Paul Skeen has
seen a lot of crops come and go in eastern Oregon over the years,
but the storage onion is certainly not one of them.
In fact, the Treasure Valley region, which covers a big chunk of Oregon’s
Malheur County and five counties in western Idaho, is so suitable
for growing bulb onions that it ranks No. 1 in the United States for
the crop.
Skeen was born near the onion fields in Ontario, Ore., in 1954 –
the youngest of seven children.
His father, Frank, moved to the area from Ogden, Utah, in 1945, several
years after the Owyhee dam was built, which brought life to more than
100,000 acres of parched land.
“He paid $14,000 for the land,” Paul said, “and
immediately had to spend $7,000 leveling it.”
The senior Skeen, who acquired a 90-acre water right on the Ontario-Nyssa
Canal, which was established in 1914 and draws from the Owyhee Project
and a portion of the Snake River, grew a lot of lettuce at first until
that crop moved south to warmer climates. Storage onions, along with
sugarbeets, potatoes, wheat, hay and corn, became a main crop around
1945 and the early 1960s.
Paul Skeen purchased ground in the 1980s that laid under the Owyhee
Ditch Company, which was established in 1888. He later purchased the
original 90-acre parcel his father bought and eventually expanded
it to 1,200 acres. That has since been cut back to around 750 acres,
but that figure is heading back up now that Skeen’s son, Cameron,
has come back to farm after graduating from Boise State University
with a degree in business.
Skeen grows yellow, red and white onions, with yellows making up around
90 percent of his crop.
“We used to call them Spanish sweets but now we just say Spanish
onions,” he said.
Yellows
prevail
Skeen said he is a big fan of the sharper tasting Spanish yellow onion.
“You want something with pungency,” he said. “For
too long we’ve all bowed down to the sweet onion.”
Skeen said Spanish onions also deliver a more pronounced flavor when
cooked.
He sells on contract and on the open market to a few of the 40 or
so packer/shippers in the valley and also to processors.
“I usually try to sell by the bin, about 1,500, 1,600 pounds,”
he said. His shed holds 4,800 bins. “I have my own storage facilities,
and there are very few of us left, about 10 or 12 with storage of
any size. Most of the farmers who do have large sheds have become
grower-shippers.”
Treasure Valley onion growers, who farm between 19,000 and 22,000
acres – half of which are in Idaho and half in Malheur County
– face stiff competition from Mexico and Texas in the late season,
but that is short-lived since onions in those areas do not store well.
In April Skeen took it on the chin when he went to sell some of his
2003 crop and ran headlong into competition from cheap 2004 Mexican
onions.
“They were dropping the price $3 and $4 a day,” Skeen
said. “I’ve never seen a drop that hard and that fast.
I had colossals (4 inches to 4-1/4 inches in diameter) sold at $17
(cwt.) that got knocked down to $8 and $9.”
Skeen plants his onions in March and harvests them through the month
of September, although some onions start coming out of the valley
in August. From then until April he’s moving the crop from his
storage bins to handlers, who sell throughout the country, and processors.
Skeen said that farmers are producing better than the 650 cwt./acre
average yield for yellow onions in Malheur County, but said, “you
just can’t live on the average anymore.”
He added that one of the big keys to successful farming is keeping
track of costs.
“Sometimes people will sign contracts too cheap because they
don’t know their cost,” he said.
Doesn’t
skimp
Skeen said he doesn’t believe in skimping on inputs.
“Some people don’t fumigate, others do,” he said.
“I’m tight, but I’ll tell you for every dollar I
spend on fumigation, I feel I get a buck and half back.”
Skeen puts an emphasis on quality and marketing. He said he tries
to get the maximum price all the time.
“My philosophy with almost everybody I deal with: ‘Do
you want a Cadillac or a Volkswagen?’ If you want good quality,
you’re going to have to pay Cadillac prices,” he said.
Another philosophy of Skeen’s is that he likes to stay consistent.
“I see lots of people increase and decrease their onion acreage
trying to figure out the best years,” he said. “I’m
not that smart. I try to do the same thing year in and year out.”
One of the biggest challenges Skeen and other Treasure Valley storage
onion growers face, he said, is oversupply.
“Washington (the Columbia Basin) has expanded tremendously in
the last few years, and our area has also expanded,” Skeen said.
China, he added, is a growing threat, too.
Another challenge growers face is water availability.
“We’ve been in a drought in this area for quite some time.
We’re going to have enough this year,” he said.
Skeen gets about 75 percent of his water from the Owyhee River and
Owyhee Irrigation District and 25 percent from Snake River and Owyhee
Reservoir.
Pesky
pest
As if water and competition from newer growing areas aren’t
enough, Treasure Valley onion growers are doing battle with the pesky
yellow nutsedge.
“It’s everywhere, but it’s gotten worse over the
years,” Skeen said. “The research arm of our marketing
order is trying to take care of that problem. Invaluable work is being
done at the Malheur County Experiment Station along with the University
of Idaho Experiment Station, and our county agent.”
Plant fluid-sucking thrips are another perennial problem.
“We spray over and over and over again. It’s like putting
mud on a bite. It doesn’t do a lot, but it makes you feel better
after you spray,” Skeen said.
In addition to fumigants, crop rotation is the other controlling management
practice.
“I grow cobbage, corn, three different varieties of seed beans,
seed wheat and commercial wheat,” he said. “I used to
grow sugarbeets and spuds. I just quit growing spuds a year ago after
30 years. The markets are just terrible.”
Skeen put most of the blame on slumping potato sales to the Atkins
diet, which shuns carbohydrates.
When peppermint prices dropped to $8 from $13 a pound for oil, he
got out of that crop, too. When sugar beet prices dropped to unworkable
lows he also quit growing them, as it was no longer profitable.
“Another problem we have here in Oregon is the third highest
minimum wage in the nation behind Connecticut and Washington,”
Skeen said. “Idaho is at the national level and it makes it
hard to compete.”
But in onions, their flavor keeps them competitive in the market.
But in addition to their unique flavor, Treasure Valley Spanish onions
have another feature that makes them popular in the marketplace.
“One thing we have going for us is our size,” Skeen said.
“We produce a bigger percentage of 3-1/2-inch or larger yellow
onions than anyone. Nobody can stick with us on that. We try to pack
70 percent three-and-half-inch and larger. We sell a lot of onions
4-1/4 and larger and super colossal to large restaurant chains like
Chili’s and Outback. Some lots will be 45 to 50 percent colossal
or better."
Good legs
Like all storage onions, Treasure Valley onions have good shelf life,
Skeen said. “They can take our onions home and don’t have
to worry about them going South on them. They’ve got legs underneath
them. Non-storage onions only have a relatively short shelf life.
They have to move them.”
Skeen said that he’s able to store his onions on his farm at
ambient temperatures without significant post harvest damage.
“You can have mold problems if you don’t take care of
them, but for the most part we don’t have problems,” he
said. “The temperature in our area is really favorable for storing
our onions.”
Most of the seed Skeen plants is bred in the Treasure Valley area
by private seed companies.
Skeen said that precision farming, especially tractor-mounted guidance
systems, is becoming more and popular in his area.
“All the ground is bedded with GPS and they’re now fertilizing
2- to 3-acre grids using GPS,” he said. “This is heaven-sent.
We’ve had our fair share of guess rows that are bad over the
years.”
The Skeen’s farming operation is a family business. Paul and
Merlyn’s four children have all grown up working on the farm,
and Merlyn keeps the books.
“It’s been a great way for my children to learn about
hard work and a great place to raise a family,” Paul said.
Skeen is vice president of the Malheur Onion Growers Association.
