Onion Harvest

“The harvest is going great, the weather looks really good”. West of Greenleaf, Idaho Dan Miasako of T&K Farms is working the dirt and turning up yellow onions which are headed to markets across the United States. Turns out that onions are nothing to cry over — these flavorful bulbs are packed with nutrients. They are excellent sources of vitamin C, sulphuric compounds, flavonoids and phytochemicals." Studies have shown that they may help reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, cardiovascular disease and stroke.

 

US farmers plant approximately 125,000 acres of yellow onions annually and produce about 6.2 billion pounds a year. 20,000 of those onion acres are located on the Idaho/Eastern Oregon border. At Allendale Produce on the Idaho side, harvest is bringing in yellow, red and white onions from the fields to storage. “The majority are yellows and then the next largest colored onion are reds and we will put close to 80 acres of reds away into storage. And then we just have a small acreage of whites that we use, we don't grow a lot of whites.” Dan says warmer than average weather has been good for the drying out period needed before the bulbs are processed for storage. “ That makes a lot of difference on how quickly these onions dry out.”