The Onion Problem More than five years ago, when no
one could possibly have dreamed that onions would sell for a shilling a pound (a price of nearly £6 per cwt., as compared with 6s. per cwt. for potatoes), a note in this column drew attention to the fact that we in England grew only 5 per cent, of our onion requirements. Even then the Government were, by considering the imposition of an increased duty on imported onions, going to do something about it. Whether this increased import duty was ever imposed I do not know ; but the effect on the situation was negligible. We have continued ever since to rely on Dutch, Egyptian, French and Spanish onions—beautifully grown, beautifully graded, beautifully packed—for something like 90 per cent, of our require- ments. Yet the onion, in this country, grows magnificently. Its cultivation, on a large scale, has been called specialised, yet its requirements are, in fact, no more exacting than those of the mangel-wurtzel—i.e., fine sowing, early thinning, and constant use of the hoe. The trouble is, perhaps, that English farming• has no tradition of onion-growing, just as it has had no tradition of flax-growing. It has begun to acquire the one, however, and could, of course, acquire the other. Even a controlled price of something like £40 per ton must conceivably mean something to the conservative farming mind.
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