Is Quinoa Unhealthy For Its Producers?

Quinoa is hailed as a healthy, high-protein substitute for grains, but some reports have indicated that its popularity hasn't been good for the people who farm it. Learn why, and what researchers are doing about it, in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Stuff Lauren Bogle o bamb here. Quinoa has caused quite
a lot of confusion during its short tenure on the
worldwide scene. Raised four thousands of years in the Andean
Mountain region of South America, it's only really blown up
worldwide over the past decade. The United Nations Food and
Agricultural Organization declared the International Year of Quinoa, giving the

(00:27):
crop a big boost on the world stage. The declaration
was intended as a way to highlight crops that were
unknown and forgotten, at least to the wider world, as
a way of promoting food security. But along with quinua's
rapid ascent to the top of the health food chain
came news reports that local populations in Peru and Bolivia
could no longer afford to buy it, as the prices
had doubled or tripled. But before we get into that,

(00:50):
some basics. Quinoa spelled q u I n o A
in case you've seen the word but never heard it pronounced.
Cooks like rice, looks sort of like couscous, and pack
a serious nutritive punch. It's high in protein, contains all
the essential amino acids and is high in iron and fiber.
It's eaten like a grain, but it's really more like
a seed or a vegetable, and it's also gluten free.

(01:12):
In short, it checks a lot of boxes for folks
looking to eat fewer animal products or fewer carbs, but
is its mainstream popularity hurting the people who grow it.
Researchers have called through year's worth of data two thousand
four from a national Peruvian survey to find out how
the seemingly worldwide kinwa frenzy affected the quality of local

(01:34):
citizens lives over that period. The air circumstances actually seem
to have improved. We spoke via email with one of
those researchers, Mark F. Bellamare, an associate professor of applied
economics and director of the Center for International Food and
Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. He said, in
most cases, we find that rising kinwa prices have modestly

(01:56):
increased the welfare of both kinwa producers and kinwa consumer
in Peru. At worst, we find a small decline in
welfare in some regions, but that decline is almost nil
at less than one percent of total welfare. Welfare here
is defined as the value of a household's consumption expenditures.
Bell Amare explained, since consumption tends to be a function

(02:18):
of income, consumption is a good proxy for income, but
it's not necessarily all good news. There are a couple
of concerns that could still affect the people who originally
grew kinwa, bell Amare said. The first is that once
the price of kinwa fell back down to its level,
many small producers told us they were holding onto their

(02:38):
grain and the hope that the price would spike back up.
But this is highly unlikely to happen, considering that with
the kinwa price spike in many new producers got into
the kinwa production game, which lowered the price up, probably permanently,
unless there's a new spike in the international demand of kinwa.
The other problem is an issue of maintaining biodiversity. Very

(03:00):
few varieties of kinwa are exported to places like the
US and UK, especially compared with these some hundred varieties
grown in Peru, and so if it's most worthwhile for
producers to grow for export markets, those other local varieties
might disappear forever. This phenomenon isn't good for the long
standing health of crops, and it's not a new problem.

(03:21):
Take the banana, but when I say banana, you probably
think of a very particular variety of the fruit, like
someone greatly enlarged and gently bent a yellow number two pencil.
That's a Cavendish banana, and it's the only one many
of us encounter outside of the tropics. It's popularity elbowed
out other varieties and farmers came to rely on it
as a stable export, which sounds great right up until

(03:44):
a fungus that affects only that variety swept in and
started destroying crops. If you haven't heard, Scientists are now
racing to figure out a way to save it, and
that's the danger of monocultures. The Irish potato blight is
another example. That's why organizations like biod Adversity International have
piloted programs to give native farmers incentives to grow the
less in demand varieties of kinwa. So will kinwa ever

(04:09):
where out it's welcome, It sure doesn't look that way.
Where it used to be limited to health food stores
and vegan restaurants, kinwa is showing up on mainstream menus
now in place of rice or pasta as part of
main entrees as breakfast cereal, or even added to soups
and salads. Hopefully, with cooperation among exporters and researchers, conditions
will only continue to improve for Kinwa's growers and for

(04:31):
Kinwa itself. Today's episode was written by Alia Hoyt and
produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and how Stuff Works.
For more on this and lots of other nutritive topics,
visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com