Price of Onions

Price of Onions

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Onion packing plants and onion storage facilities in Idaho and Oregon have had their roofs collapse due to the weight of snow and rain. I talked with Ken Stewart, sales and operations manager for Four Rivers onion packing plant and he said several weeks ago they got quite a bit of snow on the roof of their packing facility then the weather turned to rain. Ultimately, the intense weight collapsed the building. And Four Rivers is not the only facility that got hit. My question for Ken was what was going to be the result of these catastrophes on the price of onions. I had heard that it was going to increase above $3.50. "$3.50 is actually a very deflated price. The average price of onions this time of year is probably close to $6.50 to $7.00. the market had already started to come up and actually the market has gone well past $6.50. We don't have any onions that we are packing and selling today but our neighbors are mostly $10 and more. We're not the only ones that were affected by this. There have been upwards of 25 to 30 onion buildings that have collapsed. A few packing lines. We were the first but there have been a few since us. It has greatly reduced the ability of all of the facilities to pack the volume of onions that they would normally pack. Some just because of the snow and the weather, they couldn't get to their facilities and then some of us, unfortunately, because we just lost our buildings.
Previous ReportCT Scans for Plants
Next ReportVFD impact