Lurching from vegetable crisis to another
It was onions, then became about tomatoes, and will be about onions again
This week’s The Long View:
THE LONG VIEW
Crisis to crisis
By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 03:55 AM February 08, 2023
Right after we taped our “Proyekto Pilipino” episode last week (about onions), word came that a tomato crisis was brewing. By now, you’ve probably heard of it after seeing the appeals online to help tomato farmers get something for the crop they were compelled to consider simply throwing away. Appeals to the middle and upper classes to buy tomatoes is public-spirited, generous, but only a start: with tons poised to go to waste, concerned individuals got together to find customers willing to order by the ton. Mercifully, there are some of these; with the added advantage that purchasing from the tomato crop can supply products such as tomato sauce and paste, products that extend the commercial life of the crop.
The story of how the alarm was sounded over tons of tomatoes potentially going to waste, and the ways business people and civil society came together to find ways to connect buyers with producers, is something that will be told on this Thursday’s episode of “Proyekto Pilipino.” A Reader’s Digest condensed version of the discussion may whet your appetite to watch the whole thing. What we have is a collision between old ways (the seasonal growing of produce, for example) with new habits (consumer demands for certain produce to be available all year around; not to mention more and more buying commercially prepared food, which means buyers needing vegetables of consistent quality and price on a consistent basis). There remains a disjoint when it comes to the habits and practices of farmers and those of wholesale buyers and the public.
To give a sample of the discussion strictly on tomatoes: one opportunity (and challenge) is to find different parts of the country that can have different growing seasons and thus cumulatively provide a consistent, year-round supply, while preventing the boom-and-bust that happens because of everyone everywhere scrambling to be part of the same growing season; not to mention the question whether some places such as the uplands, wouldn’t be better off focusing on more lucrative specialized crops suitable to their areas, leaving tomato-growing to the lowlands. Another challenge (and opportunity) exists for farmers to get a better grasp of the needs of wholesale buyers, who would be willing to invest in logistics if they could be assured (by the farmers) of consistent output. As it is, where abroad there might be three interventions in the supply chain (aggregators buying from many farmers; logistics to get them from one place to another; and warehousing to keep them in peak condition throughout), here at home some estimate the interventions (and thus those getting a cut) to range from as high as eight to a minimum of four (an example: farmers sell at the barangay level; barangay buyers to city suppliers, to then, say, provincial and regional aggregators, with the transport and storage at each step demanding a cut).
What was refreshing about the discussion was that for once there wasn’t the usual fiesta of finger-pointing and conspiracy theorizing; instead, it involved a sober, even clinical, analysis of where the system is outmoded and can be improved and where slowly, perhaps, different groups are learning to work with each other (including government: for example, the Department of Agriculture has been lending a hand with logistics to help the farmers get their products to buyers).
One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion came from the perspective of one of the guests who operates institutional canteens and thus needs to buy produce in bulk. One major change to their business model was to become reacquainted with the seasonality of produce, adjusting their menus in turn. To be sure, this still leaves the problem of consistency of supply for vegetables for which there is a year-round demand (the holy trinity of our cooking, onions, garlic, and tomatoes, for example), and this, in turn, has led to buyers and those trying to help the producers talking to each other to ramp up knowledge.
But this leaves the problem of the here and now which brings us back to last week’s topic, which those involved in the produce business seem to think will be back as a main topic in at least a couple of weeks: onions. To expand on some thoughts from last week, what’s at work, as you read this, is something like this. If you’ve noticed, the supply has improved and because of that, prices have gone down. That’s because the government finally gave the green light for imports. But the thing is, the government gave the go-ahead to import onions just when the domestic crop, planted a few months ago, is about to be harvested. So we run the risk of the crop of onions being harvested, only for it to be thrown away because with prices already going down, prices would then basically risk collapsing, just when the investments of farmers in their onion crop, are ready. And it’s not as if we have the means to store the onions for very long: not to mention that there will be frantic farmers desperate to cut their losses by harvesting early to get ahead of the looming collapse of prices. As I mentioned last week, if you harvest early, the onions don’t last as long.
I won’t make a habit of it, but since this is literally a gut issue, you might want to check out our next episode on tomatoes and onions, tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. on The Conscience Collective channel on YouTube (where previous issues are also archived). You can also catch the new episode of “Proyekto Pilipino” on the following channels and timeslots: mySKY 955: Fridays, 7 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, 3 p.m. Jeepney TV: Sundays, 5 p.m. and Mondays, 6:30 a.m.
Last week’s The Long View:
Crocodile tears over onions
Philippine Daily Inquirer
1 Feb 2023
MANUEL L. QUEZON III
Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter:@mlq3
With nine bills filed in Congress proposing some form of Charter change (including the previously unthinkable constitutional convention option), it doesn’t hurt to play safe and remind the people you can put on a good show. Congress may have blocked the appointment of his brother to the Cabinet, but if it vetoed one Tulfo, it can stage a real extravaganza on the prodding of another, older Tulfo. One that places no less than the First Lady’s own brother in the dock—along with what Ambassador Teddy Boy Locsin in his more iconoclastic (and politically incorrect) crusading days would have termed a “Chinese chum.” Like cannibal jungle drums from a 1940s budget serial, the online attack dogs are already busy snarling that they may have been bloggers for the President before he won, but now that he’s won, they’re every bit as able as Tulfo to turn the tables on the man they helped elect.
The hearings to come seem to be zeroing in on the First Lady’s brother and a business partner who happens to be Chinese; the allegation is that the two are in cahoots to smuggle in onions. An exposé of this sort promises to be a test of the new, post-pandemic, post big network, and big newspaper eras: who will get to grandstand—and how, in the era of so many platforms competing for overall fewer and fewer pairs of eyes—when the hearings begin?
Most frustratingly, of course, is that aside from trying to uncover if, in a time of shortage, a fortunate few have managed to rake in big bucks by breaking the law, one has to wonder if the investigations will offer more light than heat into the actual causes of the onion shortage? Or is it all just theater: crocodile tears over onions.
As it is, we’re all getting a crash course in onions, supply chains, and agriculture. It’s fascinating stuff. The explanation that makes (discouragingly) sense to me is a fairly straightforward one. So, we plant onions once a year, around October to November when the rice harvest is in; because the harvest has a predictable date for both red and white onions, farmers get rock bottom prices if they wait to harvest; instead, they are tempted to harvest early, to get a better price, but harvesting early means the onions don’t last as long, so middlemen in the end face pressure to dispose of stock cheaply before it goes bad; in the end, supply doesn’t meet demand, so importation is still needed, except that in an election year (2022), no one moved, so imports weren’t made, and supplies ran out, and you get the picture (more or less, one hopes).
To be sure, an investigation, complete with witnesses being sworn in and screamed at, offers its own kind of public satisfaction and potential political benefits. In an ideal world, a proper Senate or even House investigation would fill in the remaining blanks, but to do so would raise far more questions. The problem with this is that it would put many more people in the hot seat.
I thought about this yesterday, as we were taping our episode for Proyekto Pilipino (our weekly show on civics which included period references to topical issues). Our topic was on agriculture, and I learned, for example, there are basically eight interventions between the farmer and the consumer, when in other countries, it’s usually just two to three. Combined with tremendous waste, each intervention compensates itself at the expense of the start and end of the cycle, the farmer and consumer. And these are, mind you, apparently only the legitimate, that is, market-involved, interventions. The extortion, say, of people like policemen or rebels demanding money for protection, is over and above these.
And yet, the big merchant houses are all going into logistics in a big way, a strategy derived from the pandemic. We saw during the pandemic how civil society and small businesses banded together to work with farmers to bring their product to consumers, eliminating many of the old interventions. The challenges remaining are twofold: first, to fight the loss of a sense of urgency as we return to normalcy (meaning no more push, based on demand, for solutions to the supply of vegetables in a manner that helps farmers get fairer prices); and second, the challenge, as one of my cohosts put it, to “dream big, start small, and expand fast,” because boutique solutions from the pandemic have to give way to a truly improved system for bringing vegetables to the broader public.
One of our guests, Betty Listino of Pansigedan Advocacy Cooperative (learn more at
https://pansigedan.org/
) brought up all sorts of other issues that require attention, particularly for those who still remember the height of the pandemic when farmers were shown on the news destroying the produce they’d grown for lack of buyers. Land with a certain slope and beyond, for example, cannot be privately owned, which permanently places upland farmers in a permanently legally precarious plight as essentially agricultural squatters. In terms of government support through the agriculture department, the lion’s share of funding is for the big, politically back crops, so to speak: sugar, rice, and coconut; vegetables don’t even have the political prestige of say, export favorites such as cut flowers (a high-end product), coffee, or cacao.
Watch the new episode of Proyekto Pilipino on the following channels and timeslots: The Conscience Collective YouTube channel: Thursdays, 7 p.m.; mySKY 955: Fridays, 7 p.m. | Saturdays and Sundays, 3 p.m.; Jeepney TV: Sundays, 5 p.m. | Mondays, 6:30 a.m.
AS IT IS, WE’RE ALL GETTING A CRASH COURSE IN ONIONS, SUPPLY CHAINS, AND AGRICULTURE
In #ProyektoPilipino: Two related episodes
Napakamahal ng sibuyas, nagtatapon tayo ng mga kamatis, nag-iimport tayo ng bigas. Agrikultural na bansa ang Pilipinas, pero bakit napaka-backwards ng ating agrikultura?
We learned from school that the Philippines is an agricultural country, with at least 32% of our lands comprised of agricultural land and 34% of Filipinos working in the agricultural sector. But why are we lagging behind our neighboring countries, Thailand and Vietnam, in terms of technology, system, and supply?
In this episode, Fr. Tito Caluag, Manolo Quezon, and Carlo Santiago talk to Harold Lu and Betty Listino, two people who are working directly with farmers and the agricultural industry to help us understand where the problem lies—and hopefully, what we can do to be part of the solution.
“Given the right tools, information, and capabilities, kaya ng farmer natin. Ang challenge now is to fix the system. We need good governance from public sector, and the right motivation and people from the private sector.”
“The tomato problem is a bigger problem that we thought. And it’s starting to snowball. We need to move fast. We need to find a more permanent solution. Mahalaga ’yung long-term.”
After last episode’s conversation on the problem with onions and tomatoes, we are now zooming in to dissect the roots of the problem. Why are there shortages and wastages in our raw materials? Why are the prices higher than what consumers can actually afford? What are several groups doing to help farmers directly? In this episode, Fr. Tito Caluag and his trio of distinguished thinkers—Manolo Quezon, Leloy Claudio, and Carlo Santiago—talk to WOFEX Project Consultant Harold Lu, and Kitchen City President and COO Jun Abelardo to help people understand what several groups are already doing to address the problem and reflect on how to institutionalize these solutions in the long-term.
“Kailangang ayusin ang supply chain dahil makikita natin, instant ang epekto nito sa presyo. Hindi lang marketing ploy ang ‘farm to plate,’ may direktang epekto at tulong ito both sa farmer at consumer.”
This is part 2 of our “From Farmer to Consumer” conversation on agriculture. In this multi-episode special, we are tackling the most pressing agriculture issues and helping mobilize people to become part of the solution. If you want to help us connect farmers to consumers, e-mail proyekto.agri@gmail.com.