Compare prices for fresh onions across varieties.
Dry cooking onions — yellow, red, and white — reach the store fully mature and cured, so there is no ripening to wait for at home and selection comes down to firmness and dryness. Choose onions that feel solid and heavy for their size, with dry, papery, tight-fitting skins and a small, tight, dry neck where the bulb tapers to the top. Pass over any that are soft or spongy when gently squeezed, are sprouting green shoots, show dark or sunken patches, carry a black or grey powdery dust under the skin, or smell strongly of onion through the wrapper — a noticeable odour from an unbruised bulb points to damage or decay inside. The firmest, driest, most pungent onions also keep the longest, so for stocking up choose those and save the milder, higher-moisture sweet onions for use within a week or two.
Whole dry onions keep best in a cool, dark, dry, well-ventilated spot such as a pantry, cellar, or cupboard, loose or in a mesh or paper bag rather than sealed plastic, which traps moisture and shortens their life. Long-term commercial storage holds them near 0 °C at 65 to 70 percent humidity, but any cool, dry, airy place works at home; do not refrigerate whole onions, as the higher humidity of a fridge softens them and encourages mould. Keep them away from potatoes — potatoes give off moisture and gases that speed sprouting and rot in onions, and the two stored together spoil faster than either does alone. Sweet onions, and any onion that has been peeled or cut, are the exceptions: refrigerate those, the cut ones wrapped or in a sealed container, and use them up promptly.
An onion is past its best when it turns soft, spongy, or mushy, sends up green sprouts or roots, develops dark sunken spots, or shows the grey-to-black powdery mould of neck rot at the top; a sour or rotten smell means it should go in the bin. A firm onion that has begun to sprout is still safe to use, though the flavour fades and the woody core is best cut away, while any bulb that has gone soft or mouldy should be discarded. One cold-climate caution worth noting in Edmonton: onions are easily ruined by freezing, turning watery and brown as they thaw, so do not leave them in a freezing vehicle, an unheated garage, or a cold porch through winter — bring them indoors, but keep them out of warm spots near the stove or in sunlight, which hasten sprouting.
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Onions are one of the few fresh vegetables where Canadian production carries a meaningful share of year-round retail supply. In 2024, Canadian farmers harvested a record 298,564 tonnes of fresh dry onions, with a farm-gate value of CAD $181.1 million, up from 276,565 tonnes in 2023. Ontario and Quebec are the dominant producing provinces. The Holland Marsh, located roughly 50 kilometres north of Toronto, is the single most important Canadian production node for the category. The Marsh comprises approximately 2,800 hectares of high-organic-content muck soil and generates around CAD $160 million annually from onions alone, alongside comparable revenue from carrots and salad greens.
Outside of Ontario and Quebec, Manitoba is a meaningful secondary node, particularly for organic supply. Alberta and British Columbia produce onions on a smaller scale primarily for local fresh markets, and that production cannot service the full year of Edmonton retail demand on its own.
Despite strong domestic production, Canada is a net onion importer. Imports topped 268.4 million kilograms in 2024, and between January and July 2025 Canada imported 163.2 million kilograms while exporting only 26.4 million kilograms. By value, the United States is the dominant supplier at approximately 68% of imports, followed by Mexico at about 26%, with smaller volumes from China, Peru, and Spain. Imports are concentrated in the spring and early summer months when domestic storage stocks are drawn down and before the new Canadian crop is harvested.
The Pacific Northwest is the principal U.S. source region for onions sold in western Canada. Washington, Oregon, and Idaho together accounted for approximately 58% of U.S. utilized onion production in 2024. Washington is the largest single producing state (utilized production value of CAD-equivalent USD $477 million in 2024), followed by Oregon (USD $260 million) and Idaho (USD $205 million). For Edmonton specifically, the Pacific Northwest is the closest large-scale U.S. supply region by trucking distance, which makes it the natural import origin for spring and summer shelf supply.
Mexican onions, particularly white and sweet varieties, fill a complementary role during the winter and early spring. Mexican supply matters for variety availability — Canadian and U.S. growers concentrate on yellow storage varieties, while white and sweet onions are more frequently sourced from Mexico.
The Canadian onion supply chain is concentrated among a small number of large family-operated growers and packers, most of them located in or near the Holland Marsh.
Horodynsky Farms operates more than 600 acres across multiple locations and supplies approximately 90,700 tonnes of onions per year to wholesalers and major Canadian supermarket chains. The farm has been in operation for more than 45 years and is among the largest single onion operations in the country.
Gwillimdale Farms, headquartered on the outskirts of the Holland Marsh in Bradford, is a four-generation family operation specializing in onions and other root vegetables, and is one of the largest fresh onion suppliers in central Canada.
Kroeker Farms, based in Manitoba, is the largest organic onion grower in Canada and supplies fresh onions from August through June. Kroeker is the principal organic onion supplier to national grocery chains, which means private-label and organic onion offerings on Edmonton retail shelves frequently trace back to this single Manitoba operation.
The Canadian onion harvest runs from August through October. After lifting, onions are cured in the field or in ventilated facilities for 7 to 14 days until the outer skin is dry and the neck has tightened — a critical step for storage life and skin quality at retail. Cured onions are then moved into climate-controlled storage at approximately 0°C and 65 to 70% relative humidity. Higher-end facilities use controlled-atmosphere (CA) storage with reduced oxygen and elevated carbon dioxide; published research identifies 5% CO2 and 3% O2 as the optimum mix for retaining the highest percentage of marketable bulbs.
This storage capability is the central economic feature of the onion category. Year-round retail availability of Canadian-grown onions is supported almost entirely by storage drawdown rather than continuous harvest. Domestic storage typically supplies retail shelves from August through April or May; from late spring into mid-summer, U.S. and Mexican imports bridge the gap until the new Canadian crop is ready. This means that retail prices for storage onions tend to follow a predictable annual rhythm: lowest immediately post-harvest, rising through the winter as storage costs accrue, and most volatile in the late spring transition window when buyers are switching between domestic and imported supply.
Edmonton is an inland market with no direct port access, and onion distribution into the city follows the same overland pattern as other produce categories. Holland Marsh and Quebec onions ship west by truck or intermodal rail; Pacific Northwest imports cross the border at Sweetgrass-Coutts or Pacific Highway and move overland. Western Canadian wholesale and foodservice distribution to Edmonton retail is anchored by a relatively small set of operators — Sunfresh Farms (which runs an Edmonton-based fleet and offers value-added onion processing including peeling), Krown Produce, Freestone Produce, H&W Produce, and Sysco Canada's Edmonton hub. Sunfresh's value-added peeled-onion line is particularly relevant for foodservice but also feeds back into retail private-label processed product.
Compared to coastal markets, Edmonton carries an additional freight cost layer for U.S. and Mexican onions because of the inland trucking distance, and a smaller but real cost for eastern-Canadian onions for the same reason. These costs are normally absorbed by the distributor and reflected in shelf price rather than itemized.
Onions are a regulated category at the Canada-U.S. border beyond the standard tariff regime. Onions imported into Canada from the United States must be accompanied by a USDA inspection certificate, and onions are one of the products subject to U.S. Section 8e grade and inspection requirements when crossing the other direction. These inspection requirements are a structural cost in the supply chain, not a recent policy change, but they add documentation overhead and narrow the pool of compliant suppliers.
On the tariff side, the Canada-U.S. trade environment in 2025 created brief but meaningful uncertainty for the category. Canada imposed 25% counter-tariffs on a list of U.S. goods effective March 4, 2025, in response to U.S. tariff actions. Effective September 1, 2025, Canada removed most of those counter-tariffs, retaining them only on steel, aluminum, and automobiles. CUSMA-compliant fresh produce, including onions, is therefore tariff-free into Canada provided the certificate of origin requirements are met. For onions grown in the U.S. or Mexico, the relevant rule of origin is straightforwardly met (the product is wholly obtained in a CUSMA party country), so compliance is largely a documentation exercise. Non-CUSMA-compliant goods remain subject to a 35% tariff, which is a meaningful penalty for any importer that fails to certify properly.
The practical implication for Edmonton retail pricing is that, after a turbulent first half of 2025, U.S. and Mexican onion imports returned to tariff-free entry from September onward. The brief tariff window earlier in the year did, however, push some buyers to lean more heavily on domestic storage stocks during that period, which had a knock-on effect on storage drawdown timing.
Yellow cooking onions are the dominant retail variety by volume and the lowest-priced on a per-kilogram basis. They are predominantly Canadian-grown in season and U.S. Pacific Northwest in the import window. Red onions are produced in similar regions and trade at a modest premium driven mostly by lower volume and higher demand per acre rather than by structural supply differences. White onions carry the highest variety premium in this template's retail set: domestic acreage is small, and white onions are more reliant on Mexican imports, which adds freight cost and exposes the variety to more pricing volatility tied to currency and border conditions.
Wholesale fresh onion prices in Canada averaged approximately USD $1.76 per kilogram in 2025 and are projected to average USD $1.55 per kilogram in 2026, reflecting the strong 2024 Canadian harvest and continued growth in U.S. Pacific Northwest acreage. This wholesale softening should translate into stable-to-modestly-lower shelf prices for yellow and red varieties through the 2026 storage drawdown, with white onions remaining more variable.