Silos: useful for food storage, not for idea storage. Referring to analysis by Emma Banks for The Andean Information Network, food columnist Ari LeVaux brings a more holistic perspective to the quinoa-impact debate in his Slate Magazine article “It’s OK To Eat Quinoa.” The grain, praised by Western vegetarians, had recently been maligned in a series of articles arguing that its popularity had brought the price of quinoa up so high “that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it.” LeVaux debunked erroneous over-simplification: “Most of the world’s quinoa is grown on the altiplano, a vast, cold, windswept and barren 14 000-foot Andean plateau spanning parts of Peru and Bolivia. Quinoa is one of the few things that grow there, and its high price means more economic opportunities for the farmers in one of the poorest parts of South America.”
Local farmers still eat quinoa but now enjoy higher income as a result of its popularity. “Those hit hardest by the rising price of quinoa are probably quinoa eaters that live in urban areas, since they must pay higher prices for the grain, but don’t reap the economic benefits.” There are also concerns about environmental degradation as production rises to meet demand. Quinoa requires an “organic, rotational grazing system in which llamas are pastured on fallow fields,” yet it is still largely coming from the altiplano, and thus requires long-distance transportation. But, as LeVaux shows, simply ignoring it in some kind of solidarity with its producers, is not necessarily the most well-researched decision and could actually hurt the producers it aims to ‘save.’