What Has the Quinoa Controversy Really Been About?
By Sarah Lecouffe Axtell
Author Tanya Kersens writes in “Quinoa: Is ‘To Buy or Not to Buy’ the Right Question?”,
“...the debate has largely been reduced to the invisible hand of the marketplace, in which the only options for shaping our global food system are driven by (affluent) consumers either buying more or buying less. It’s the same logic that makes us feel like we’ve done our civic duty by buying a pound of fair trade coffee. This isn’t to dismiss the many benefits of fair trade or other forms of ethical consumption, but the so-called quinoa quandary demonstrates the limits of consumption-driven politics. Because whichever way you press the lever (buy more/buy less) there are bound to be negative consequences, particularly for poor farmers in the Global South. To address the problem we have to analyze the system itself, and the very structures that constrain consumer and producer choices.”
Modern industrial agricultural methods and technologies have brought great increases in food production but not without high costs to the Earth and its inhabitants. The purpose of this report is to address the controversy and impacts which have rose out of quinoa's rising popularity as a highly nutritious food. Emanating from the 2011 piece in the The New York Times then in 2013 Can Vegans Stomach the Unpalatable Truth About Quinoa by The Guardian, a flurry of responses arose from mostly Western view based blogs and popular press sources. The main issues raised in the responses were that increased export production of quinoa in Peru and Bolivia is causing social, economic and environmental negative impacts to local farmers. Secondly, most Western sources perpetuated that local quinoa growers were no longer able to afford their staple native food due to global increase in demand and consequent increase in price (Ambrozek "Pop. Press"). This was based on Bolivian government reports supposedly showing a decrease in domestic consumption. The main misconceptions originate from the Western presses due to a disregard for the Southern perspective. From these responses we learn that maintaining food security in one place is not solely controlled by foreign consumer choice. A movement towards food sustainability, a look at Andean legislation and the Latin American press perspective increase our understanding of the quinoa controversy. Lastly some questions which were largely left unasked will be posited.
By Sarah Lecouffe Axtell
Author Tanya Kersens writes in “Quinoa: Is ‘To Buy or Not to Buy’ the Right Question?”,
“...the debate has largely been reduced to the invisible hand of the marketplace, in which the only options for shaping our global food system are driven by (affluent) consumers either buying more or buying less. It’s the same logic that makes us feel like we’ve done our civic duty by buying a pound of fair trade coffee. This isn’t to dismiss the many benefits of fair trade or other forms of ethical consumption, but the so-called quinoa quandary demonstrates the limits of consumption-driven politics. Because whichever way you press the lever (buy more/buy less) there are bound to be negative consequences, particularly for poor farmers in the Global South. To address the problem we have to analyze the system itself, and the very structures that constrain consumer and producer choices.”
Modern industrial agricultural methods and technologies have brought great increases in food production but not without high costs to the Earth and its inhabitants. The purpose of this report is to address the controversy and impacts which have rose out of quinoa's rising popularity as a highly nutritious food. Emanating from the 2011 piece in the The New York Times then in 2013 Can Vegans Stomach the Unpalatable Truth About Quinoa by The Guardian, a flurry of responses arose from mostly Western view based blogs and popular press sources. The main issues raised in the responses were that increased export production of quinoa in Peru and Bolivia is causing social, economic and environmental negative impacts to local farmers. Secondly, most Western sources perpetuated that local quinoa growers were no longer able to afford their staple native food due to global increase in demand and consequent increase in price (Ambrozek "Pop. Press"). This was based on Bolivian government reports supposedly showing a decrease in domestic consumption. The main misconceptions originate from the Western presses due to a disregard for the Southern perspective. From these responses we learn that maintaining food security in one place is not solely controlled by foreign consumer choice. A movement towards food sustainability, a look at Andean legislation and the Latin American press perspective increase our understanding of the quinoa controversy. Lastly some questions which were largely left unasked will be posited.
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