The recent imposition of a 30% tariff on garlic imports from China by the United States has triggered a chain reaction in the global market. With the U.S. door effectively closed, China is now looking to redirect its garlic to Europe, which could lead to a massive influx of off-quota product and further destabilise the Spanish sector.
“The Chinese will sell that garlic in Europe and in other markets where we operate, and that’s going to hurt us,” warns Luis Fernando Rubio, spokesperson for ANPCA (National Association of Garlic Producers and Traders).
Although the annual European quota allows for 53 million kilos of duty-free imports under a 9.6% ad valorem tariff, anything exceeding that threshold is subject to a deterrent duty of €1.20/kg or €1,200/t. “Even so, if China continues lowering prices, the price difference might still be attractive enough for Chinese garlic to flood the European market,” Rubio adds.
But the threat doesn’t just come from the East. Egypt, backed by a free trade agreement with the EU, has significantly increased its presence, and Turkey is expanding its cultivation areas. Faced with this uneven playing field—where foreign producers don’t face the same labour, food safety, or input costs—Spanish growers are in a dire situation: in the past two years alone, garlic acreage has dropped by 30%. This year, a modest 5% recovery has been recorded.
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The contraction is no coincidence. Garlic farming in Spain is deeply rooted in rural communities and provides critical employment in many towns across regions such as Castilla-La Mancha and Andalusia. However, it has been battling profitability issues for years.
“Production costs have risen by 30% over the past five years, and farms are unable to offset that extra cost due to falling yields—caused by the lack of active substances for crop protection—and low market prices,” explains Rubio.
To this, one must add the lack of generational replacement, a structural challenge that could condemn the crop to eventual disappearance.
Uncertainty heading into 2025
The current campaign is also marked by added uncertainty: delays have forced a rescheduling of orders, and there’s a severe shortage of phytosanitary products—so much so that exceptional measures have been requested to continue the harvest.
With over 65 workdays per hectare required just for fieldwork—excluding warehouse labour—garlic is one of the most labour-intensive crops. Losing it would not only be an agricultural crisis, but also a blow to the socio-economic fabric of rural Spain.
The sector is urgently calling for decisive action from European institutions to halt the uncontrolled entry of foreign garlic that fails to meet EU food safety standards, and to secure the future of a crop closely tied to the land.
