Farmers and groups supporting them gather at the Department of Agriculture office in Quezon City on Jan 16 to call on the government to solve high food prices, support local production, and halt importation. - PDI
MANILA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network): Onion farmers have been driven to despair, with some taking their own lives, after bearing the brunt of protracted losses, mounting debts, unscrupulous traders who have made their crops out of consumers’ reach, and the deluge of smuggled onions in the market.
This was the human element, the hard reality, behind the macroeconomic abstraction of rising prices of onions, as senators looking into that matter were apprised of that situation on the ground at their hearing on Monday.
