Quinoa Wars

Quinoa is the new rice, only twice as healthy, and ten times more valuable. You can make just about anything with quinoa. Vegans and vegetarians are going nuts for it because of its high protein content, and healthnuts want it because it's... well, healthy. But everything comes with a price, and the price we pay for this crop is human life, prosperity, and peace. Skyrocketing demand for this product in first-world countries threatens the lives and livelihoods of those who grow it.

Bolivia, being one of the only places in the world it can be grown organically, supplies 46% of the world's quinoa. Quinoa has put Bolivia on the global stage, and locals are eager to get their hands on land to grow it and get in on the success. But success in the global market is taking a huge toll on locals. People are ditching their llamas and turning their herding land into crop fields, which threatens to collapse the relationship between herding and soil fertilization that is necessary to grow quinoa and other crops. It also puts a huge strain on water availability. In addition, because of the soaring local price of quinoa, farmers can no longer afford to eat their own crops, and quinoa may very soon be too expensive to include in common Bolivian dishes. While we pay next-to-nothing, Bolivians are losing the ability to feed themselves adequately. Many low-income families who used to sustain themselves on healthy quinoa, cannot afford the now $100-per-sack pricetag, and now eat white rice and low-quality pasta. The staple food that has sustained the people of the Andes region for millennia is now so rarely eaten, it is feared that rampant malnutrition is just around the bend.

And if being unable to feed yourself and your family with something you grew up on wasn't bad enough, Bolivians are also fighting amongst one another for the land to grow quinoa on. Land that was once worthless became the source of unspeakable violence. Bolivia is divided into several regions called "departments." In a recent dispute, quinoa producers on the borders of the Potosí and Oruro departments attacked one another with dynamite, grenades, sticks, rocks, and even took hostages over the land. A truce was reached, but when harvest time comes, it is feared that fighting will arise again, and armies will have to oversee the harvest. Land feuds are spreading elsewhere, and violence is expected to follow.

SOURCE: TIME (April 3, 2012) Quinoa: The Dark Side of an Andean Superfood