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Onion Market Update October 31, 2023
By John Harris
Spooky Tuesday is here and Thanksgiving week is only 3 weeks away. A few of us from Paradigm attended the IFPA show in October and had a lot of insightful conversations with a lot of people. The take away from October is that business was pretty slow and the yellow market was, generally speaking, a dumpster fire. With that said, harvest is complete and everything is under cover at this point. These growers and shippers simply cannot afford to continue to sell at prices we saw in October. Over the past week, we have seen these sheds cut down on run time and the bottom of the market is being raised.
Buyers are still looking for deals that no longer exist and this week, I think we’ll see most people come around to these slightly higher prices. I am hoping that this upward market trend continues through the Holidays to at least get the market to a breakeven point to support these growers’ production costs on yellows.
The white market has fallen a bit in the last month, but it is stable and we should be in a position to keep it that way through the end of 2023. The red market is a little all over the place. The general consensus is that reds are on the shorter side this year, and we should see nothing but a strong red market for the remainder of this storage crop season. Medium sizes in all colors seems to be harder to come by this year than jumbos, particularly in the whites and especially in the reds.
Yellows – Quality is overall very good in most storage areas. There are a few concerns in the Northwest, with some rain that came about during harvest in August that will likely create larger than usual shrink as we get later in the season. It will be something to keep an eye on. Mediums are a little harder to come by than larger sizes, and with the big retail Holiday push coming up, we’ll probably see that become more magnified.
Whites – We have a nice crop of whites under roof this year, with the great growing conditions Mother Nature provided this summer. The market is generally stable on both mediums and jumbos with mediums a little tight from time-to-time. Like the yellows, we’ll see that magnified as well, as Thanksgiving approaches. Loose jumbo whites will be a more appropriate item to try and promote going into the holiday season.
Reds – The story continues with reds; that mediums are hard to come by in load volume this year. So far, I feel like we’ve had very nice quality on reds this season. Availability on jumbos hasn’t been an issue up to this point, but I think this market has potential to see supplies tighten and for the market to rise as we go into 2024.
Editors Note: John Harris is the president and founder of Paradigm Fresh and Colorado Cold Connect in Fort Morgan, Colorado. He can be reached at John@paradigmfresh.com.
