Season after season, Peru has proven to be a reliable source of good-quality sweet onions for U.S. consumers, and this year should be no exception.
“The crops in Peru are in great condition and some of the best we’ve seen in a decade,” said Walt Dasher, vice president at Glennville, Ga.-based G&R Farms. G&R aims to have sweet onions year-round. “We expect to have Peruvian sweet onions by August and continue Peruvian sweets into April, when the Vidalia crop gets underway,” Dasher said.
Glennville-based Bland Farms LLC also expects a good crop from Peru. “The growing conditions in Peru have been good this year,” said CEO Troy Bland. “We expect a consistent crop, very comparable to years past, with a nice, even size profile.” Volume from Bland Farms should be similar to last year, he said. “We will start in September and will go through the spring.”
Peruvian onions play an important role at Reidsville, Ga.-based Shuman Farms. “Importing our sweet onions through the Port of Savannah allows Shuman Farms to maintain a full-time local workforce in southeast Georgia providing American jobs 12-months of the year,” said John Shuman, president and CEO. “Thanks to our Peruvian sweet onions program, we are able to retain the same employees from Vidalia season except for their H-2A field labor,” he said.
Peru accounts for about 23% of imported onions, second only to Mexico, according to the USDA. In 2021, the U.S. imported nearly 357 million pounds of Peruvian onions, up from about 315 million pounds in 2020.
“Peru is a perfect climate and ecology to produce a great onion crop that mirrors the consistent quality and flavor you would find from Vidalia sweet onions,” Dasher said. The Peruvian sweet onion crop provides a year-round option for fresh, sweet onions when the U.S. sweet onion industry is out of production.
“Peruvian sweet onions offer the opportunity for consistent year-round supply from a climate that is equal in weather and soil type,” he said. “The Peruvian onion growing region is a very mild, consistent climate that has mild temperatures, low humidity and limited disease pressure.”
Peru also allows Bland Farms to provide customers with a year-round supply of sweet onions, Bland said. “Peru’s weather and soil are similar to Southeast Georgia, where Vidalia onions are grown, so we use the same seed variety we use for Vidalia onions to grow our Premium Sweets in Peru.” Springtime in Peru is fall in the U.S., he pointed out.
As with most commodities, Peruvian onions will experience increased costs of inputs, but G&R has done its best to “forward-negotiate and use our economy of scale to maintain prices as best as possible,” Dasher said. In fact, higher food prices might actually benefit the onion category as consumers do more cooking at home, he said. “Inflationary pricing causes consumers to look for more value-priced onions,” Dasher said. “We’ve moved to a 2-pound and 3-pound bag over the last several years, giving consumers a lower price point.”
