Onion shortage threatens a new chapter in world food crisis
- Prices are soaring, fueling inflation and prompting countries to take action to secure supplies.
- Restrictions have gone beyond onions to include carrots, tomatoes, potatoes and apples, hampering availability worldwide.
- In Europe, empty shelves have forced UK supermarkets to ration purchases.
- In the Philippines, a dearth of onions has compounded shortages of everything from salt to sugar.
- The costs of wheat and grains have fallen in recent months, easing concern over access to some staples. But a combination of factors is now shaking up the vegetable market, the backbone of a healthy, sustainable diet. And at the sharp end of that is the humble onion.
- The experiences of the two women more than 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) apart shows how the global crisis over food supplies is taking an alarming twist: threatening to consume ingredients critical to the world’s nutrition.
- Prices are soaring, fueling inflation and prompting countries to take action to secure supplies. Morocco and Turkey have halted some exports, as has Kazakhstan. The Philippines has ordered an investigation into cartels.
- Onions are the staple of cuisines across the world, the most consumed vegetable after the tomato (technically some fruit). About 106 million metric tons are produced annually — roughly the same as carrots, turnips, chilies, peppers and garlic combined. They’re used in everything from the base flavoring of curries and soups to fried toppings on hotdogs in the US, where futures trading in them has been banned since 1958 after an attempt to corner the market.
- The jump in prices is a knock-on effect from disastrous floods in Pakistan, frosts damaging stockpiles in Central Asia and Russia’s war in Ukraine. In North Africa, meanwhile, farmers have battled severe droughts and an increase in the cost of seeds and fertilizers.
- Poor weather has hit Moroccan growers particularly hard. At a market in the Ocean district in central Rabat, Fatima said vegetable prices remain “exuberantly high” even with the ban on sending onions and tomatoes to West Africa introduced by the government this month.
- We are eating more lentils, white beans and fava beans and soon we will settle for rice,” said Fatima, who declined to give her full name because of the political sensitivity in Morocco surrounding food inflation.