Guides
The onion market, explained
How the numbers on this site actually work: FOB and the mostly range, origin rotation, movement and imports, sacks versus cartons. Each guide is built on the same live data as the trackers, so the examples are real and current.
Reading the report
How to read a USDA shipping point report
A USDA shipping point report is the daily record of what produce actually sold for FOB at the origin, collected by USDA Market News reporters who survey confirmed sales from shippers and buyers. Each onion line names an origin, variety, pack, size and grade, then a low-high price and usually a narrower "mostly" range where the bulk of the day's sales landed.
What does FOB mean in produce?
FOB in produce means free on board at the shipping point: the price of the onions loaded on the truck at the origin, before any freight. The buyer takes ownership at the shed door and pays the trucking from there, which is why an FOB price and a delivered price for the same onions are two different numbers.
What "mostly" prices mean on a USDA report
On a USDA report the "mostly" price is the range where the bulk of the day's confirmed sales actually happened, tucked inside the wider low-high range. The low-high captures every sale including the outliers, while mostly throws out the edges and shows where the real volume traded, which makes it the truer read on the market.
The onion calendar
The US onion calendar: who ships when
The US onion market runs on an origin relay: the Northwest storage crop out of Idaho-Eastern Oregon carries the country from late summer through spring, then Texas, California, New Mexico and Georgia take over for the summer before storage onions come back around. Most onion price action is really the story of which origin is handing off to which.
Storage onions vs fresh-market onions
Storage onions are pungent yellows that are cured after harvest and held for months, so the Northwest crop becomes a national inventory drawn down all winter. Sweet onions barely store at all, which is why late-winter and spring pricing hinges on how much storage crop is left and what condition it is in.
Sizes, grades and packs
Onion sizes and grades: jumbo, colossal, medium and US No. 1
Onion size is set by diameter: medium runs about 2 to 3.25 inches, jumbo is 3 inches and up, colossal 3.75 and up, super colossal 4.5 and up. Grade is a separate quality standard, and US No. 1 is the workhorse grade covering mature, firm, well-shaped onions free of the serious defects, so the same field can price several ways once you split it by size and grade.
Onion packs explained: 50-lb sacks, cartons and consumer bags
Onions ship wholesale in a few standard packs: the 50-lb sack is the workhorse, the 25-lb sack is common and the 40-lb carton rounds it out, with consumer bags of 2 to 10 pounds sitting below them. A carton price and a sack price are not comparable until you put them both on a per-pound basis, which is the one bit of math every pack comparison needs.
What moves price
Yellow, red, white, sweet: how variety moves onion price
Yellow onions are the workhorse, about 87 percent of US production, so they carry the volume and set the reference price. Red and white are small, choppier markets that can swing harder on thin demand, and sweets trade as their own brand-driven market, which is why a red or white move often looks bigger than a yellow one.
What moves onion prices
Onion prices move almost entirely on supply, because demand is famously steady: acreage decisions, weather at the growing origins, how well the storage crop holds and the quality of what is left. Freight is the wildcard on the delivered side, imports are the relief valve, and the handoffs between growing regions are the classic moments prices jump.
How freight changes the delivered onion price
The delivered price of onions is the FOB price plus the truck freight from the origin to the buyer's dock, so the same onions land at different costs in different cities. Because freight moves with fuel, distance and truck availability, a buyer can pay one FOB and see the delivered number swing on the lane alone, and sometimes switch origins on freight rather than on the onion price.