PARMA, Idaho — The Idaho-Oregon onion industry will use a $35,000 specialty crop grant to educate consumers in Mexico about the yellow bulb onions grown in this region.

Farmers in southwestern Idaho and Malheur County in Eastern Oregon grow about 25 percent of the nation’s storage onions and 90 percent of the onions grown here are yellows.

Mexico is a promising market for Idaho-Oregon onions but Mexican consumers are more familiar and comfortable with white onions, said Candi Fitch, executive director of the Idaho-Eastern Oregon Onion Committee, which received the grant from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

“There is a lot of potential in Mexico and we want their consumers to understand how versatile a yellow onion is,” she said. “They’re more familiar with the white onion … and we’re just trying to introduce them to the yellow onion.”

The grant will help the committee overcome the lack of knowledge about yellow onions that exists in the Mexican marketplace, said Standage Produce CEO Joe Standage, a member of the IEOOC’s export committee.

“They are not accustomed to the presentation of a yellow onion on a plated dish; it’s just not what they’re (used) to looks-wise,” he said. “It’s just a matter of educating them that the yellow onion is still good.”

The IEOOC received a similar grant from the ISDA last year that was used to promote onions at the retail level in Mexico through in-store promotions. This year’s grant will be used to target Mexico’s food-service industry.

“Anything we can do to educate consumers in Mexico about the yellow onion versus the white onion is money well spent,” Standage said. “It will definitely help us promote our product down there.”

The two-year project will include cooking seminars, menu promotions and receipt development in several cities in Mexico.

Some of the money will also be used to help offset the cost of onion industry representatives going on trade missions, which Fitch said provide opportunities to meet potential new buyers and gather in-depth information and insight into the demographics of foreign markets.

“We want to build our identity in other markets and continue to create market share for our onions in other countries,” she said. “It’s a global economy so we want to try to find as many markets as possible for our onions.”

The IEOOC will evaluate trade missions as they become available to determine which ones will benefit the industry the most, Fitch said.

The grant amount is equal to the IEOOC export committee’s annual budget.

“This enables us to do a lot more than we would otherwise be able to do,” Fitch said.