Whether or not onions will be available in our supermarkets is in question. The warm summer this year has led to a much lower harvest of onions.

“In the twenty years we’ve been operating, we’ve never seen anything like this before,” says Erik Waterman, director of Waterman Onions in Emmeloord. The company purchases onions from domestic and international growers, sorts and packages them, and delivers them to customers around the world.

Despite the decreased harvest, there’s no cause for panic. On the contrary. “In the Netherlands, onions are on the shelves all year round. We won’t have a shortage here.”

However, consumers abroad will certainly notice that 2018 has been a less successful harvest year. “We generally export the greater part of the Dutch onion harvest. This export will be lower this year, because all the onions will simply be gone at a certain moment. So there are still some challenges ahead for us, but we’re ready to tackle them.”

In the Netherlands, we’ll be able to eat onion soup as usual this winter. Whether the rest of the world will be able to do that is yet to be seen.