Dutch tulip mania becomes Chinese garlic hysteria

It's a phenomenon with a whiff of the 17th-century Dutch tulip mania, when wealthy merchants used their life savings to buy single bulbs, another cause of the garlic bubble may be old-fashioned speculation.
Garlic has long enjoyed popular support for its healthgiving properties.

SHOOT: I think garlic deserves some of its price. It's also anti-carcinogenic.

clipped from www.ft.com Speculators smell chance with China garlic The world’s largest producer of the pungent bulbs, China has seen wholesale prices rocket as much as 15-fold since March in large cities such as Beijing, forced up in part by a combination of reduced acreage being planted by local farmers because of the recession – and a belief that garlic can keeping away swine flu. Schools have been hoarding garlic for pupils to eat because of its reputed properties in warding off swine flu. The China Daily has reported that a high school in Hangzhou in eastern China, bought 200 kg of garlic and made students eat it at lunch to keep healthy. “You need a warehouse, a lot of cash, and a few trucks. That’s how it works,” Mr Lou said, describing the tools of the trade used by garlic speculators. “Basically, what you do is try to arrest as much supply as possible then you bid up the price. Moving garlic from one warehouse to the other, you make millions of dollars.”