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Onion Market Update 04/01/2025
By John Harris
Since my last update two weeks ago, we have seen some new developments in the onion market.
Mother Nature threw us a curveball in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, dumping buckets of rain at the tail end of last week, just as the Texas crop was ready to be harvested. The Valley is a large growing area with a variety of different soil types that handle that amount of moisture differently. There will be onions harvested that will be just fine, and there will be a lot of acres that get plowed under. I suspect putting a percentage on each at this point is too early to say.
The USDA Shipments and Imports report has been experiencing technical difficulties with information recently, making it challenging to track crossings. However, it is safe to say that a decent supply of Mexican imported onions will continue to cross the border for multiple more weeks. One item of particular note is that new crop reds have become extremely scarce and are expected to remain that way for at least another week, if not a bit longer. Yellows and whites appear to still have good availability in terms of load volume. The quality of Mexican product up to this point has been overall very good.
As far as storage crop is concerned, there are still good supplies remaining of reds and yellows. Storage crop whites are in the hands of very few in Washington and are generally in short supply. The quality of storage reds remains overall very good. Yellow quality has been inconsistent from shed-to-shed and area- to-area. The whites that remain are nice, particularly for this time of year.
Markets are overall still steady but have increased slightly, especially on new crop onions as a result of last week’s weather event. I will be in touch in a couple of weeks with a new update. At that time, the Imperial Valley in California should be almost ready to get kicked off.
Have a great week and as always, definitely reach out with any questions or comments.
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.
