EDITORIAL — A different onion crisis

During the 2022 Christmas holidays, Filipinos reeled from the eye-watering prices of red onions, which surged to over P700 a kilo, with no white onions to be had for onion rings, burgers and bistek. Onion memes provided some comic relief amid the crisis.

The government was not amused, and moved to ensure that for the 2023 holidays, there would be no repeat of the onion mess. Reversing its refusal to make timely importations of red and white onions in 2022, the government flooded the market last year with imports, paying little heed to local production. The result: onion prices have plummeted to levels that are making producers weep, at just P10 per kilo at the farm gate.

Consumers should be happy, and would be even happier if retail prices reflected the glut. But if the farm gate prices are accurate, some folks along the value chain are again making a killing from onions, with retail prices ranging from P90 to P140 – more than 10 times the buying price from farmers.

A farmers’ group says the same persons behind the onion crisis in 2022 are the same ones behind the current slump in onion farm gate prices. The claim deserves to be investigated. Philippine agriculture production has a wide room for expansion, but this requires people who see farming as their life’s calling. In the past years, however, older generations of farmers have seen their children refusing to engage in agriculture. Farms including the terraced rice paddies in the Cordillera highlands are lying fallow as younger generations prefer to find jobs and livelihood opportunities elsewhere. 

Seeing crops being dumped periodically or sold at a loss will hardly encourage interest in farming. For many years now, the government has been promising various forms of assistance to farmers, from planting to post-harvest and marketing. Yet the small-scale farmers who make up the majority of people in the country’s agriculture sector continue to suffer from an exploitative system and the inadequacy of facilities such as cold storage for making their livelihood viable.

Several congressional investigations have been conducted, during which those behind a so-called onion cartel were even identified. If the farmers’ group is correct in saying that the same unscrupulous people are behind the dirt-cheap farm gate prices of onions, more resolute action is needed to stop what should constitute economic sabotage.