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Another well researched piece on the quinoa controversy; this time looking at the complicated history that led to today's controversial quinoa boom.
Tanya Kerrsen, a Bolivia-based researcher for Food First who studies quinoa says, "She feels troubled that American accounts of the story “either fall on the side of ‘the quinoa boom is amazing and it's lifting people out of poverty’ or ‘the quinoa boom is terrible and is destroying people's lives,’ and in both of those narratives the indigenous people are given no agency… If we know about quinoa at all in the north, it's because of peasants really fighting anti-peasant policies during the most anti-peasant period… these people being like what can we do to survive on the land with our culture doing something that is culturally appropriate." " Read the article by Jill Richardson at Alter Net. Lima, Apr. 22. Peru’s President Ollanta Humala has stressed quinoa-growing is an engine of development in the country’s high Andean regions as it represents a unique opportunity of progress for all families living in this area. Read the article here.
SEATTLE, Wash. – Efforts to establish a quinoa production center in the Pacific Northwest will be presented by crop breeding expert Kevin Murphy at the Washington State University Innovators lecture and lunch 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 721 Pine St., Seattle. Register at http://bit.ly/1dLtwOL. By Rebecca E. Phillips, University Communications
During Passover people of the Jewish faith are not aloud to eat leavened foods that contain grains. Since quinoa is not a grain, but a seed in the chenopodiaceae family along with beets and spinach, quinoa has now got the Kosher seal of approval. Read more: 5 Things to Know About Quinoa, NY Times Blog "Quinoa Controversies" ignited after the Guardian published “Can Vegans Stomach the Unpalatable Truth About Quinoa”. Many of the responses by North Americans raised concern about the negative social-economic and environmental changes occurring in Peru and Bolivia in response to the global rise in quinoa demand and costs. It is important to note that these Northern response left out the Southern perspective.
In order to get to the bottom of the so called "quinoa quandry" Charlotte Ambrozek and Martin Zorrilla of the Department of International Agriculture and Rural Development, Cornell University, in collaboration with Bioversity International examined 42 stories (news and blog articles) "written between 2011-2013 in order to understand how the Western world interpreted this complex issue involving malnutrition, commodity markets, land degradation, and globalization". Read the article on Agricultural Biodiversity Webblog here Or view the hard copy (in full) here In the article Indian start-up targets global snacks with high protein, price stable quinoa by Kacey Culliney+, on March 18th 2014 quinoa growing experiments in the Anantapur district proved well for the dry soil condition of the region. Thats great but Ashtral Biotech expects to grow on a larger scale in India with plans to expand in Europe and North America. The underlying drive is for profit.
Part of the success of quinoa in India has resulted from price and production setting, as compared to the fluctuations as seen in South America. When the owner of BakeryandSnacks Reddy Rebala was asked whether he was expanding too much he replied "it could be in fact an advantage, because when you build up the scales, you enjoy economies of scale". I would hope that Rebala could exemplify who these economies of scale were going to. My hunch is that the "economies of scale" are not going to the social enterprise Project Ananta. Rebela and Ashtral Biotech are proposing that international demand should dictate how local economies produce. Sustainable De-Growth concept and the ensuing movement would disagree with this proposal. When growing, processing and selling production becomes larger the accumulation of wealth and consumption is held by the few. Proponents of the De-Growth movement are calling for a paradigm shift towards removing economic focus and moving towards planetary well being. In other words it "is the transition to a smaller economy with less production and consumption." The prairies are the first area in Canada to adopt quinoa growing. Now the major producer is looking for more farmers to meet increasing demand. Read here.
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