I was planning dinner over the weekend and discovered firsthand the impact of the many food shortages in this country when I found out there are no white onions available for Filipinos for some time now. I was thinking of making Oyakudon, a Japanese ricebowl dish that has chicken, onions and eggs as the main ingredients.
I was used to making it with white onions that I almost gave up on making the dish when there were no such onions to be found. But because there seemed to be no hope at finding the onions I wanted, we decided to try using local red onions and I can happily report that nobody complained too much and the dish still worked. In conclusion, there is no need to be angry at the government’s failure to ensure availability of a simple and common cooking ingredient because the local alternative is usable and available.
When the imported white onion that sold from P70-80/kg last year allegedly sold for as much as P400/kg in early August this year and has become totally unavailable by September, it means that the French onion soup is going to be a luxurious delicacy that only the rich and powerful can afford. If it’s any consolation, maybe we can still see it on social media feeds, intricately posed beside fancy designer bags.
While we are on the topic of weird shortages, my daughter, who picked up baking over the pandemic and is currently saving up for a musical instrument, may have to hold off on her fund raising plan for a bit because of the current price of sugar. She was planning to sell cookies to raise funds to get a drum set, but for now, it looks like the only people desperate enough to buy cookies and other sugary treats are her titos, titas, lolos and lolas. Considering the prices of basic ingredients, her tasty cookies (forgive the shameless plug) might be end up too rich for the student market that she is targeting.
The shortages our country has been experiencing of late mean that whatever is available is probably ridiculously expensive, due to the unbreakable law of supply and demand. In the case of sugar, which our island should be swimming in, it is mind blowing to think that the sugar that our farmers produce and sell at what seems to be a fair price could end up being sold at ridiculously inflated prices at the marketplace.
A group of very opportunistic people are certainly making money, hand over fist, from these weird shortages. In the case of the nationwide sugar shortage, the earning opportunities are quite obvious, based on the vast difference between the quedan, mill gate and retail prices. It’s a crying shame that our farmers are not benefiting from this opportunity to screw their fellow Filipinos, but hey, at least we got a couple of Negrenses on the Sugar Regulatory Administration, so that can still be considered a win and a start, right?
Aside from sugar and white onions, there is also apparently a shortage of garlic and it was also apparently discovered recently that our country imports more than 90 percent of its salt. It boggles the brain how an archipelago, surrounded by seas and oceans on all sides, has to import salt that any salt farmer can produce by simply combining two abundantly free resources: seawater and the sun. What is so complicated about empowering them? Or are we prioritizing the interests of another powerful cartel?
These shortages need to be solved by our government, which should be in a prime position to act quickly and decisively as our Agriculture Secretary is also the President. If the most powerful man, working with the most powerful cabinet secretary in the land, cannot find a solution for this problem, it looks like life is going to be bland yet expensive in the coming months.
Given these crazy problems with sugar, onions, garlic and salt, it feels like nobody advised President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that the problem at the department he chose to lead is more serious than initially thought, because if he had only known, he would never have accepted the job he gave himself. But now that he is there, we can count on his will and power to fix these problems. Hopefully he is only getting started, and as soon as he gets going, all these weird shortages will be solved and we can thank him for bringing back flavor to our lives.
If it turns out the problem is out of their depth, then let’s just hope the shortage problem doesn’t spread to more essential goods like rice and fuel.*
