From the first of June through about mid-August, Country Sweet Produce Inc. in Bakersfield, CA, the marketing arm of Donald Valpredo Farms, offers a “full gamut” of onions, both organic and conventional, grown in the San Joaquin Valley of California, according to Duke Dodder, commodity sales manager.

The mix includes yellows, whites, reds, flat yellow sweet onions and red Italian sweets, he said.

“We have a very good crop of Italian sweet reds this year with a couple of new varieties,” Dodder said. “And of course, our ‘Bako Sweet’ onions look to be very good quality again this year.

“Bako Sweet” is Country Sweet’s band for its flat, sweet yellow onion. Other labels used by the company in its onion program are “DV,” “CSP” and “ValMar.”

In addition to onions, watermelons and sweet potatoes are the main commodities grown by Donald Valpredo Farms and marketed by Country Sweet. The company also handles various other items throughout the year, particularly in the organic line. Among them are heirloom tomatoes, Bell peppers, red and green cabbage, and cauliflower.

The farm does “a very good job of crop rotation to maintain the soil quality and actually improve on it,” Dodder said.

Country Sweet Produce, in its current format, has been around for about seven years, according to Dodder. Donald Valpredo Farms has been in business for more than 60 years and has been growing onions for around 58 years.

“We continue to improve our [packing] facility,” he said. This year, the company has added some automation to its packinglines.

With regard to packaging, “we do the 50-pound master sack, 40-pound cartons” and two-, three- and five-pound bags. “We have a wine glass labeling machine along with a vertical bagger that integrates both the plastic and the netting and the high-graphics label. It helps the retailer promote the product with better quality bags,” he said.

On sales at Country Sweet, along with Dodder, are Cody Rose and Nick Martinez. Michael Valpredo, president of the company, owner of Valpredo Farms and a third-generation farmer, also helps with sales.

The location of the company’s farms at the extreme southern end of the San Joaquin Valley enables the company to get an earlier start than most growers on the west side of Fresno County, further to the north, according to Dodder.

This year, however, there has been an overabundance of onions coming out of the Southern California desert and spilling over into the start of the San Joaquin Valley season, so having an early crop was no advantage.

At the same time, as with most crops in California this year, the Central California onion deal has been trending early. To minimize the clash, “we were able to hold off our onions a little bit due to the lack of demand in the market,” Dodder said May 30. “We have started up with just a little bit this week,” but will not start going in earnest until the week of June 2, which is a fairly normal start date.