 1990s garlic finally became one of the most produced crops in America the only problem problem was that the white skins

stain easily so a lot of it was hard to sell because Americans wouldn't buy bulbs that didn't look perfect that's where Ken's grandfather Don saw an opportunity because garlic is so time and labor intensive to grow we want to find a home for every single pound Christopher ranch was the first company in America to sell the crop peeled they invented this machine that could peel hundreds of cloves in minutes and produce gar garlic Americans were willing to pay 50% more for it gave the ranch an edge over its American competitors within the first few years

peeled garlic accounted for 10% of Christopher ranch's Revenue today their machines peel more than a million pounds of garlic every week first the bruised up bulbs go into these giant drums called crackers which use rubber rollers to break them down into cloves then a 60 person crew sorts them again chucking out the completely rotten ones and the pretty guys they go into a special room giant machines portion the cloves into cups and blast them with compressed air most peelers do that at around 116 lb per square in that's about 3 to four times the air

pressure of a car tire machines whip the garlic around at 1200 revolutions per minute in it and those stubborn shells fly right off they upgrade their machines every few years their newest one can peel 100,000 lb of garlic in an 8 hour shift these computers can identify which cloves are going to be okay for our final pack they're going to identify where the gross defects are they're going to identify Sunburn and using automation we can fire small streams of air kick out the bad cloves and let the good ones go by in effect saving a

whole lot on labor costs today peeled garlic accounts for 40% of the company's Revenue But Ken says they've constantly looked for new ways to keep up with growing competition from China the US started to import cheap garlic from China shortly after the Cold War but Chinese bulbs sold for almost 50% less than American ones the US government accused Chinese producers of trying to gain a monopoly by selling garlic for less than what it takes to grow it also known as dumping by the mid90s Christopher ranch sales had fallen by half and the company started laying

off workers the US Government tried to control it with anti-dumping duties in 1994 but Chinese Imports continued and by 2004 the US was importing over half of the garlic it consumed between 2001 and 2005 Christopher ranch had slashed the land it farmed by 40% and during this period the US garlic industry was losing an estimated $600 million to Chinese Imports meanwhile in China garlic was beating gold stocks becoming the country's most lucrative asset before the 1990s nearly all the garlic consumed in America was grown in America there used to be 12 commercial garlic growers in

the country now we're down to three and Ken often spoke about it even on TV as seen in this clip he's just back from Washington DC where he lobbied to help win a new 10% tariff on Chinese garlic one of the hardest things I've ever done was actually going to DC and testifying and offering evidence that the Chinese continue to impact and negatively hurt the domestic Arctic industry in 2018 then US president Donald Trump imposed a 10% tariff on garlic coming from China that tariff Rose to 25% in 2019 and President Biden has kept them

in place in the past decade China Imports dropped overall but the country remains America's Main foreign supplier tariffs are applied before it even enters the country so we found that they were incredibly effective keeping the company profitable has required constant Innovation though over the years they've launched dozens of new products that Americans would pay more for like minced crushed pickled or chopped garlic we've really had to upgrade our skill set in that respect you're not always going to get perfect bow like the one you see here we try to use every piece that we can

and this facility CHS out 100,000 lb of roasted garlic every week accounting for 5% of the company's sales we're going to have a two-sided convection oven heat up the garlic to about 250° you kind of see through a layer of garlic then they put it on these fans for 30 minutes oh you sorry I didn't think we going it goes into this cooler next it gets the temperature down to about 40° F which helps make the garlic shelf stable and ready to ship across the country they pack some of it into these 30 lb boxes

and send it off to their warehouse to store their robots can portion out and seal up to 500 packages every hour in a single day Christopher ranch cranks out about 200,000 lb of garlic they also sell garlic skins to local farmers as animal feed some of our garlic may not be perfect for restaurants and so we're going to find a new home for it but Ken says to stay competitive they also had to sell Chinese garlic but not under the Christopher ranch name and the packaging doesn't say grown in California like these boxes do you

want to zoom on this this is kind of the most important in 2018 a Netflix documentary rotten accused the company of selling Chinese garlic peeled by prisoners under its own name Christopher ranch has denied those allegations they made a critical mistake this is a streaming and living thing that continues to impact our brand and our business we are an ethical company uh we're a company that strives to be the best and we only work with suppliers that bring it into this country and that have the same certifications and documentations that we'd expect of our garlic

today Chinese garlic accounts for about 8 to 10% of the company's Revenue but American garlic is still the choice of all chefs who participate in the California Garlic Festival one of the biggest garlic fairs in the US ooh garlic Julie Linburg has been the head chef of the event since 2022 she bought 300 lb of garlic from Christopher ranch to prepare food for 3 Days California garlic is a bit sweeter when you flip it over if you see that brown hairy bottom you know it's out of our ground our beautiful soil if it's nice and

bleached and flat you know it came from somewhere else very very far away Julie runs a team of 40 kitchen staff at the official Festival tent let's open it all the way so when they get here it's a fast process she got here at 6:30 in the morning to prep before thousands of Festival goers start arriving at noon no frying we have no customers everything's got to be fresh fresh fresh all day they'll prepare nothing but the two signature dishes created by Julie herself garlic fries and garlic bread it may sound simple but she's thought

of every detail carefully our special concoction and then they will put parm and or bacon Julie uses 200 lb of Parmesan imported only from Italy make sure we're getting some of this from the bottom okay how much garlic is in that a lot can I say a lot so this is where the garlic bread happens we're toasting it on a Char boiler in 3 days they go through about 600 loaves of soft French bread from a local bakery and 300 lb of butter once it gets nice and toasty comes over here and it gets dipped

in this special concoction that smells just a little bit like garlic it's garlic and butter and some other things she uses pre-minced garlic she buys from Christopher ranch as a base and adds some fresh ground on top and then we wrap it and here is an order of garlic bread smell a vision I don't know if the camera captures that but then will run it by the boss make sure it's the right size one every new batch needs to be approved by Tony noet the organizer of the festival little SP Tony's in charge of the

garlic pesto pasta a recipe he learned from his Italian grandmother this ain't McDonald's here this is known of stuff back at the ranch in the old days you know so I enjoy cooking and uh that way I get to eat Tony Farms walnuts but everyone here knows him as the guy who saved the Garlic Festival in California we had heard a few years ago that the Garlic Festival was going to close and it's been the longest running festival here in California well that's when I stepped in and said we're going to continue to keep the

Garlic Festival alive the city of Gilroy used to run the largest Garlic Festival but decided to drop it in 2022 through 3 years earlier a mass shooting at the festival caused insurance rates to spike and the covid-19 pandemic slashed turnout in 2020 a year after that it was a legacy that we thought we couldn't let go I mean it's just part of our life cycle here in California and we believe in local business local products that's very important keeping our local economies going though this is technically a different Festival Tony invested more than half a

million dollars out of his own pocket to continue the tradition near its former home in Gilroy it's important for agriculture the community the people that there's so many people involved in agriculture throughout California and throughout the world Julie wave to the camera hey everybody without her this wouldn't go she even gives me orders and I think I'm the boss now she's the boss in the kitchen this year nearly 16,000 people attended the festival more than double the attendance in 2023 Cali garlic alley is open for business follow the smell garlic fries garlic bread and have

about some garlic pasta garlic garlic garlic that's how what I how I grew up as a Filipino family my mom cooks everything with garlic so and he keeps the vampires away yeah about 150 vendors from all over the State signed up using California garlic on chicken all right here's the magic more garlic pork our famous pork belly and even honey and butter would you guys like to try a free sample you like it it would be a sad sad place to be without garlic yes Mama oh I'm adding it right now one vendor here even

puts garlic in ice cream ice cream ice cream it's different yeah he's Italian so they eat a lot of garlic and in my culture which is Cambodian we eat a lot of garlics too but to infuse it into an ice cream it's amazing I love it I'm not Shar but some Festival goers told us it wasn't just about buying local it's amazing it has healing properties it's very good for your body it acts like an antibiotic I garlic in the morning in the afternoon so I have to be careful when I'm engaging with people cuz

they'll smell they'll smell the garlic before they see me Ken says these are the customers who will keep the business going we're finding that Americans want the safest and healthiest product for them and their family Christopher ranch has its own tent here selling minced peeled and organic bulbs the company used to supply all the garlic for the original Festival back in Gilroy since co-founding it in 1979 nowadays other producers participate too but Ken says organic only recently became a trend here about 10 years ago we started really investing investing in our organic program and since

then we've scaled up they started off with about a million pounds of organic garlic which was grown without pesticides fertilizers or hormones that often means producing it takes more work and the garlic has a greater chance at rotting which is part of what makes organic more expensive but Americans have been buying more of it anyway today Christopher ranch grows 15 million PBS of organic garlic about 20% of its annual crop we found that to be our best profit Martian Center as inflation goes up as the cost of Labor goes up as we have more scarcity

for land and water really pivoting towards Organics and a more high-end heirloom program is going to be the path forward as for the produce Christopher ranch doesn't sell during the harvest season each one of the rooms behind me we're going to store millions of pounds of garlic from our Harvest and as you can see we have garlic that was harvested at the end of June of 2023 so last week we just opened up the room behind me and the garlic is every good as you could hope for the garlic you see here essentially goes to

sleep for 12 months they can pull garlic from here all year you can remove the oxygen from the room lower the temperature and keep your product safe but Ken says farming is always a gamble over the past decade droughts in California have made it harder to grow in the area and Silicon Valley is expanding making land a lot more expensive than it used to be meanwhile America's appetite for garlic is still growing the country consumed over $4.5 billion worth in 20123 and Ken says regardless of how or where his Ranch harvests it he's confident homegrown

garlic will never go away how important is garlic to your family garlic means nothing to no garlic is a part of our DNA it's part of our culture it's part of who we are it's an inspiration for our whole family [Music]