Brand names

Yesterday, an old hand in the produce industry complained to me he was unable to sell Texas sweet onions at any price, because as he said the entire produce industry is besotted by Vidalia onions.  The vidalia onion is an example of the triumph of marketing over reality.  I am pretty sure that sweet onions from Texas or Mexico will test as sweet as their Georgia counterparts, which are ironically short day onions which originated in Texas and were called granos.  Then some genius in the peach state grew some and discovered they were sweeter there than when grown in Texas.  The next step, convincing Americans, or at least the produce buyers, that Vidalia sweets were somehow better than any other sweet onion was the real stroke of genius.  Of course the industry in Georgia has now evolved to the point some growers have controlled atmosphere strorages and hope to provide their hyped product for six to eight additional months.  They risk over exposure of their product, similar to what happened to the Yukon Gold potato.  That was another marketing wonder which became a mainstream commodity with very little value added cachet, since nearly every potato growing area can grow a yellow fleshed potato.  The same thing will happen with sweet onions, although Vidalia is a location, rather than a variety.  Perhaps the geographic will trump the gatronomic, at least until another location manages to capture the consciousness of American produce buyers.