THE retail price of red onions ranging from P550 to P700 per kilo in markets around Metro Manila on New Year’s Eve made unpleasant headlines during the festive season. Red onion was sold at P90 to P120 in mid-2021 and P120 to P170 four months ago. Onion prices hover around P85 in Singapore, P55 in Vietnam, P35 in China and in India.
The onion was easily the inflation leader in 2022 and made Philippine onions the most expensive onion on Earth. Though the price is likely to drop significantly in the coming month as the annual harvest kicks in from February to May, and the Department of Agriculture has issued a P250 per kilo SRP and even threatened penalties for violators, the price volatility of a short-season crop this year should serve as a poignant reminder that the country’s agriculture production system is not working well. Many industry players also question whether there are groups who are benefiting from a designed crisis.
Onion farming in the Philippines
Onions are cool season plants, taking three to four months from planting to harvest. The key risk to onion growth is insect infestation and excessive soil moisture triggered by heavy rain that facilitates anthracnose from fungal growth. The 2016 onion crop failure was triggered by Typhoons “Lando” and “Nona” damaging standing crops in Central Luzon in the last quarter of 2015 and the armyworm infestation in the first quarter of 2016. As a result, onion production in 2016 dropped one-third, and it was the only time that imported onion at 135,000 metric tons was more than the domestic production at 122,000 MT in a given year.
The country planted 18,391 hectares of onion in 2020, and the average farm size was around half-a-hectare. Nueva Ecija accounted for more than 60 percent of production, with Northern Luzon and Mindoro for the balance.
Onions are planted from September to December and harvested earliest in December and ending in June. While onion production is seasonal during the dry month, consumption is all year round. Hence a good inventory system is important to smoothen out the supply-demand pattern during the July to November period.
2010 was the last time the country ran a surplus in onions. It exported a net of 7,000 MT when domestic demand was pegged at 181,000 MT. Since 2012, the country has been a net importer. Moving from self-sufficiency to becoming a net importer is a microcosm in many agricultural products. Therefore, the issue of food security cannot be taken as a trivial issue.
From self-sufficiency to perennial importer
The onion sector is considered one of the more progressive agricultural sectors in the country.
The annual growth in production from 2011 to 2020 was 10.7 percent, while the annual planted area grew at 4.9 percent. The government praised the onion farmers for being more adaptive to modern practices compared with other commodity crop producers.
However, the sector has faced subtle challenges since recovering from the 2016 crop failure. Foremost of which is the stagnating yield. Since yield peaked at almost 13 MT per hectare in 2014, the country never exceeded the figure and yield in 2010 is pegged at 11.13 MT/ha. The yield is much lower than the two leading producers that account for almost half of the world, China and India, which are 22.1 and 18.7 MT/ha. DA study noted that top onion-producing countries offer cheaper prices at $ 0.11/kg to $0.43/kg, while the Philippine domestic price averaged $0.79/kg in 2019. The productivity and price discrepancy make onion smuggling a tempting proposition.
The government also noted that most traditional growing areas are degraded due to the excessive use of inorganic fertilizers. It is also reported that Central Luzon growers regularly lose 10 percent of their crop from armyworms and anthracnose annually.
The shifting pattern of typhoon season to extend to the end of the year adversely affects the planting schedule of the onion farmer. Moreover, the delay in planting complicates the government’s effort to bring importation to stabilize the market during the lean month. The inventory and price swing this year seems to validate that worry anecdotally.
In addition to long-standing structural problems in the agriculture industry, onion growers today also face new challenges from climate change-induced production shocks that make new changes to the production system imperative.
Onion Industry Roadmap 2021-2025
The Department of Agriculture published the 129-page “Philippine Onion Industry Roadmap 2021-2025” late last year under its High-Value Crops Subsector Roadmap Development Program. The multistakeholder Onion Industry Development Team addresses three major challenges: achieving self-sufficiency while lifting farmers from poverty; preparing for the advent of the Asean Economic Community; and adapting to climate change.
The roadmap looks to increase onion production from 229,000 MT in 2021 to 279,000 MT by 2025 and attain self-sufficiency. The plan allocated a budget support of P721 million, with fertilizer-based production support taking 83 percent of the total budget.
The extensive roadmap will help stabilize onion production in the coming years, but it is doubtful whether it is enough to put the industry into high gear. The science element in the roadmap focuses on the earlier generation approaches, such as fertilizer subsidy, improved irrigation and better seed. The adoption of precision agriculture is discussed over a single page. The key strategy for precision farming, such as developing/optimizing drone-mediated fertilizer and pesticides, provides real-time weather, pest and disease forecasting, and recommendations were mentioned without elaboration. The precision farming adoption is not highlighted in the latest P100 million support fund earmarked for onion production.
Three waves of agricultural revolution
Many experts agree that the first agricultural revolution was the increasing use of mechanization from 1900-1930. The second wave prompted the Green Revolution with new methods of genetic modification. Finally, the third wave today is focused on precision agriculture.
Precision agriculture is the farming management strategy based on observing, measuring, and responding to temporal and spatial variability to improve production sustainability. The concept started in the late 1980s and got a huge boost in recent years when complementary technologies such as drones, GPS and real-time sensors became available.
The new precision farming technology can better meet the onion farmers’ challenges over the soil degradation problem affecting yield, the planting delay problem affecting the importation, and the farmers’ perennial worry about controlling insects and soil moisture. And, of course, the mechanization of the field, plus better seed and fertilizer subsidy, will bring much better production efficiency to onion farmers.
Agriculture cooperation with China
Agriculture cooperation is one of the 14 agreements signed by President Marcos Jr. during his China visit. China produces 25 million MT of onion a year; it is the largest onion producer worldwide, with much higher efficiency than the Philippines. The country is stepping up precision farming in all areas of agriculture, including onion production. It could be good if onion farming is included in future Philippine-China cooperation. The field is low-hanging fruit, and focusing the assistance on Nueva Ecija can already reverse the entire market supply situation and benefit all consumers in the Philippines.
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A model to follow is the successful hybrid rice cooperation under the Sino-Philippine Center for Agricultural Technology-Technical Cooperation Program (Philscat), which is already benefiting thousands of farmers and countless Filipinos. The scientist who helped the Philippines, Yuan Longping, is regarded as a hero by the Chinese for helping China achieve rice self-sufficiency.
IDSI President George Siy in our recent forum advised: the average age of farmers in the Philippines is 57, and most young Filipinos do not view a career in agriculture as profitable. The government, academe and media can help promote more stories and support of scientists, engineers, farmers, including technology application; and legal and logistics impediments have to be significantly modernized if the country actually intends to improve its agriculture industry, beyond the onion crisis.
We welcome logical feedback and possibly working together with compatible frameworks (idsicenter@gmail.com). A similar version was also published in ManilaTimes.
