7 ms·

A particular concern with quinoa, given its narrow (native) growing area, and the poverty endemic to that area, is that worldwide demand for the crop has out-pr

by rosser 13y ago

A particular concern with quinoa, given its narrow (native) growing area, and the poverty endemic to that area, is that worldwide demand for the crop has out-priced its growers' and their communities' ability to afford it in order to feed themselves. A select few brands set aside some of each harvest specifically for that purpose (and also put some of their profits back into improving the farms, sending the farmers' children to college, and that kind of thing), but so far, that's decidedly not the norm.

YokoZar 13y ago
Why is this a problem? If quinoa sprouted literal diamonds we wouldn't be upset that the farmers were selling them instead of making their own jewelry. Having your crops be too valuable to eat is a good problem to have; these farmers incomes have more than sextupled. That easily lets them sell the crop and buy other food like everyone else.
- aaronblohowiak 13y ago
  >That easily lets them sell the crop and buy other food like everyone else. [citation needed].
  - jessaustin 13y ago
    Did you miss the part where they make six times their previous income?
    - SteveGerencser 13y ago
      And what about the people that used to buy it as their primary food source? Their incomes did not increase six times, just their monthly food bill.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      But we have no idea what their previous income was, nor how much other sources of food cost. It feels weird that local food is exported as a cash crop, and other food is imported.
      - reeses 13y ago
        This is basic Adam Smith-David Ricardo economics. They can grow quinoa and eat the seeds or export them and import a more diverse diet. Even if other countries can cultivate quinoa, it may make sense for Andeans to export their quinoa and import other foods.
        DanBC 13y ago
        We don't know if they make enough from exporting quinoa to import more diverse food.
        reeses 13y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. You don't know if they can make enough from exporting quinoa to import more diverse food, so...?
  - johnchristopher 13y ago
    I am pretty sure this is parent's conclusion of his logical argument.* So the citation you are looking for is the bunch of sentences before the one you quote. * which sounds a little bit like an open question "am I wrong ?" type.
- bagels 13y ago
  The concern isn't just for the farmers, but everyone that lives near them that used to have affordable local food.
- pqqqqq 13y ago
  It's a problem for everyone else. Specifically, malnutrition in children has grown in quinoa cultivating areas since their parents can no longer afford quinoa. It's literally four times as expensive per weight compared to much less nutritious noodles http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?_r=1&gwh=92A77B8ACE152ED023720C4D4B8A4577& http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...
  - btown 13y ago
    This is absolutely a correct response to @YokoZar's assertion, and I would add that the families of the farmers who grow quinoa can also be in danger of malnutrition, since there is now an unreasonably huge economic incentive for the farmers to avoid eating their own quinoa, compounded with a dearth of other ways for nutritious food to be obtained on the open market. YokoZar's "diamonds" analogy only holds true in a market unrestricted by physical transportation difficulties and education gaps about nutrition (why not just spend our larger income to get more of the cheaper [less-nutritious] grain?). True, these might be solvable problems, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the fact that they exist today. An interesting parallel in urban environments in more developed countries is the phenomenon of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert - malnutrition can occur even when families have enough money to avoid it.
- lukasb 13y ago
  I remember seeing a headline in Thailand "rise in rice prices hits small farmers hard". I've seen similar things in Kenya: "high maize prices devastate small farmers." It turns out many subsistence farmers (of which there are roughly a billion) are net consumers of their staple crop. In order to survive, the poor diversify across a variety of agricultural products. Large industrial farming operations are growing the rest of the rice/maize ... and I'm guessing quinoa. So, if the same pattern holds here, farmers consume more quinoa than they sell, and suffer when prices go up.
  - artsrc 13y ago
    > farmers consume more quinoa than they sell, and suffer when prices go up. Unless there are other foods they can buy which are cheaper. Then they benefit from the higher prices and don't pay them.
    - lukasb 13y ago
      The reason staples are staples is because they're cheapest per calorie. There probably are not replacements that are as cheap per calorie. Remember that subsistence farmers tend to be geographically isolated so you can't assume they have access to the same food products you do.
      - dbecker 13y ago
        If they are net consumers of the staple, they must be net producers of some other crops. If the price of the staple increases dramatically, can't they shift towards eating other crops (that they were previously net producers of)?
        lukasb 13y ago
        "If they are net consumers of the staple, they must be net producers of some other crops." Again, those other crops are likely more expensive per calorie. That means there is no mix of consumption that will get them the same amount of calories they previously consumed, which for subsistence farmers will often mean malnutrition if not starvation.
- gohrt 13y ago
  Non-farmers in Peru used to be able to afford food. In a sense, they were getting discount-priced quinoa. Now, farmers are selling quinoa to foreigners, so the farmers are making more money, but everyone else is paying more for food. One solution would be to impose some sort of tax, to share the windfall quinoa profits with the former customers, or cooperative community ownership of the farms. Or farmers spending their increased profits on the labors of other locals in the community.
  - temp453463343 13y ago
    The farmers are the people bringing in money into the economy. The rest of society starts to simply charge more for their services b/c their expenses have gone up.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  I don't think you can compare diamonds to food.
- inopinatus 13y ago
  As my macroeconomics lecturer once put it, "The purpose of exports, is imports!"
mathattack 13y ago
Every farmer has a decision: Eat the grain, or sell the grain. They sell it if the money has more value to them than eating it. Unless they're indentured servants or slaves, they are doing this for their own benefit. If they'd starve as a result, they just wouldn't sell the crop.
- rosser 13y ago
  What about the broader community?
  - icebraining 13y ago
    How broader? ;) The local community loses cheap quinoa, but gains with the influx of money from abroad.
    - Daishiman 13y ago
      If the local community has no economic integration and no means to afford the transportation costs associated with imports (because transportation has been optimized for a certain crop), then it's a problem. Malnutrition has been an endemic problem in Bolivia since the Spaniards pillaged its mineral wealth. This does little to improve things.
wf 13y ago
This is debatable.[1] After hearing about this through NPR I initially thought that it was terrible; however, after doing more reading it seems to be unclear what kind of effect this is actually having on their economy.[2] [1] http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-or-why-the-world-still-needs-agricultural-economists/ http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-... [2] http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/05/bolivian-quinoa-questions-production-and-food-security/ http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/05/bolivian-quinoa-questions-pro...
- btown 13y ago
  Most would argue that "effect on their economy" is a means to an end, and that "effect on the well-being of people" is the end itself. In that case, economic analysis can fall short. Friends of mine have personally spoken to rural Andean farmers who can verify that the price rises in quinoa can cause more problems than they solve.
  - bayesianhorse 13y ago
    How does that work? Food security should increase rather than decrease. Subsistence farming is a living that can be extremely hard to the point of starvation when anything goes wrong. Sometimes a "more problems" verdict neglects the idea of different qualities of problems. More money usually comes with a higher quantity of problems, for example...
    - zecho 13y ago
      Mo' money, mo' quantity of problems.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
I completely disagree. Quinoa as a food stock is not a saving grace for the farmers that grow it. It does grow where little else grows, but it does not yield a lot of nutrition compared for the labor invested as a lot of other crops. With the price rising they can actually afford a better living. For them, getting a little richer than they are means consuming less quinoa, and more meat, more fruit and vegetables. And they can afford stuff other than food, which seems to be a novel idea.
dxbydt 13y ago
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2005/03/thoroughly_modern_millet.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2005/03/thoroughly_m... "In Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, a village of beleaguered peasants seeks to protect itself from marauding bandits by hiring a squad of samurai. To show their esteem, they offer up precious white rice to the warriors, saving only lowly millet for themselves. "
- sgdnogb2n 13y ago
  And iirc, they said they'd get night blindness from eating only millet (presumably from its lack of vitamin A?).
Pxtl 13y ago
Yes, but Quinoa is farmed in countries ruled by populist left-wing democracies. If the poor subsistence farmers were somehow being screwed by this massive inflow of cash, do you really think Hero Of The People types like Morales or Maduro wouldn't find some way to protect them? It's not like we're talking about corporate dictators here. I mean, there's a lot of faults in Latin American populist leftist politics, but this kind of thing is the sort of stuff they're supposed to excel at.
Gormo 13y ago
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I can't comprehend the concept of people growing a crop not being able to afford to eat it - if they're the ones growing it, then they don't have to buy it at all, just sell less of it. And surely the high international demand for quinoa means that they're making much more money in trade than previously.

by rosser 13y ago

YokoZar 13y ago

Why is this a problem? If quinoa sprouted literal diamonds we wouldn't be upset that the farmers were selling them instead of making their own jewelry. Having your crops be too valuable to eat is a good problem to have; these farmers incomes have more than sextupled. That easily lets them sell the crop and buy other food like everyone else.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago
>That easily lets them sell the crop and buy other food like everyone else. [citation needed].
- jessaustin 13y ago
  Did you miss the part where they make six times their previous income?
  - SteveGerencser 13y ago
    And what about the people that used to buy it as their primary food source? Their incomes did not increase six times, just their monthly food bill.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    But we have no idea what their previous income was, nor how much other sources of food cost. It feels weird that local food is exported as a cash crop, and other food is imported.
    - reeses 13y ago
      This is basic Adam Smith-David Ricardo economics. They can grow quinoa and eat the seeds or export them and import a more diverse diet. Even if other countries can cultivate quinoa, it may make sense for Andeans to export their quinoa and import other foods.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        We don't know if they make enough from exporting quinoa to import more diverse food.
        reeses 13y ago
        I'm not sure I understand your point. You don't know if they can make enough from exporting quinoa to import more diverse food, so...?
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  I am pretty sure this is parent's conclusion of his logical argument.* So the citation you are looking for is the bunch of sentences before the one you quote. * which sounds a little bit like an open question "am I wrong ?" type.
bagels 13y ago
The concern isn't just for the farmers, but everyone that lives near them that used to have affordable local food.
pqqqqq 13y ago
It's a problem for everyone else. Specifically, malnutrition in children has grown in quinoa cultivating areas since their parents can no longer afford quinoa. It's literally four times as expensive per weight compared to much less nutritious noodles http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.html?_r=1&gwh=92A77B8ACE152ED023720C4D4B8A4577& http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/world/americas/20bolivia.h...
- btown 13y ago
  This is absolutely a correct response to @YokoZar's assertion, and I would add that the families of the farmers who grow quinoa can also be in danger of malnutrition, since there is now an unreasonably huge economic incentive for the farmers to avoid eating their own quinoa, compounded with a dearth of other ways for nutritious food to be obtained on the open market. YokoZar's "diamonds" analogy only holds true in a market unrestricted by physical transportation difficulties and education gaps about nutrition (why not just spend our larger income to get more of the cheaper [less-nutritious] grain?). True, these might be solvable problems, but that doesn't mean we can ignore the fact that they exist today. An interesting parallel in urban environments in more developed countries is the phenomenon of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert - malnutrition can occur even when families have enough money to avoid it.
lukasb 13y ago
I remember seeing a headline in Thailand "rise in rice prices hits small farmers hard". I've seen similar things in Kenya: "high maize prices devastate small farmers." It turns out many subsistence farmers (of which there are roughly a billion) are net consumers of their staple crop. In order to survive, the poor diversify across a variety of agricultural products. Large industrial farming operations are growing the rest of the rice/maize ... and I'm guessing quinoa. So, if the same pattern holds here, farmers consume more quinoa than they sell, and suffer when prices go up.
- artsrc 13y ago
  > farmers consume more quinoa than they sell, and suffer when prices go up. Unless there are other foods they can buy which are cheaper. Then they benefit from the higher prices and don't pay them.
  - lukasb 13y ago
    The reason staples are staples is because they're cheapest per calorie. There probably are not replacements that are as cheap per calorie. Remember that subsistence farmers tend to be geographically isolated so you can't assume they have access to the same food products you do.
    - dbecker 13y ago
      If they are net consumers of the staple, they must be net producers of some other crops. If the price of the staple increases dramatically, can't they shift towards eating other crops (that they were previously net producers of)?
      - lukasb 13y ago
        "If they are net consumers of the staple, they must be net producers of some other crops." Again, those other crops are likely more expensive per calorie. That means there is no mix of consumption that will get them the same amount of calories they previously consumed, which for subsistence farmers will often mean malnutrition if not starvation.
gohrt 13y ago
Non-farmers in Peru used to be able to afford food. In a sense, they were getting discount-priced quinoa. Now, farmers are selling quinoa to foreigners, so the farmers are making more money, but everyone else is paying more for food. One solution would be to impose some sort of tax, to share the windfall quinoa profits with the former customers, or cooperative community ownership of the farms. Or farmers spending their increased profits on the labors of other locals in the community.
- temp453463343 13y ago
  The farmers are the people bringing in money into the economy. The rest of society starts to simply charge more for their services b/c their expenses have gone up.
enraged_camel 13y ago
I don't think you can compare diamonds to food.
inopinatus 13y ago
As my macroeconomics lecturer once put it, "The purpose of exports, is imports!"

mathattack 13y ago

Every farmer has a decision: Eat the grain, or sell the grain. They sell it if the money has more value to them than eating it. Unless they're indentured servants or slaves, they are doing this for their own benefit. If they'd starve as a result, they just wouldn't sell the crop.

rosser 13y ago
What about the broader community?
- icebraining 13y ago
  How broader? ;) The local community loses cheap quinoa, but gains with the influx of money from abroad.
  - Daishiman 13y ago
    If the local community has no economic integration and no means to afford the transportation costs associated with imports (because transportation has been optimized for a certain crop), then it's a problem. Malnutrition has been an endemic problem in Bolivia since the Spaniards pillaged its mineral wealth. This does little to improve things.

wf 13y ago

This is debatable.[1] After hearing about this through NPR I initially thought that it was terrible; however, after doing more reading it seems to be unclear what kind of effect this is actually having on their economy.[2] [1] http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-or-why-the-world-still-needs-agricultural-economists/ http://marcfbellemare.com/wordpress/2013/01/quinoa-nonsense-... [2] http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/05/bolivian-quinoa-questions-production-and-food-security/ http://ain-bolivia.org/2011/05/bolivian-quinoa-questions-pro...

btown 13y ago
Most would argue that "effect on their economy" is a means to an end, and that "effect on the well-being of people" is the end itself. In that case, economic analysis can fall short. Friends of mine have personally spoken to rural Andean farmers who can verify that the price rises in quinoa can cause more problems than they solve.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  How does that work? Food security should increase rather than decrease. Subsistence farming is a living that can be extremely hard to the point of starvation when anything goes wrong. Sometimes a "more problems" verdict neglects the idea of different qualities of problems. More money usually comes with a higher quantity of problems, for example...
  - zecho 13y ago
    Mo' money, mo' quantity of problems.

bayesianhorse 13y ago

I completely disagree. Quinoa as a food stock is not a saving grace for the farmers that grow it. It does grow where little else grows, but it does not yield a lot of nutrition compared for the labor invested as a lot of other crops. With the price rising they can actually afford a better living. For them, getting a little richer than they are means consuming less quinoa, and more meat, more fruit and vegetables. And they can afford stuff other than food, which seems to be a novel idea.

dxbydt 13y ago

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2005/03/thoroughly_modern_millet.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2005/03/thoroughly_m... "In Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, a village of beleaguered peasants seeks to protect itself from marauding bandits by hiring a squad of samurai. To show their esteem, they offer up precious white rice to the warriors, saving only lowly millet for themselves. "

sgdnogb2n 13y ago
And iirc, they said they'd get night blindness from eating only millet (presumably from its lack of vitamin A?).

Pxtl 13y ago

Yes, but Quinoa is farmed in countries ruled by populist left-wing democracies. If the poor subsistence farmers were somehow being screwed by this massive inflow of cash, do you really think Hero Of The People types like Morales or Maduro wouldn't find some way to protect them? It's not like we're talking about corporate dictators here. I mean, there's a lot of faults in Latin American populist leftist politics, but this kind of thing is the sort of stuff they're supposed to excel at.

Gormo 13y ago

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I can't comprehend the concept of people growing a crop not being able to afford to eat it - if they're the ones growing it, then they don't have to buy it at all, just sell less of it. And surely the high international demand for quinoa means that they're making much more money in trade than previously.