My carrots come from Baden, my beets from Alymer, my flour from Arva, and my quinoa from, well, the grocery store. An article on quinoa from this morning’s Globe and Mail (published yesterday online) reminds health food nuts like me that, like meat-eaters, my favorite foods come at a high cost. For lovers of quinoa, the price is the subsistence of people (especially children) in South America where quinoa production is centered. Quinoa has become unaffordable for the people who have tra
ditionally used it as a staple in their diet. The price is also the land, which is being transformed into quinoa monoculture farms for exportation rather than a diverse range of products meeting community needs. I recommend you read the article and, if you are a weekly quinoa eater like me, reduce your quinoa consumption.
Katy Fulfer
While it’s useful to be reminded that the increased demand from wealthy nations for specialty foods like quinoa drives up the price such that locals can’t afford to eat it, I see this as part of a larger systemic problem. Many, if not most, people living in the developing world live on a razor’s edge in terms of being able to afford their basic food staples (which is most often a grain of some kind). Increased demand from the developed world, both from supermarket choices, but also from failed crops due to drought etc., very quickly lead to the inability of locals to consume their traditional diet, or any diet.
Quinoa is actually a highly adaptable plant – I’ve grown a few plants over the past few years on a very small scale here in Ontario. Many will be familiar with the extremely prevalent ‘weed’ lamb’s quarters – a very close relative of quinoa with smaller edible seeds, but equally delicious fresh leaves. The only reason quinoa is not grown here in North America as a monoculture already is probably that a mechanized way has not yet been introduced, whereas, I would guess that the majority of production in the South is based on cheap human labour – which is true of many crops we import.
That said – the point to limit use of quinoa based on its effect on the global market price is well-taken. But, another response to that is to ask what about the local Peruvian farmers who have been able to lift themselves out of poverty by growing what is now a lucrative crop?
Note that the original article from the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa) strongly demonizes vegans/vegetarians – as if you had to be one to consume quinoa, and that all of them do so in large amounts!