With onion production winding down from several competing areas and a smaller crop from the Rio Grande Valley anticipated for this season, it appears that a strong onion market may accompany the Texas onion crop throughout its six-week deal.

Because Mexico, which ships a significant number of sweet onions through Texas in the February-through-March time frame, tends to shut down around Easter, some Texas growers got started a little early this year in late March because of the early Easter date (March 27).

Don Ed Holmes, owner and president of The Onion House in Weslaco, TX, told The Produce News March 22 that Mexican growers had harvested about 60 percent of their crop with very few shipments expected during that week.

“It’s Holy Week in Mexico, which means very few shipments,” he said. “Some people take the whole week off.”

Because of that, some Texas shippers started on March 21, which was two weeks ahead of the typical early-April start date. Holmes said Mexico has had excellent quality and good, but not overwhelming, volume.

“There has been no hard peak to the deal,” he said.

That has meant a strong market, which is another reason some Texas growers began harvesting a bit early. Holmes said the market for 50-pound bags was $12-$14, depending upon the size of the onion. On that particular day, he said an anomaly had developed as smaller onions were commanding a higher price than the jumbos due to an undersupply of small onions. He characterized the $12-$14 as “perfect, good for everybody. The grower can make money at the price. It’s good for the seller and the retailer, and the consumer gets good value.”

He noted that a low market in single digits makes it difficult for the grower to survive, while a through-the-roof market in the $25 range is good for the grower but not good for anyone else along the distribution chain.

Holmes was very optimistic about this season because Texas is down in acreage, and competing areas are also light on onions for the immediate marketing period. While Mexico will have onions into April, volume is expected to be light. Also, the storage deal in Nevada is not expected to make it into April and onion growers in the Northwest are also seeing their inventories dwindle quickly.

The Texas onion veteran noted that the Rio Grande Valley has only 4,500 acres of onions this year. “Five years ago, we had 10,000 acres,” he said.

A variety of reasons led to the reduction, including poor onion markets, strong market pricing for alternate crops such as cotton and the grains, and a relatively hot housing market.

“We are losing 40,000 to 50,000 acres each year to urban sprawl,” Holmes said. “This is one of the fastest-growing areas (population wise) in the country.”

And one can’t forget last year when rains started in early

April and lasted all month, all but completely wiping out the onion crop. Much of South Texas received 300 percent of normal rainfall for the month, with as much as seven inches falling on one day during the middle of the month. Growers and shippers were lucky to harvest one-fourth of the crop.

As Holmes surveyed this year’s deal, he noted that April hadn’t arrived yet and he didn’t want to even contemplate the possibility of another devastating year courtesy of rainfall. Instead, he focused on the current weather, which was mostly dry, and the great growing season Rio Grande Valley farmers have had so far. In total, he said there had only been traces of rain and the crop looked great.

Still another factor working in favor of South Texas onion growers was damage to the onion plants in the Winter Garden/Uvalde are in south central Texas, near San Antonio. This acreage usually comes on at the back of the Rio Grande Valley deal in late April. That area was hit severely by a hail storm this winter, taking out much of the acreage. Without that competition, the South Texas onion deal could very well be strong from start to finish.

“We are optimist, very optimistic,” Holmes said.