George Wooten, owner of Wayne E. Bailey Produce Company in Chadbourn, NC, said that North Carolina had the best crop of sweet potatoes in the country in 2009, but shortages in other states put severe pressure on supplies during the past summer.

Spud City Sales LLC, based in Stevens Point, WI, regularly markets more than Wisconsin potatoes. But Tom Lundgren, president of the firm, said that practice is very true this season.

Citing excellent supplies and sizes running heavy to jumbos, Sweet Clover Produce Sales Manager Bill (Sweet Willie) Brownfield said Red Wings were moving very well going into the holiday season.

From his Walla Walla, WA, office Mr. Brownfield said Nov. 16 that supplies will remain good through May, and he added that some colossal are available.

"We have virtually no mediums," he said of the famed single-center onions.

In anticipation of onion sales ramping up for the 2010 holiday season, Nancy Carter, owner of Parma, ID-based Savory Sweet LLC, said her sales and marketing company has seen its biggest gains this year in retail.

Ms. Carter, who launched Savory Sweet in April 2010, has more than 25 years' experience in produce sales. For the past decade she has focused on Spanish Sweets from Idaho-Eastern Oregon’s Treasure Valley. She noted the goal of Savory Sweet is to "align good customers with good growers and packers."

"Movement is just so-so," Paul Dolan said of the Red River Valley potato deal on Nov. 16. “It's not as brisk as we hoped it would be for Thanksgiving.”

Speaking from his Grand Forks, ND, office, where he is manager of Associated Potato Growers Inc., Mr. Dolan indicated, “Markets are holding but the demand is so-so. And the truck situation is really tight. It hasn’t been this bad in five years for trucks, so transportation is causing some of the lack of movement, as well.”

Over the past decade Bland Farms LLC has expanded from its Glennville, GA, headquarters to locations throughout the world, adding new sweet onion- growing areas to its network as it has become one of the nation's larger purveyors of Vidalia onions and one of the larger in the onion category.

This year, that product line has been expanded with the addition of the EverMild, a sweet onion from the Pacific Northwest. Bland partnered with River Point Farms in Hermiston, OR, to add the newly developed onion to its lineup.