Georgia’s Vidalia Onion Crop Is Small This Year

There is a smaller than usual Vidalia onion crop this year, thanks to the wet spring weather. Earlier this spring, the Vidalia onion crop was in good shape, but then in May, there was a lot of rain, wind and some hail.

“And so a crop that was looking really good, all of a sudden, wasn’t,” UGA agricultural economist Jeffrey Dorfman said.

He said on top of the weather, farmers planted fewer acres of Vidalia onions this year.

“If you are a farmer whose fields were not damaged much, and you have all or most of a normal-sized crop, you’re going to do really well,” he said.

For farmers whose fields were damaged, they’re missing out.

If you’re just a person with a taste for sweet onions, Dorfman said you won’t see much price difference in grocery stores because so little of what you pay actually goes to the farmers; it’s mostly for things like shipping and storage.

“On average, about 20 cents of your grocery dollar goes to farmers, and 80 cents went somewhere else,” he said. 

This year’s small crop shouldn’t have a lasting impact on Vidalia farmers, Dorfman said.