Vidalia onion growers have spent decades building their product’s name and reputation. Now, they are making moves to protect that image. Beginning with the 2014 season, no Vidalia onions will be packed or shipped before 12:01 a.m. on the Monday of the last full week of April each year, which will be April 21 for the upcoming season.

In recent years, some growers have rolled the season start back earlier and earlier, a move that others believe has been putting lesser quality early season onions on the market.

While a vast majority of growers support the new date, there are those who have countered that there is no way to know when a crop will be ready for market in any particular year.

Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Gary Black led the push for the mandatory pack date for the official state vegetable.

“We support Commissioner Black’s action because we believe it’s the best effort yet to improve quality and appearance in order to restore consumer confidence, protect the trademark and sustain the industry to protect livelihoods,” said Kevin Hendrix of Hendrix Produce Inc. in Metter, GA, who is also chairman of the Vidalia Onion Committee. “With this new packing date, no grower will begin their first harvest at the stage they have in the past — because in the past those very first onions harvested were never truly fully mature and there was the ever-present fear that ‘I can’t get beat.’”

Said Bo Herndon of L.G. Herndon Jr. Farms, Inc. in Lyons, GA, “We’re 100 percent behind the commissioner, this is going to make this industry better. The industry has been putting early varieties on the market that aren’t the best the last 10 years and we need to get back to the right varieties of Vidalias. This is not just for this year or the next year, it’s for eight and 10 years from now. We want to be in this business a long time. That’s why we need to do something now.”

Added Walt Dasher of G&R Farms in Glennville, GA, “We are in favor of it. Sometimes we all need someone else to step in and tell us things from the outside looking in. We all can get caught up in the circus of doing business and we can’t always see the land mines in front of us. We think this is the proper action for the future of the Vidalia industry.”

Growers say the better varieties of Vidalia onions need more heat units to mature than is typically possible to accrue before mid-April.

“The size of the onion can get there but it’s not mature, it’s soft, it doesn’t have shelf life and it’s hotter than the other varieties,” said John Williams of Herndon Farms. “We go on that Vidalia name, but the name does not make it the right variety and we’re turning the consumer away if we continue to put that on the shelf. When they see the Vidalia name in their supermarket they’re going to grab that onion regardless. If you go to a restaurant and have a bad experience, you may go back once, but if it happens twice, you’re not going back to that restaurant.”

“This is nothing new, this has been an ongoing problem for Vidalia for the past 10-15 years. [Former Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture) Tommy Irvin tried to solve the problem 10 years ago by appointing an advisory panel of growers; once a year we’d get together in March and establish a voluntary opening date, but it had no teeth in it,” said John Shuman of Shuman Produce, Inc. in Reidsville, GA. “We’ve had 10 years to address it and it just hasn’t worked. There is no silver bullet here, no absolute fix to this, but this is a step in the right direction. We’re going to put a better product on the market. At the end of the day it’s going to benefit the Vidalia brand, the growers and the industry.”