The Border's Onion Trails

Part of a special series on border agricultural history and the New Mexico economy. The series was made possible in part by grants from the New Mexico Humanities Council and McCune Charitable Foundation.

Courtesy: The Food Museum Online

(LAS CRUCES, NM) - As the summer fades into fall, more than the seasons have changed on the farms of southern New Mexico. For many, the focus of production has changed from sacking onions to harvesting chile peppers. In recent weeks, however, it was the onion that filled trucks crammed with bags headed out of the borderland and into distant markets across the US and abroad. “Overall, it was a great season. I wish all of them were like that,” said Brandon Barker, operations manager for the Barker Produce Company in Las Cruces. “We’ve had beautiful weather. Great yields this year.”

Running three packing sheds in southern New Mexico and west Texas, Barker Produce is a leading example of the modern onion grower/packer that operates the Southwest and taps into the different seasonal niches of the business. To get the juice flowing early in the spring, the company harvests about 70 acres in Buckeye, Arizona. According to Barker, his company prefers cultivating the commercially-developed Ranchero and Granero onion varieties.

Although onions receive scant attention in the lore and legend of New Mexico, the crop is an important one in the border counties of Dona Ana and Luna.

In 2009, onions fetched New Mexico farmers an estimated $53.9 million, according to the New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA). Approximately 30 onion packing sheds operate in New Mexico, providing employment to seasonal workers. In some years, onions bring in more money to farmers than the vaunted chile crop. From 2004-2009, onions earned New Mexico growers nearly $328.4 million.

“Everybody thinks of Hatch as being the chile capital of the world,” said Jay Hill, transportation and shipping manager of Shiloh Produce in Hatch, “but all in all, onions are our main gravy train.” The young manager was quick to defend the place of the overlooked onion in New Mexican culture and economy. “You think of New Mexico and you think dirt, snakes and hot chile, and onions are our big crop. It’s a powerhouse crop for us,” Hill said in an interview earlier this season. While onions dried outside Shiloh’s big but tidy packing operation located behind Hatch High School, Hill showed off the noisy conveyor lines inside that dumped red, white and yellow onions into sacks eventually headed for outlets like Texas’ HEB stores, Wal-Mart, Albertson’s, and Safeway. During the season, Shiloh’s Hatch shed employs 70 workers from 7 am to 7 pm, Hill said. Shiloh Produce is another family-initiated business in the top ring of the contemporary Southwestern onion industry. Developing from Hatch’s Adams family farm, Shiloh Produce now plants and harvests onions in New Mexico, Texas and California, according to Hill.

Employing about 650 workers in all phases of its operations, Shiloh produce is “cranking” by the Fourth of July every year, Hill stressed. According to the NMDA, 3,136 trailer loads of onions were shipped from Dona Ana, Luna and Sierra counties by the end of the first week of July this year. Few people probably realize that the onion slapped on their hamburger during a backyard summer barbecue likely comes from New Mexico. According to NMDA Secretary Dr. I. Miley Gonzalez, the majority of onions on the US market in June and July hail from the Land of Enchantment. The onion business is an example of how New Mexico has become a “specialty crop state” in modern times, Dr. Gonzalez said in an interview.

“It’s a big business as a whole,” added Noreen Jaramillo, public information officer for the NMDA. In an age of globalization, New Mexico-grown onions wind up on plates in Mexico and Canada. In 2001, hundreds of thousands of pounds of New Mexican onions were shipped as far south as Honduras and Nicaragua, according to a report from the NMDA. This year was an especially brisk one for the Canadian market. By mid-season, shipments to Canada were up 20-30 percent compared to last year, with 95 percent of the bulbs coming from the Hatch Valley, the NMDA reported. As an international export commodity, onions are subject to mandatory inspections which are carried out by NMDA personnel who scrutinize shipments for size, color, quality and disease. “It all comes down to a quality issue,” the NMDA’s Jaramillo said. “(Inspectors) are literally working 12-hour days on some days.” The success of New Mexico’s onion industry is due to several important factors: favorable climate, increasingly experienced growers, the availability of low-cost labor from neighboring Mexico, a steady supply of water from the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, and an active breeding program at New Mexico A&M, the predecessor to New Mexico State University (NMSU).

In 1931, Dr. Fabian Garcia, New Mexico A&M horticulturist and director of the New Mexico Agricultural Experiment Station, released the New Mexico Early Grano onion variety. Dr. Garcia was best known for his landmark chile-breeding work, but the Mexico-born horticulturist’s hands helped firmly plant the onion on New Mexican soil as well.

Gradually, onion acreage increased from a few hundred acres in the 1930s to 2,700 harvested acres in 1970.

For decades, onions were planted and harvested entirely by hand. Different waves of workers from Mexico and the US performed the hard chores, with migrant workers from south Texas dominating the labor force for a number of years during the last century. “Tejanos were the experts,” said Dr. Dionicio Valdes, a professor of history at Michigan State University who has done extensive research on agricultural history and farm labor in southern New Mexico.

In more recent years, Mexican immigrants dominated the onion trades, Dr. Valdes said. Nowadays, onion planting and harvesting are partially mechanized, though some producers say they still employ hand labor because it renders onions of superior quality.

By 1976, in a sign of the onion’s rising status in state agriculture, NMSU had established an onion breeding program. Seven years later, growers formed the New Mexico Dry Onion Commission with the goal of promoting the industry and channeling financial support to NMSU’s onion breeding efforts.

Since the program’s advent, numerous varieties have been developed in Las Cruces under the “Nu-Mex” name. Reports from NMSU researchers detail efforts to create onions that are resistant to pink root disease and bolting, as well as products with improved handling characteristics and cold hardiness. Additionally, breeding low-pungency or “sweet onions” to meet consumer and market demands has been an important mission of the program.

New Mexico onion production experienced another spurt in growth during the last two decades of the 20th century, with the peak year of 1995 notching 9,700 harvested acres. Since then, harvested acres have leveled off to the 5,000-6,000-acre range. However, improved irrigation methods, better seed-planting technology and seasoned grower know-how have contributed to increase yields from 290 cwt per acre in 1970 to harvests in the 400 and 500 cwt range since 1995, according to the New Mexico Agricultural Statistics Service.

Viewed another way, the number of 50 lb. bags harvested has increased from 600 to 900 per acre on average, according to a paper by Dr. Joe Corgan, NMSU professor emeritus.

“You save on your seed costs, and your yields are up,” said Brandon Barker.

In the 21st century, the New Mexico onion industry could be poised for a qualitative transformation. Until now, the local onion economy has followed a very colonial model of producing a raw good for export. Nonetheless, opportunities exist for adding value to the raw onion in dehydrating and processing. Onion rings, for example, are a popular item in supermarket freezers.

Barker Produce is one enterprise that is making the leap from producer to processor. Currently, the company is building a Las Cruces plant to process onions for companies like Campbell’s and Pace. The plant should employ about 30 people when it opens, with possibilities for hiring as many as 70 or 80 workers when production ramps up, Barker said. All in all, the future looks bright for the local onion industry, he added.

“We’re really growing,” Barker said. “We’re growing, growing.”