Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1903-12-10
IOWA's BIG ONION CROPS.
Good Incomes Raising the
Pungent Vegetable. "a

One Of the greatest onion growing dis
tricts in the United States, often quoted
as the greatest, is that which lies along
The iowa shore of the Mississippi river
above here and has Davenport as its
market and shipping point. The onion
Is known as the "Scott county orange,
and is one of the main agricultural sta
pies of this region. Just now 1t Is being
sent in carload after carload to St. Louis,
the principal point of distribution over
the south. There are some shipments
to other southern points, even as far as
New Orleans, but st. Louis is the great
jobbing point to which the commission
houses here consign. Chicago gets lair
slice Of the crop, Cincinnati takes some
and there are scattering shipments to
other points, but St. Louis has long been
the principal consignee.
The harvest has been on here several
weeks, says recent Davenport report.
The crop is fine and, though the average
is not as great this year as It has been
in some past years, there appears now
to be a total product here of $50 to 200
carloads, running about 600 bushels to
the car. The quality is excellent this
year and the market has held firmly
around the price of so cents per bushel
Usually the price says by this time, but
this year it has held up we'll. The TALL
ure of the crop, in part or In whole, IN
other onion growing regions Is under
stood to be the reason of this stiffness.
There Is a tract in Ohio that grows
good onions, and there is another IN
Nebraska. about 40 miles west of Omaha,
but the Scott county, Iowa, onion field
has for 60 years been the big one, and
one that could always reckoned upon.
There have been very few failures here.
The quality has fluctuated with the sea-
son, sunburn and rot appearing at times
to do mischief, but usually the red onion
of Scott county has been we'll at the top
of the market It has made more than
one man rich in this part of the coun-
try, and it is paying big dividends this
year.
There is no crop that a northern farm
er can raise that means so much money
to him as the onion. Unfortunately, the
opportunities in that direction are few,
for there is not much prime onion land
in the country. When the Scott coun--
ty tract was new, in the earliest '4O's, 1t
was no difficult thing to get 1000 bushels
from an acre of it. Nearly that yield has
been gathered in recent years where the
fields have been well maintained with
fertilizers and cultivation. Five hundred
and 600 bushels to the acre are more
usual, but still higher yields are often
got. There is good deal of work In
making the crop, cultivation being q
large item, so it is reckoned that it takes
$40 to $50 an acre to grow onions. In
times of low prices the margin is reduced,
but it is still large, except when a glut
of onions lets the bottom quite out OF
the market. Once or twice within the
last Is years onions here have been down
to ten cents and even eight cents BUSH
ell, with practically no sales at those
prices, but the average has been far
meant large returns
There is more money in onions than
in corn 20 times over, provided TINT the
land is adapted to onion growing. A
yield of 500 bushels to the acre at this
years prices has meant profit Of 5000
or more per acre; and in those cases
where the farmer and his family did the
work, hiring nothing, they have alb
sorbed the cost of cultivation and made
Just that much more. The best Scott
county onion land is held at hundreds
of dollars per acre and is rarely sold. 1t
is usually farmed in fields of small or
moderate size, but there are many small
fraction of an acre, that are made to
yield astonishingly.
The crop is always shipped in gunny
sacks, holding about two bushels, never
in bulk. During the onion harvest here
there are usually weeks when the streets
are blocked by the wagons of the onion
growers, waiting their chance to get to
the warehouse, unloading or getting
away. The steamers usually carry a
good part of the shipments to St. Louis,
though there is very large balance that
goes there by rail. In the colder wealth
er all the shipments, of course, are made
by rail.
There are always some growers who
hold their crop of onions until we'll into
the winter or even the spring. While
there is a possibility of loss by freezing,
and certainly some loss by rotting and
always some shrinkage, there are now
and then onion markets in the spring
time that are simply golden in their
chances of easy wealth for the man who
has onions to sell. It was a recent af-
fair here that group of Scott county
onion raisers held back their crop until
the severe weather was past. The fall
market had been about IS cents a BUSH
ell. In the spring they got their onions
of with no heavy shrinkage on their
hands at a price around $1.25. There
have been other years when the stock
of late onions went still higher 1t is
believed that, Notwithstanding the very
good market this fall, a number of grow
ers here will try to carry at least part