Sign in Subscribe
By Carina Magyar in Vegetables —

III: Onion

The strange reason you can't trade onions.

tridi, the 3rd of Messidor, Year CCXXXI
No, YOU chop the onions. Photo by Önder Örtel / Unsplash

Good morning. Today is tridi, the 3rd of Messidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate l'oignon, the acid-filled bulb we can't live without.

💡
Onions have layers because they grow from the inside out. The juicy bits that we eat are actually leaves formed by the underground stem of the bulb which are then pushed skyward to collect delicious sunlight and send carbohydrates back down to the root. As each leaf is formed, it pushes the old leaves to the outside, where they get farther from the source of water and carbs and slowly begin to die (which is why the outer layers are paper-like). The old farmers' wisdom is that an onion will do this precisely 13 times before making a flower and no longer bothering with leaves, so it's time to harvest an onion when you see the 13th leaf above ground. Nothing in nature is quite that precise, but it's a good rule of thumb. You won't find 13 layers on a grocery store onion because by the time it's harvested, some of those layers have shed all the way off and are still in the dirt, decomposing.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange sits, majestic and statue-topped, just a short ride on the Red Line from Morning Croissant headquarters. Commodities trading has always struck me as a fascinating game, working in the world of pure widgets as opposed to brand valuations, executive reputations, and product pipelines. You can see the math of the economy laid bare in the ups and downs of commodities.

The argument of many economists – most prominently the University of Chicago's highly decorated economics department, natch – is that the Merc allows for price volatility to work itself out on the trading floor, leading to more stable prices at the grocery store that more accurately reflect the true cost and supply of food. The best case study for whether or not this is true happens to be onions for the simple reason that, since CLXVI (1958), it's been illegal to trade onions (and only onions) as commodities.

Previous

II: Oats

 Next

IV: Speedwell

You might also like...