Last updated on November 6, 2018
I was contacted last week by Alia Hoyt, who writes for the website HowStuffWorks.com, and who was writing an article about whether quinoa had gotten too popular for its own good.
Other than the usual question journalists ask me when it comes to quinoa–what did the quinoa price spike of 2013 do to the welfare of the people growing it?–Alia also had a few more questions that allowed me to share some thoughts I’ve been having about quinoa which I am not sure I have had a chance to share before.
Here is what she writes:
There are a couple of concerns that could still affect the people who originally grew quinoa. “The first is that once the price of quinoa fell back down to its pre-2010 level in 2014, many small producers told us they were holding on to their grain in the hope that the price would spike back up,” Bellemare recalls. “But this is highly unlikely to happen considering that with the quinoa price spike in 2013, many new producers got into the quinoa production game, which lowered the price–probably permanently unless there is a new spike in the international demand [for] quinoa.”
The other problem is an issue of maintaining biodiversity. “The varieties of quinoa that we consume in the U.S., the U.K., and other wealthy countries tend to be few (e.g., white, red, and black quinoa). In truth, there are over 100 varieties of quinoa grown in Peru,” Bellemare says. “This means that we are at risk of losing some quinoa biodiversity; if producers are interested in selling for the export markets, they have an interest in growing those few varieties that foreign consumers want.”
The phenomenon isn’t exactly new, however. “We have seen this ‘convergence’ toward a few varieties happen for many other commodities,” Bellemare says. “Perhaps the best example is how most people think of the Cavendish banana as the archetypal banana when, in fact, those of us who have traveled to countries where bananas are grown know that are many, many varieties of bananas that look nothing like Cavendish.”
Here is a link to the full article. On how market forces have led to the Cavendish banana dominating the marketplace, here is an interesting article from the Smithsonian Magazine.