Onion supply shortage, fish importation due to crisis in governance
This is in reaction to your editorial, “Desperation over onion,” (1/19/23).
We were aghast at the magnitude of the “onion problem,” which has caused some farmers to lose their lives by committing suicide after incurring millions in losses they suffered. What made us fume in anger was the statement made by an onion farmer from Mindoro who said in a Senate hearing that traders buy their products at P8 to P15 per kilo and sell them for P600 in the market.
We cannot fathom the insensitivity of those traders who have the gall to pay a measly few pesos for every kilo of onions they buy and sell it at a gargantuan profit.
How inhuman and insensitive can they get?
The Philippines is an agricultural archipelago surrounded by water where fish abound. But why is it importing agricultural products and fish?
The easy answers are: a) unscrupulous business people choose to import fish and agricultural products because that is more profitable instead of patronizing local farmers and fishermen; and b) many agricultural lands have been converted by land developers into residential subdivisions, and fishermen of a foreign power have been fishing in our waters and protected by that powerful country’s militia that harasses Filipino fishermen in our own territory.
It has also been reported that the government will import onions at a time when farmers will harvest their produce! What a “brilliant idea”? It is just like telling the gardener to water the plants as rain pours!
The call for a full-time secretary of the Department of Agriculture (DA) is understandably getting louder! How can President Marcos Jr. as DA head manage this department in the face of myriad problems besetting this country? There is that brouhaha raging in the Department of National Defense, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and the Philippine National Police. Add to them the nagging illegal drug problem which has caused the loss of innocent lives as a result of the “extrajudicial killings” allegedly executed by rogue elements in the police force who are believed to be awarded tens of thousands of pesos for every victim they kill.
These problems have made many think that the ship of state is fast sinking because it is rudderless, thanks to those who seem to guide this president in very troubled waters.
God save this benighted land!
RAMON MAYUGA
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