Made in Idaho: A behind-the-scenes look at the final days of onion harvest with J.C. Watson Co.

PARMA, Idaho — J.C. Watson Company — a fourth generation grower, packer, shipper in Parma and Wilder — is projected to pack around 200 million pounds of raw onions this season. We take you behind the scenes on the final days of onion harvest to show you how it all works.

• J.C. Watson ships millions of Idaho onions all over the United States and Canada.
• J.C. Watson received a $1.55 million grant from the USDA through the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program — which aims to strengthen the food supply chain— to upgrade infrastructure for their rail shipping operation.

(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)

Onion harvest is coming to a close, but the folks at J.C. Watson are still hard at work.

“The machines we’re using are Top Air onion loaders,” says Brad Watson, the President of J.C. Watson Company.

He tells me the Treasure Valley is the perfect place to grow onions because of the low humidity, long growing season, and ample irrigation.

These onion loaders pick up cured onions off the ground.

“They cut off the excess tops and then load them into the back of the semi trucks that will then take them to storage,” Watson said.

Those semi trucks then bring them to the packing shed where they are unloaded, inspected, weighed, and sorted before being packaged to be stored or sent to a variety of different buyers by truck or by rail.

“So this is kind of the whole purpose of this facility we’re in currently, right now we have two rail doors,” says Emily Watson-Libsack, VP of Sales and Marketing at J.C. Watson.

She tells me they just received a $1.55 million dollar grant from the USDA through the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program — which aims to strengthen the food supply chain.

They’ll use that money to improve infrastructure and upgrade equipment for their rail loading operation.

“The biggest improvements will be to the rail, which is kind of hard to see, but this rail track has been here for, I think, close to 100 years,” says Watson-Libsack.

She tells me they can fit 4.3 truckloads of onions in one rail car— a much more efficient option for getting onions from Idaho to buyers across the country.

“So we have different equipment that we submitted as part of the grant, so some of that is some racking systems, again it just makes it easier for loading our rail cars,” says Shelly Bateman, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at J.C. Watson.

She tells me along with a new high-tech racking system, refrigeration units will also help extend the season for local growers.

“This expansion and this grant is kind of allowing us to kind of prepare for the generations. And in order for us to do that in Idaho we have to expand our shipping, have high-tech equipment that we’re putting in, and be able to be competitive in the marketplace,” Watson-Libsack said.