If you know and love the Vidalia onion—an onion sweet enough, its fans say, to eat like an apple—you likely also know it as a product of Georgia, as proudly claimed as the peach. But the story of the Vidalia’s popularity is far more complex than just one of a local onion made good. In this episode of Gravy: an onion’s success story, born of clever marketing, government wrangling, technological innovation and global trade.
This episode was co-produced by Tina Antolini and Tyler Pratt.
![An onion field in South Georgia. Photo by Tyler Pratt.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.southernfoodways.org/wp-content/uploads/onion-field-1024x768.jpg)
Here is Tore Olsson’s paper on the Vidalia Onion: “Peeling Back the Layers: Vidalia Onions and the Making of a Global Agribusiness.” To learn more about Tore Olsson, go here.
![Delbert Bland with boxes of his farm's sweet onions. Photo by Tyler Pratt.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.southernfoodways.org/wp-content/uploads/delbert-bland-e1485361705434-1024x768.jpg)
You can check out Bland Farms here.
![The original ad for sweet onions that Delbert Bland placed in Southern Living. Photo by Tyler Pratt.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.southernfoodways.org/wp-content/uploads/ad-for-bland-farms-e1485361981395-768x1024.jpg)
![Onions at Bland Farms. Photo by Tyler Pratt.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.southernfoodways.org/wp-content/uploads/peruvian-onions-1024x768.jpg)
There is a Vidalia Onion Museum in Vidalia, Georgia, which you can learn more about here.
![Vidalia, Georgia is proud of its onions. Photo by Tyler Pratt.](https://cdn.statically.io/img/www.southernfoodways.org/wp-content/uploads/sweet-onion-water-tower-1024x768.jpg)