18 BULLETIN 1325, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
About two-thirds of the fertilizer is bought on credit. Sales are 
made on open account, are unsecured, and call for payment about 
September 1. Liberal cash discounts are allowed for payment before 
July 1. Credit for seed and some food supplies is advanced by the 
local supply merchants. 
HARDIN COUNTY, OHIO 
Approximately three-fourths of the crop in the well-known onion 
section of Hardin County, Ohio, is grown on share-crop agreements. 
The landowner usually furnishes the fertilizer and seed and prepares 
the ground and the tenant does all the remaining work. In some 
cases the tenant furnishes a portion of the fertilizer and seed. The 
crop is equally divided between the landowner and the tenant. Bank 
loans are made rather frequently to the larger growers who are con- 
sidered good credit risks. Frequently, a landowner indorses a note 
for his tenant. Conditions under which bank loans are made and 
credit for fertilizer is obtained differ little from those in sec- 
tions already described. Since almost all the large growers are 
also dealers, their resources and credit facilities are usually suffi- 
cient to finance the marketing of the crop independently. 
LOCAL SALES METHODS 
A very large proportion of all onions go from the field at once 
into the hands of local buyers or local agents of city dealers or are 
consigned to commission men in the central markets. This is true 
both of early and of late onions. 
THE EARLY CROP 4 
Early southern onions are on the market only a very short time 
and must be handled through some system that moves them quickly 
and gets them into the hands of the consumer within a few days 
after reaching the terminal market. In most instances the first 
shipments of onions bring much higher prices than those that are 
shipped a few days later. For this reason there is an attempt by 
both farmers and shippers to place their onions on the market as 
soon as possible after they are ready to ship. 
The farmer who raises early southern onions in Texas and Cali- 
fornia usually sells for cash to a local buyer at harvest time as the 
cars are loaded. Some growers contract to sell to a buyer before 
planting time, or before harvest, at a specified price or for the priv- 
ilege of marketing the crop. Comparatively few farmers them- 
selves ship onions on consignment, although consignment shipments 
by local dealers are in some years the most prevalent form of sale. 
The local buyer or shipper of early onions is likely to be an agent 
of some commission firm or onion dealer in the large central mar- 
kets, to whom he forwards his purchases as quickly as possible after 
they have been delivered at the local station. He may, however, 
4 A more detailed discussion of financing of the early crop will be found in Department 
Bulletin 1283, United States Department of Agriculture. " The Marketing and Distribu- 
tion of American-Grown Bermuda Onions." 
