Middlemen exploiting onion glut, says Pangasinan agriculture official

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan—Middlemen had been making a killing as onion farmers in Pangasinan province suffer from the sharp drop in farm gate prices of the crop, an agriculture official said.

Nestor Batalla, assistant provincial agriculturist, said middlemen, who connect farmers to traders, had been exploiting the crisis.

“For instance, they tell the farmer that the price is P10 per kilogram. But they pass on the onions to traders at P12 per kg. So for 150 metric tons, which is about 150,000 kg, middlemen make P300,000,” he said.

To break even, Batalla said, farmers should price their crops at P15 per kg. A farmer spends at least P120,000 for every hectare of onions.

“Easy money” for the middlemen, the official told onion farmers and agriculture officials of Bayambang and Bautista, the province’s onion-producing towns, during a dialogue late last week.

He said a low demand and an oversupply due to good harvest had led to a sharp drop in onion prices in the province.

“We had no rains during the planting season and onion infestation was minimal,” he said.

He said 650 hectares of land in Bayambang and 210 ha in neighboring Bautista grew Red Creole onions at the start of the onion season in October last year.

The areas suffered from bulb rot but it struck only 40 ha of onions in Bayambang and 30 ha in Bautista. Farmers in the two towns harvested 15,000 kg of onions.

Since February, Red Creole onions have been fetching P10 to P13 per kg and Yellow Granex onions, P6 to P8 per kg.

“This is way below the farm gate prices in January which were P35 per kg. Farmers who planted early benefited from this,” Batalla said.

Last month, farmers were surprised that their buyers from Metro Manila did not buy their crops, he said. Consequently, they were forced to sell their produce at a big loss.

Valentino Perdido, Ilocos regional director of the Department of Agriculture, said onion farmers should sell their produce at least one month after harvest to earn a good price. They should air-dry the onions first after cleaning these to fetch good prices, he said.

The wholesale price of onions at the “bagsakan” (wholesale) market in Urdaneta City is P18 to P20 per kg, he said. “If they were bought at very low prices right in the farms, it’s the traders who are making money,” he said.

Newly harvested onions are usually bought at lower prices because these need cleaning, he said.

Ronnie Ringor, an onion farmer of Barangay Manambong Parte in Bayambang, said newly harvested onions are more expensive than those which had been stocked for a long time.

He said even if farmers want to delay selling their harvests, they could not do it because they no longer have space in the onion storage facilities in their town and in neighboring Tarlac province. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon