Why Homegrown Is Always Better

This week the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of an E. Coli outbreak that appears to be linked to the McDonald’s Restaurant chain.

This latest outbreak, I think, illustrates the risk of today’s centralized food networks.

The CDC says most of the people infected reported eating the Quarter Pounder hamburger at McDonald’s restaurants in Colorado and Nebraska. They’re not sure which ingredients in the hamburgers are making people sick. But McDonald’s has stopped using fresh slivered onions on their hamburgers while investigators determine the cause.

To be clear, I have no idea whether onions are the cause of the outbreak. McDonald’s thinks it is, so let’s assume they’re right. The U.S. harvests more than 125,000 acres of onions every year. Lots of folks in the south think of Georgia’s famous sweet Vidalia onions. But most of the Nation’s harvest comes from a handful of growers in the western states of Washington, Oregon, California.

A huge chain like McDonald’s wants customers to have the same experience at every location across the country. A Quarter Pounder in Washington State should taste the same as a Quarter Pounder in Washington, DC. They don’t shop at the local grocery store. They utilize a huge, centralized distribution system.

How huge? Well, according to a press release from their corporate office, they’ve removed the Quarter Pounder from locations in the following states: Colorado, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming, as well as portions of Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

Let’s think about this: a few bad onions in their supply chain could have made it to restaurants in nearly a quarter of the states in the nation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not bashing on McDonald’s.They’re an iconic American brand. It’s probably not good for your health to eat a Big Mac every day. To be honest, I’m a sucker for their Spicy Chicken Sandwich with cheese. And I wish they’d ditch the seed oils and return to cooking their french fries in beef tallow. But I digress.

The Golden Arches probably can’t sustain their business model using locally-sourced produce. But you can.

Under a huge, centralized network, one farm somewhere in California could spread a disease across much of the nation. But if we had more local growers, those risks can be spread out. A problem in one location might only affect a few people in one town or one county before its identified and solved.

Speaking of onions, did you know onions used to be a popular commercial crop grown here in Fayette County? Local newspaper articles beginning around the turn of the century occasionally mention local onion growers. The market really took off in the 1930s.

A Schulenburg Sticker article from Sept. 11, 1931, talks about a meeting of onion growers that took place in High Hill. According to it, one grower, Chas. Winkler, planned to plant 236 acres that year. A group of growers from Poth spoke to the High Hill farmers about their experience growing onions. They reported profits of $50 to $90 an acre after expenses, which amounts to $1,037 to $1,867 per acre in today’s dollars. That was in the Great Depression. By comparison, Farm Progress Magazine reported average corn profits of $290 an acre in 2023.

Growers back then preferred the yellow Bermuda onion. Today’s Granex onions are descendants of that variety.

A May 20, 1932 article in the Sticker reported that farmers in the Schulenburg area expected to harvest 50 to 60 train car loads of onions that year.

An article from July 15 of that year stated the following: “Everyone knows we raise better onions here than they do in Corpus Christi. Onion buyers in New York have stated they much prefer the onions from this section…”