Senator Imee Marcos on Sunday urged the government to conduct a comprehensive inventory of local white onions to check the extent of a shortage caused by last summer’s lean harvest.

Marcos said doing so would also help the government determine if there are traders who are hoarding white onions.

“Trace the traders who bought white onions from local farmers and find out if they are hoarding the crop in cold storage,” Marcos said in a statement.

“Without a comprehensive inventory, we cannot arrive at a well-calibrated importation policy that answers consumer demand but also relieves our local growers from low farmgate prices,” she said.

The Department of Agriculture (DA), last Wednesday, confirmed there is a lack of supply of white onions in the market. According to the DA, they have started listing the names of traders gathered from farmers in major onion-growing provinces like Nueva Ecija and Mindoro.

The senator warned that smugglers of imported white onions are now taking advantage of the situation by selling to the restaurant industry at 10 times the usual price.

She also said popular fastfood chains are complaining that the cost of white onions now being sold to them at P400 pesos per kilo by Divisoria-based traders when they used to buy at P40 per kilo.

Marcos also said the government should also include in their inventory farmers in the Visayas and Mindanao to know the true extent of the situation.

But while waiting for the results of the inventory, she said the govenrment should already link more local farmers with the restaurant industry ahead of the next major harvest in April.

“We can shut out smugglers from the supply chain through contract-growing, wherein industrial buyers assure local growers of income from their upcoming harvests and, in turn, are assured supply of a staple ingredient in their food products,” the lawmaker said.

Marcos said she is concerned that the shortage of white onions could extend until December or when Christmas comes around as the wet weather conditions could aggravate the situation and cause white onions to sprout or rot in storage.

“Next year’s national budget should provide more cold storage facilities for our local farmers. For now, an inventory and contract-growing must be done as soon as possible,” she stressed.