Price trend
Well above normalOnion price trend
Yellow jumbo onions in 50 lb sacks, the market's reference spec, are quoted from mostly $12.00-13.00 at Washington to $14.00-15.00 at Idaho-Eastern Oregon per sack FOB in reports through Oct 16, 2026, against a five-year low of $5.00 (Mar 2025) and high of $30.00 (Feb 2022).
Data through Oct 16, 2026 · source last checked Oct 17, 2026 · page revised Oct 17, 2026
Cite
- Washington
- Idaho-Eastern Oregon
- California
- New Mexico
- Texas
- Mexico
- New York
About this data
- Source
- USDA AMS shipping-point onion FOB reports (FV130)
- Series
- Yellow jumbo onions, 50 lb sacks, FOB, every quoting origin
- Basis
- FOB shipping point, low-high range
- Geography
- Across US growing origins
- Unit
- $/50 lb sack
- Calculation
- Full published history, no averaging across districts
- Last observation
- Oct 16, 2026
- Update frequency
- USDA reports on business days
Mostly $12.00-13.00 per 50 lb sack, 56% above the 5-yr median. Comparison midpoint: $12.50.
Washington yellow jumbo in 50-lb sacks trade mostly $12.00-13.00, down 3.8% week over week. Idaho-Eastern Oregon holds $14.00-15.00. Current levels sit 56% above the five-year median of $8.00, versus $5.75 a year prior.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | $12.50 | $13.00 | -3.8% |
| Month over month | $12.50 | $13.50 | -7.4% |
| Year over year | $12.50 | $5.75 | +117.4% |
| vs 5-yr median | $12.50 | $8.00 | +56.3% |
| Year | Lowest quote | Highest quote | Origins quoting | Days quoted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $7.00 | $21.00 | 5 | 120 |
| 2022 | $12.00 | $30.00 | 7 | 250 |
| 2023 | $7.00 | $20.00 | 7 | 249 |
| 2024 | $8.00 | $28.00 | 7 | 249 |
| 2025 | $5.00 | $14.00 | 6 | 247 |
| 2026 | $5.50 | $21.00 | 6 | 199 |
Previous weeks
An earlier week
Yellow jumbo in 50 lb sacks are mostly $12.00-13.00 at Washington, down 0.50 on the week, and $14.00-15.00 at Idaho-Eastern Oregon through Oct 15. The Washington market has fallen 7.4% month over month. Year over year, prices are up 117% to sit 56% above the five-year median.
Week of Oct 9, 2026
Washington yellow jumbo in 50 lb sacks stood at mostly $13.00 on Oct 9, with Idaho-Eastern Oregon at $14.50, both running 63% above the five-year median. Year over year, the benchmark price has climbed from $6.00 to $13.00.
Week of Sep 25, 2026
Yellow jumbo in 50 lb sacks at Washington trade $13.00-14.00, 59% above the 5-year median. The midpoint eased 0.50 on the month but is up 7.00 from a year ago. Idaho-Eastern Oregon moved to 16 through late September; New Mexico quoted 19 in mid-August.
Week of Sep 18, 2026
Washington yellow jumbo in 50 lb sacks is $13.00-14.00, 50% above the five-year median. Month over month the benchmark fell 10.0%, but year over year it has climbed 107.7%. Idaho-Eastern Oregon has moved to $16.00, New Mexico to $19.00 and California to $15.00.
How to read the onion price trend
There is no single national onion price, and this page does not print one. USDA Market News quotes onions district by district, and each quote is a real range from confirmed sales at that shipping point. Averaging those districts together would produce a number no one publishes and no one trades on, so the trend here is read off one fixed specification instead: yellow jumbo onions in 50-lb sacks, the most-quoted combination in the USDA file and the closest thing the trade has to a benchmark. Each line above is one origin's real quotes for exactly that spec.
The saw-tooth shape is the crop calendar, not volatility. A storage district like Idaho-Eastern Oregon or the Columbia Basin quotes from harvest in late summer through spring and then goes silent when the sheds empty, while the desert and spring-crop districts pick the market up for the summer. A line that stops in April and restarts in August has not crashed. It has finished its season. Follow the origins in relay across the chart rather than reading any single line as the market.
The year-by-year table is the plain version of the same story: the lowest and highest price USDA published for this spec in each calendar year, with the number of origins and report days behind it. A wide spread means the year held both a glut and a squeeze. Read the origin count too, because a year with fewer quoting origins is a thinner sample, not necessarily a different market.
For the current picture rather than the arc, current onion prices carries the live benchmark quote week to week, the weekly board ranks this week's biggest moves, and the variety and pack size pages cut the same USDA data by product instead of by time. Know Your Onions reports these prices as published and does not forecast where they go next.
Common questions
Are onion prices going up or down?
Down on the month and up on the year. At Washington, the most-quoted origin for the reference spec, yellow jumbo onions in 50 lb sacks are mostly $12.00-13.00 (Oct 16, 2026), down 7% from $13.00-14.00 a month earlier and up 117% from mostly $5.50-6.00 a year earlier. Both origins quoting the spec are lower than a month ago. Current onion prices tracks the benchmark week to week, and why onion prices are rising and why they are falling cover the causes.
What is the highest onion price on record in this series?
$30.00 per 50 lb sack, the top of the range USDA published for yellow jumbo onions in 50 lb sacks from Mexico on Feb 28, 2022. That is the highest quote for the spec at any origin in this site's record, which begins in July 2021. The lowest was $5.00 at Washington on Mar 17, 2025. The year-by-year table above lists each year's high and low.
What is a normal onion price?
For the wholesale benchmark, yellow jumbo onions in a 50 lb sack FOB the shipping point, the five-year median for this time of year is $8.00 per sack at Washington, about 16 cents a pound. Half of all the quotes USDA published for the spec over the past five years, at every origin, fell between $9.00 and $17.00 per sack (range midpoints). These are prices for onions loaded at the packing shed, before freight, wholesale handling and retail margin, so they are not what a grocery store charges; this site does not track shelf prices.