No onion in my ‘sisig’: How did it come to this?

The other day, I lamented over a plateful of pork sisig because it lacked onions. To compensate for its absence, more portions of diced carrots and sweet corn kernels were added.

It was sweet as a result but wasn’t strong enough to fend off my hunger. In between spoonfuls of sweet pork sisig, I wondered: How did we end up with the tear-inducing price of local onions?

Over the year-end holidays of 2022, the price of onions soared to P720 per kilo, a number higher than the daily nonagricultural wage of P500 in the National Capital Region. It even led some overseas Filipino workers to bring onions as pasalubong for their families back home.

The Philippines annually imports onions to compensate for local demand. Despite typhoons, pests, and diseases affecting local supply, importation was disallowed in 2022. In September, farmer groups raised a call to allow restricted imports to meet the increasing demand for December.

Last Jan. 10, the Department of Agriculture authorized the importation of 21,060 metric tons of onions (red and yellow). With the influx of imported onions, prices went down but at the expense of local onion farmers who were about to harvest their crops.

In the memorandum, the import deadline was Jan. 27, 2023—more or less 15 days from its release. This decision was doomed from the start, naturally, due to its ill-timing and disregard for the local onion sector. According to a USDA report, several conditions required were too steep given the tight window of application and limited volumes.

As I stared blankly at my empty, sizzling plate, I felt angry, although my stomach wasn’t hungry anymore. “Wala tayong mahiwa pero iyak parin tayo nang iyak,” Sen. Grace Poe said at a Senate hearing on the onion prices.

Houdini Lucas,

NGO worker,

South Cotabato