Onion farmers of Nueva Ecija, known as the “onion basket of the country,” are looking forward to a bright Christmas this year, unlike the past years when they were very vocal against the influx of imported and smuggled onions.
The reason: A bountiful harvest this year attributed to the comprehensive program of the Department of Agriculture initiated by Secretary Arthur Yap through a package of sustained assistance directly to local government units (LGUs), marginal farmers and multi-purpose cooperatives of onion growers.
Hitting a banner year in harvest is Bongabon town, a third-class municipality with 28 barangays and a population of less than 100,000. Bongabon is the leading producer of onions in the province with some 2,000 hectares planted and producing an average of 350 bags of onions per hectare.
Bongabon Mayor Amelia A. Gamilla lauded Yap for giving the town’s 2,850 farmers direct assistance in the form of “certified seeds,” a multi-million irrigation infrastructure to portable irrigation generators, and coupons for P250 worth of fertilizers.
Bongabon municipal agriculture officer Luchie Cena said province-wide, Nueva Ecija produced an average of 250 bags of onion per hectare or about three million bags harvested this year from a total of 12,000 hectares.
Cena said the 22 multi-purpose cooperatives in Bongabon allied with the Union of Growers and Traders of Onions of the Philippines (UGAT), headed by Magtanggol Alvarez, also benefited from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA) program.
Gamilla said wiping out poverty among the onion farmers in her town is her top-most priority. “This entails a continuing effort to give our marginalized sector the empowerment to provide themselves alternative sources of income to make them self-sufficient in food and other basic needs,” Gamilla explained.