It was a wonderful experience for us to be a vendor in last week’s Hudson Valley Garlic Festival 2021, held at the Cantine fields of Saugerties Village. After a gap of one year, we welcomed back the biggest Garlic festival in the North Eastern region, probably the second biggest of the country, after Gilroy in the West Coast! Attracting thousands of visitors in its two days of activities, The Hudson Valley Garlic Festival provided visitors with an amazing range of fresh Garlic directly from farmers, garlic based food from food makers, and many other foods, crafts and curious items. The festival was entertained throughout out by music played by many prominent local and NY musicians. Hundreds of volunteers controlled the traffic in its several miles radius. The entire coordination committee under the able guidance of the Kiwanis Club and has once again done an excellent job in its over 30 year old existence.
find the history here : http://hvgf.org/garlichistory.html
Hudson Valley Garlic Festival continue to open many possibilities and opportunities for the participants, vendors, general public to addresses the most vital issue of our time, growing food and taking care of Mother Earth through Garlic.
This was Atina Foods 4th year participating in the Festival with our regular favorites and a new exciting product, Garlic Scape Dust. This is a wonderful evolution from our Good Food Award winner and popular Garlic Scape Pickle, where fermented garlic scape is slow dehydrated and ground into a finishing salt, to sprinkle on all your food! It tastes great, and we already sold out .
During the festival, we presented a proposal to form a Garlic Collective as a new initiative to make our New York State, the Garlic capital of the world. We feel that the favorable climatic condition, fertile soil and a dynamic local market provide us with an opportunity to grow more garlic in the Northeastern region in general and NY state in particular along with installing appropriate infrastructure facilities to process the raw garlic into value added products which is supported by research and education for the market development. Download the Brochure here (I don’t know how to do this)
Growing Garlic is Great
It helps farmers in the region to cultivate over winter otherwise unused with garlic crops.
The planting, harvesting, processing and making value added products generate a significant number of jobs in the region.
Growing Garlic and developing value added products can contribute to the local economy and to soil health.
Unfortunately the market demand of the fresh Garlic and other garlic products in the NE region has been met through the imports from the West coast and other countries
With 400 million pounds of garlic grown in the US., still the US is the largest importer of garlic in the world, with 75% from China. The top garlic producer in US comes out of Gilroy, California and New York comes in 5th.
WHAT IS HOLDING US BACK?
Have you ever tried to peel 1 Metric tonne of garlic by hand ????
Most farmers do not have garlic peeling facilities, inhibiting its use for large scale production
Scapes add extra labor for farms, often unprofitable and discarded
Both peeled garlic and Scapes need to be stored in temperature controlled space.
There are very few value added products from locally grown garlic.
Garlic produced in the NE region does not meet market demands
THE GARLIC COLLECTIVE
Objectives
Help existing garlic farmers to increase productivity
Facilitate new farmers to grow garlic
Develop centralized procurement system for buying, storing and processing raw Garlic.
Develop and expand existing value added products from Garlic
Integrate and expand the market potential for fresh Garlic and products
Develop education and awareness programs by offering courses on sustainable farming, health and cultural practices on Garlic
WE PROPOSE TO:
CREATE A CORE FUND
• Create a core fund to advance payment to farmers for future crops.
INSTALL INFRASTRUCTURE
• Processing raw garlic, drying, peeling, and temperature controlled storage and fermentation.
• Commercial kitchen: Production of value-added products.
• Research and Development center for growing garlic , product development.
• Sales, marketing, distribution, for products regionally and nationally.
• Education center with garlic based curriculum from growing to preserving to
health and culture.
We hope you can join us, we cannot garlic alone : ) Please read HVADC article on us
Please do let us know your interest:
