Thursday, April 29, 2010

The China Price

I noticed over the last couple weeks that garlic became more expensive. I usually spent $1 for a sleeve of five heads of garlic. Now I've seen prices rise slightly by 25 to 50 cents. Not a big deal for a lot of garlic (and we do use a lot in our cooking).

In a news brief in the Shenzhen Daily, it seems the price increase is more alarming. In the city of Shenzhen, the wholesale price of garlic has doubled in the past week to 7 Yuan per half kilogram (close to a pound). Considering most of the garlic around here is imported from China, and a sleeve is about a pound, the price increase is actually quite minimal. This could lead to a greater price hike in the next few weeks in the US.

I just hope I don't have to change my recipes to include less garlic.

2 comments:

Yokie Kuma said...

If you are worried about garlic, then you should be really really really worried about chicken feet!

There is a new China tariff coming for US imported chicken feet and heads (into China) because of US government subsidies to chicken farmers .....

Matthew said...

Yokie,
I heard about the chicken feet tariff. I surprised a few years ago when a friend said he didn't eat chicken feet in restaurants because they were shipped frozen from the US--he only wanted them fresh.

Now we have to wait and see what the US will put tariffs on in retaliation. International economic politics is really frustrating.