“Opposite onion year very much a possibility”

In his last newsletter, Leon van Meir reported that export was going well in spring, although it was at low price levels. “We then assumed no onions would be left this year due to the large export volume. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Quite a few growers can no longer find buyers for their onions. In the past year, the onion export increased again, but there’s still too much product. Apparently, we onion growers are capable of producing enormous volumes, so that we now have an oversupply. Two factors are the cause of this: the acreage and the yield per hectare. When both are high, prices are low. Yield per hectare has the most influence on this, and not just nationally, but also on a European level, and to a lesser extent on a global level. We could say too much product has been grown in Europe in the past year.”

“It’s difficult to do business on an overfull market. We from Van Meir Onions & Potatoes saw quite often that large onions could easily be sold, but not the medium ones. We naturally had most onions in medium sizes, which wasn’t what customers wanted. In short, a difficult year,” Leon continues. “What about the new harvest now that old onions are still arriving on the market for little money? These are now in the way of the new onions, and there are more than enough import onions. Despite all this, we managed to sell the first new onions for good prices. Now that more supply is arriving, bale prices of plant onions are under a bit of pressure. This isn’t because of the large supply of plant onions, but because of the cheap supply of the old harvest. The acreage of plant onions has grown considerably in the Netherlands as well. Most were planted late and can’t be irrigated either. Now that it’s dry and warm, we don’t expect a good yield of those. Moreover, they can’t be grubbed up if it doesn’t rain. Conclusion: if it doesn’t rain, there will be fewer plant onions rather than more. It would be better for prices if it were to stay dry for a while longer.”

“It’s different for seed onions. These should be in larger supply in August, just like potatoes. If it then turns cold and wet, there could be a good harvest of storage onions. But if it stays dry, this yield could be very disappointing. It’s dry everywhere in Europe now, and besides, fewer onions have been sowed and planted. It’s therefore very much a possibility that it’ll be the opposite of last year: less acreage has been sown, if it stays dry we’ll have a low yield per hectare resulting in higher prices. But it does have to stay dry in Europe.”

Finally, Leon looks back on the pool results of the 2017 harvest.