Farmgate prices of onions have gone down amid the arrival of imported ones, the Samahang Industriya ng Agrikultura (SINAG) said.
SINAG president Rosendo So said prices of white onions have dropped to P70 to P90 per kilo from a high of P700 in December.
“This is in Bongabon area in Nueva Ecija. Red onions, on the other hand, is now at P170 to P190 per kilo,” So said in a radio interview.
Farmers, however, have complained that the low farmgate prices are affecting their income.
Some farmers have also flagged what they described as an “oversupply” of tomatoes.
In an interview with ABS-CBN, farmer Joemar Sabawil said they are earning very little because prices of tomatoes at the Nueva Vizcaya Agricultural Terminal (NVAT) have dropped.
“We really have an oversupply. We cannot sell the tomatoes—they will just rot. Our trucking cost to bring our produce to NVAT is wasted,” Sabawil said.
At Balintawak Market, a kilo of tomatoes fetches for P15 to P40, depending on the size of the produce.
The Bureau of Plant Industry, however, said there is no oversupply but only an overproduction during the harvest season.
“We really produce more than what we consume, but that is not oversupply per se,” BPI spokesman Jose Diego Roxas said after a photo of tomatoes being thrown away by farmers went viral on social media.
“You can see from the photo that the tomatoes were quite small, or what we call rejects,” he added.