Last Saturday, David Light sold me an onion:
"It’s the sweetest sandwich onion of Spanish type. It originated in Corsica and a Frenchman brought the Walla Walla onion — then not known as Walla Walla — he brought them to the state of Washington and they’ve been known as Walla Walla ever since."
Originally, David Light thought he’d sell his onions by this name too. But then he did some research, and found out that there’s a long story behind the name.
It turns out that the Walla Walla Valley has a specific climate — its soil is very low in sulfur and very rich, and the weather is mild. When the Frenchman — Peter Pieri — brought the sweet onion seed to valley back in the late eighteen hundreds, it thrived. He and his neighbors called their big, sweet, round onions Walla Walla sweets, and so did farmers outside the region who grew the same variety.
That went on until 1995. At that point, a group of farmers in the Walla Walla Valley decided that this wasn’t fair. They thought that because of the soil, their onions tasted different, and that they were better than Walla Wallas grown elsewhere. So they went to the federal government, and they got it to adopt Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Order Number 956.
"I looked up the order going to their official site found out that sure enough there was this USDA order forbidding the sale of these onions, using that name."
The official site David’s talking about is the website of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee. It’s a ten-member committee appointed by the USDA, and its job is basically to promote onions grown in the Walla Walla Valley, and to make sure that no one else outside the valley — like David Light on his farm in Orleans — can sell the onion variety with the Walla Walla name.
The only thing you can’t sell is the onion itself. You can sell the seeds and you can sell the plants.
You can see how this could be confusing for small growers. Someone like David, who just has a small stand once a week at his local farmers market in Orleans.
"The enforcement of it is, according to the order, up to handlers and shippers of onions. This seems to be the level at which they pick up on it."
I asked if anyone said anything to him. He said, "well, no."
"If you look in garden catalogs, there’s no caution…nothing that says “Be Careful," David added.
And that’s the kicker. David was lucky — he happened to find out about the marketing order on his own. But it’s easy to imagine that a lot of small growers don’t have any idea that this law exists. If you get caught selling a Walla Walla onion grown outside of the legally specified growing region in southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon, they can fine you. I couldn’t get the Walla Walla Marketing Committee to confirm this, but a grower in Ohio, Lucy Goodman, told me that she got a cease and desist letter and that if she hadn’t stopped selling the onions, the fine would have been five thousand dollars.
"The seed packets, actually it was plants…they advertised, and I bought em as Walla Walla…but I’m not going to sell em that way!"
Instead, David Light is selling his Walla Walla variety onions as sweet Corsican onions. And he might not have Walla Walla soil, but they’re still getting pretty big.
"Ok…that’s a 1.46 pound onion. And they’re $3 a pound so that’ll set you back $4.35," David says as he rings me up.
I decided to spring for it. I brought it home, and as I sliced it up, I couldn’t stop thinking that I don’t know where I stand on the idea of a marketing order like this. On the one hand, in an era when local food is making a comeback, these restrictions make a certain sense. You want to protect heritage and identity. Still, this onion grown on Cape Cod was from Walla Walla seed — and it was big and juicy and incredibly sweet.
