Urgently needed: Full-time, hands-on overseer for DA

The story told to senators by Merlita Gallardo during a committee hearing on the plight of onion farmers last Monday, 16 January is heart-wrenching.

In 2021, Gallardo’s husband took his own life after the family’s onion farm in Pangasinan was devastated by crop-devouring armyworms, leaving the Gallardos practically impoverished.

Driven by the need to survive, the widow Merlita plugged on planting onions, but a series of storms in 2022 destroyed her crops. She lost most of whatever borrowings she had made to replant and because of the continued rains, the harvest from her small farm yielded small onions.

Yet, Merlita managed to struggle on, although now it is certain that the looming arrival of cheap onion imports by the Department of Agriculture will depress the price of locally-produced onions like Merlita’s, and will likely finish off the poor widow.

Gallardo’s poignant story, echoed by thousands of other small farmers like her, is moving many quarters, including members of the Senate, to call for a full-time chief overseer at the DA who would devote his (or her) time and undivided attention to the crisis plaguing the agricultural sector.

The DA has been rocked by strong criticism for what many quarters call the poorly-timed approval by the President, who currently heads the department, of the importation of over 21,000 metric tons of onions in early January this year.

Leaders of farmer groups like the Federation of Free Farmers Cooperatives head, Raul Montemayor, said the onion importation will come just as farmers are about to harvest their onion crop.

The government, he said, “is playing into the hands of traders; it (importation) will cause the further lowering of prices of onions, and traders will take advantage of the situation and buy low from the farmers who, sadly, will have no choice but to sell their produce to them.”

Senators agree that there was a miscalculation by the DA in the timing of its decision to import onions in January. A visibly irked Senator Grace Poe couldn’t contain herself during the 16 January committee hearing at the Senate.

She remarked, “Prices had long been high but the department refused

“To

be sure, the apparent crisis bedeviling agriculture is not limited to the unbelievably astronomical price of onions.