What moves price
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.
Updated Jul 10, 2026
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Onion prices move on supply, not demand. People buy roughly the same volume of onions week in and week out, so the demand side is close to a constant. That leaves supply to do almost all the work, and supply is where every real price story on this market comes from.
Supply is the whole story
Start with acreage: how many acres growers planted, decided months earlier, sets the ceiling on the crop. Then weather at the origins, a hot spell, a wet harvest, a freeze, any of which can take tonnage off that ceiling. Then storage: a stored crop shrinks and can degrade, so how well the onions hold and what condition the remaining lots are in drives the back half of every storage year. The tight 2022 to 2023 Northwest season is the textbook case, with Idaho-Eastern Oregon tonnage running well below a normal year and prices firm through the storage draw as a result. Steady demand against a supply that swings is why onions can go from cheap to dear without anyone's buying habits changing.
Freight, imports and the transitions
Three more levers sit on top of the supply story. Freight is the wildcard on delivered price: the onions can be flat at the shed while the delivered cost jumps because trucks got tight or fuel moved. Imports are the relief valve: when a domestic origin is short, Mexican, Peruvian or Canadian supply can cross in and take the top off a price. And the transitions between growing regions are the classic volatility windows. When one origin is selling out and the next has barely started, supply is at its thinnest, and that is where prices tend to spike, only to settle once the new crop is running.
Worked example: the biggest mover on the board
Take the biggest move on the board above and run it through the framework. First ask which origin it is and where that origin sits in its season, because a move on an origin that is selling out reads differently from one just getting going. Then ask whether it is a transition week, one region handing off to another. Then whether volume, the movement side, is confirming it. Most big onion moves resolve into one of those supply stories: a short crop, a quality problem, a thin handoff or a freight jump. Demand is rarely the answer.
Know Your Onions explains how this market works and reports what USDA published. We do not forecast prices or tell anyone what to do about a move. A price change here helps one side of the trade and costs the other, and we report its size and direction plainly.
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Common questions
Why are onion prices so high sometimes?
Almost always a supply problem, because onion demand is steady. A short crop from bad weather or low acreage, a storage crop that did not hold, a thin handoff between growing regions or a jump in freight can all push prices up without demand changing.
Do onion prices depend more on supply or demand?
Supply. Onion demand is famously steady week to week, so price moves come overwhelmingly from the supply side: acreage, weather at the origins, storage condition, imports and freight.
When are onion prices most volatile?
During the transitions between growing regions, when one origin is selling out and the next is just starting. Supply is thinnest at those handoffs, so that is when prices tend to move most.
Know Your Onions reports public USDA data and explains how this market works. It does not forecast prices and it is not trading or contracting advice: it never tells a reader what to buy, sell, or contract for. Figures are attributed to USDA as published.