ANALYSIS OF MARKET STRUCTURE, CONDUCT, AND PERFORMANCE OF RED BULB ONION IN GENERAL SANTOS CITY

This study was undertaken in General Santos City from October-November 2021 to evaluate the bulb onion's market structure, conduct, and performance. The study employed descriptive statistics Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve to determine traders' degree of market concentration in income distribution. At the same time, marketing margin and efficiency were used to measure the performance of the red bulb onion in General Santos City.

The study revealed that the market concentration of wholesalers was equally perfect, with a Gini coefficient of 0.25, which implies a perfectly competitive market. On the other hand, wholesalers and retailers are relatively highly concentrated, meaning few dominate the market in income distribution with a Gini coefficient of 0.80 and 0.41, respectively. Retail pricing has a higher marketing margin compared to wholesale pricing. Further, the efficiency indexes on different channels are high with 10.05, 23 and 35.11, and 29.6 for wholesalers, wholesaler-retailers, and retailers, respectively. High-efficiency index means there is an existence of a high surplus of profit by red bulb onion traders, which indicates inefficiency in the supply chain. Thus, the government may require integrated agricultural marketing information system linked to producers, traders, and final consumers to avoid the exploitation of high prices. Further, farmers may take time to cure and dry their produce for added value to increase profit and lessen their incurred loss.