We've been tracking this year's onion crop and we checked in on the mucklands today, and from the road, the fields looked pretty good, but looks can be deceiving, said Paul Mortellaro, of G Mortellaro And Sons in Elba.
From the air, Mortellaro said, you can see a lot of open patches and thin spots.
"You'll probably see averages of 500 to 600 bags (50-pound bags) per acre," Mortellaro said. "Some less, some maybe 1,000. That's pretty disappointing."
Right now onions are trading at $13 per bag, but with transportation costs for Elba onions, that brings the crop yield down to about $6 per bag.
"At $6 per bag, you cannot make a living like that, not in Elba," Mortellaro said. "You can do that out west, but you can't do it here."
He said he and his brother are in no hurry to harvest their onions -- but will do so at the end of the month -- unlike last year when onions were going for $20 per bag.
The onions that were transplants -- such as the one pictured above from a Torrey field -- are developing bulbs and some have already been harvested, Mortellaro said. Those fields are generally in better shape than those planted with seeds, which have not yet started to bulb.
The problem this year: too much rain and not enough warm, dry days between storms.
