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2011-01-05 11:33:01
By CARLOS VALDEZ and FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Carlos Valdez And Frank
Bajak, Associated Press Tue Jan 4, 12:55 pm ET
CARACOLLO, Bolivia It's as inhospitable as climates come for crop
cultivation, the dry and rocky soils of Bolivia's semiarid altiplain. Miguel
Choque can see his breath as surveys his fields of quinoa, the Andean
"supergrain."
In late March or April, the flowering plants will paint the rugged landscape
yellow, green and red. Their diminutive seed, which powered Inca armies only to
be elbowed aside by the wheat preferred by colonizing Spaniards, is unmatched
in nutritional value.
Quinoa's rising popularity among First World foodies the wholesale price has
jumped sevenfold since 2000 as global demand climbed has been a boon to the
poor farmers here in the semiarid highlands where most of it grows.
And that boom has transformed the lives of the largely subsistence farmers who
grow it, though it remains unclear whether the large-scale commercial
cultivation sought by Bolivia's government is environmentally sustainable in
the altiplain_ or even welcome by growers.
President Evo Morales' government has deemed quinoa a "strategic" foodstuff,
essential to this poverty-afflicted nation's food security. It is promoting the
grain and has included quinoa in a subsidized food parcel for pregnant women.
Yet the higher prices quinoa is fetching have had an unanticipated impact where
the grain is grown. Some local children are showing signs of malnutrition
because their parents have substituted rice and noodles for quinoa in the
family diet, said Walter Severo, president of a quinoa producer's group in
southwest Bolivia.
"Only 10 percent of it stays in Bolivia. The other 90 percent gets exported,"
says Rural Development Minister Nemecia Achacollo.
Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) provides 10 essential amino acids, is loaded with
minerals and has a high protein content between 14 and 18 percent. The FAO
(U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization) says it is so nutritious it can be
substituted for mother's milk.
"This food is about the most perfect you can find for human diets," said Duane
Johnson, a 61-year-old former Colorado State agronomist who helped introduce it
to the United States three decades ago.
Quinoa isn't a cereal. It's a seed that is eaten like a grain, but is
gluten-free and more easily digestible than corn, wheat, rye, millet and
sorghum. And it can be substituted for rice in just about anything from soup
to salad to pudding to bread.
"I've got high-performance athletes that swear by it," said David Schnorr,
president of Quinoa Corp., the largest U.S. importer. It's also being embraced
by the increasing number of Americans with food allergies or celiac disease, an
immunological rejection of gluten, a wheat protein. NASA researchers consider
it ideal for inclusion in possible future long-term space missions when crops
would need to be grown on spacecraft.
Quinoa has been cultivated in the Andean highlands since 3,000 B.C., and grows
natively from Chile north to Colombia, mostly in Peru and Bolivia. The
varieties of this region of southwestern Bolivia at 3,700 meters (over 12,000
feet) are resistant to the freezes and droughts that periodically afflict it.
The crop "chisiya mama" or mother grain in the native Quechua language also
grows in the San Luis Valley of Colorado at about 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) as
well as in a growing number of countries including China and Mongolia, said
Johnson.
"It's very specific in the environments where it will grow," he said. "It
requires very cool days and even cooler evenings."
He says Peru and Bolivia account for as much as 97 percent of global
production.
And demand is booming.
"We've easily doubled our business in the last couple of years during the worst
economic recession we've had in a long time," said Schnoor.
In 2000, Bolivia exported 1,439 metric tons valued at $1.8 million. In 2009,
exports totaled 14,500 tons worth more than $25 million, principally to the
U.S., Japan and Europe. The goal for this harvest is 30,000 tons, said
Bolivia's deputy minister of rural development, Victor Hugo Vasquez.
Schnoor said prices soared threefold in early 2008. A decade ago, a 12-ounce
box of his quinoa, marketed under the Ancient Harvest brand, retailed for 99
cents in the United States. Now it costs about $4.50. It's also available in
bulk at natural food markets and even Costco warehouse stores now carry it.
The indigenous Bolivians who cultivate quinoa are among Bolivia's poorest and
many lived until the late 20th century by barter. It was the discovery of
quinoa by the health conscious in wealthier countries that introduced these
people to the life of the market, says Brigido Martinez, president of the
National Association of Quinoa producers, ANAPQUI.
Martinez traces the boom in quinoa's popularity to a visit by the king and
queen of Spain in 1987, when the royals sampled it, and the news media and the
world took note. Food exporters in the coastal Peruvian capital of Lima, where
it had been considered "poor people's food" by the European-descended elite,
took note and began buying it up.
It's not by chance that most of the world's quinoa comes from Bolivia.
In the 1990s, Johnson and fellow Colorado State University crop scientist Sarah
Ward patented a high-yielding hybrid with the intention of spurring large-scale
cultivation in the U.S. But they were challenged by ANAPQUI in an international
court and abandoned the effort.
There are those in Bolivia who believe this scrappy grain could lift its
altiplain out of poverty just as soy has become the economic motor of the
country's wealthier eastern lowlands. After all, quinoa fetches up to five
times the price of soy beans in the U.S. and European markets.
Martinez doesn't believe that can or will happen. For one, quinoa growers farm
on a smaller scale (the country's soy growers are mostly agribusinessmen with
huge plantations).
But for a government that proudly declares itself "decolonizing" Bolivia in
favor of its long downtrodden indigenous majority, the promotion of quinoa is a
linchpin of an agricultural policy that favors the small holder over
agribusiness.
Officials are working on details of a plan to boost quinoa production,
including credits for farmers that never before had access to financing. Many
producers are suspicious, however, that the government could turn into a
competitor.
"Its support is fine, but we'd like it to help with irrigation and research to
improve the quality of the seed and soil performance," said Martinez.
Meanwhile, some quinoa farmers have put their increased income to work raising
more llamas and alpacas, whose waste is used as fertilizer and which also
produce wool. And while most harvesting is still done manually, some have
abandoned the ox-pulled plow for tractors.
Some farmers believe current cultivation methods inadequate.
"The soils are tired and need nutrition. Production is dropping," said
Francisco Quisbert, an indigenous leader in the region where Quinoa Real is
grown.
But other quinoa boosters caution that traditional, organic farming methods
must be maintained to preserve the purity of the crop.
Consumers in the developed world don't want quinoa grown with chemical
fertilizers or pest controllers, said Schnorr.
However it plays out, Martinez, the producer's association president, is not
complaining.
"Quinoa isn't lifting us out of poverty," he says. "But we are living better."
___
AP Writer Frank Bajak reported from Bogota, Colombia.