Dive Brief:
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Matt Curry, president of Curry & Co., a major onion grower in Oregon, recently told produce industry newsletter And Now You Know that yields were tight in his area for a while. As snow in the northwest growing areas has been retreating, the situation is looking healthier.
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Curry said that the wintry weather has not impacted the health of his crop, and his onions are larger than usual this year.
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Because of year-round onion trade between the U.S., Mexico, Canada and other countries, supplies tend to be fairly steady year-round, Kim Reddin, public and industry relations officer for the National Onion Association told Food Dive.
Dive Insight:
Last August, The Greely Tribune in Colorado reported that hail — hardly an uncommon phenomenon in that area — had wreaked havoc on local corn, onion and other crops. Mother Nature has a way of doing that, costing farmers small (and larger) fortunes in the process. And yet, most farmers weather the storm and continue producing our foodstuffs in sufficient abundance to allow for low consumer prices here — as well as elsewhere, thanks to U.S. exports.
U.S. food store supplies are increasingly part of a global marketplace, with this or that coming from the oddest of places: Plums from Peru were available in central Virginia earlier this week. Some of the onions in the store could be coming from Mexico.
In today's business world, it is anything but exclusive. Nations depend on each other. And the United States has been depending on international trade to keep grocery stores supplied with different fruits and vegetables year-round. According to the National Onion Association, the U.S. imports 12 million to 17 million 50-pound bags of onions per year. Most of them come from Mexico, Canada, Peru and Chile.
With the importance of the onion trade between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, trading routes need to remain open. President Donald Trump has often repeated his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he has called "a disaster." While Trump's major focus is U.S. factory jobs, several in the food and agriculture industry have written to the president to ask him to modernize — but not scrap — the agreement.