There are too many onions. That's the sentiment around the current state of the onion market.
"We just have onions everywhere right now. There's also not enough demand and there's very very very weak pricing," says John Harris of Paradigm Fresh.
As he notes, there are still some storage crop onions getting shipped, albeit not a substantial amount. On top of that, there is product coming from California's Imperial Valley, which is in full production right now. There are also onions from Mexico crossing via New Mexico as well as the Winter Garden area in Texas and in south Texas. Canada is also shipping onions.
Slow movement of onions
Meanwhile demand for onions is low–there are 385 shipments a day at the moment in the U.S. with the weekly average in the 300 shipments range. "It is a little low I would say, particularly for this time of the year going into the Memorial Day holiday. It's typically a little bit higher than that," says Harris. "It's just not there. A lot of us in the industry are just not sure why movement is stagnant."
Movement on yellow onions was slower than the other colors initially but now the red and white markets are also equally depressed. "There could be hope for the red and white market depending on what's planted in the ground," says Harris, though he adds that regions such as Chihuahua, Mexico are about to ship a large crop of onions which will continue to pressure the market.
It's expected to stay that way throughout the summer onion deal as well unless for example a weather event affects one of the fresh crop growing regions. "2025 has been quite a disaster with onions which is quite the opposite of 2024. That was an amazing year," says Harris.
For more information:
John Harris
Paradigm Fresh
Tel: +1 (970) 775.2049
[email protected]
www.paradigmfresh.com