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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogle o bamb here. Quinoa has caused quite

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Speaker 1: a lot of confusion during its short tenure on the

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Speaker 1: worldwide scene. Raised four thousands of years in the Andean

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Speaker 1: Mountain region of South America, it's only really blown up

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Speaker 1: worldwide over the past decade. The United Nations Food and

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Speaker 1: Agricultural Organization declared the International Year of Quinoa, giving the

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Speaker 1: crop a big boost on the world stage. The declaration

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Speaker 1: was intended as a way to highlight crops that were

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Speaker 1: unknown and forgotten, at least to the wider world, as

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Speaker 1: a way of promoting food security. But along with quinua's

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Speaker 1: rapid ascent to the top of the health food chain

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Speaker 1: came news reports that local populations in Peru and Bolivia

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Speaker 1: could no longer afford to buy it, as the prices

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Speaker 1: had doubled or tripled. But before we get into that,

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Speaker 1: some basics. Quinoa spelled q u I n o A

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Speaker 1: in case you've seen the word but never heard it pronounced.

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Speaker 1: Cooks like rice, looks sort of like couscous, and pack

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Speaker 1: a serious nutritive punch. It's high in protein, contains all

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Speaker 1: the essential amino acids and is high in iron and fiber.

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Speaker 1: It's eaten like a grain, but it's really more like

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Speaker 1: a seed or a vegetable, and it's also gluten free.

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Speaker 1: In short, it checks a lot of boxes for folks

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Speaker 1: looking to eat fewer animal products or fewer carbs, but

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Speaker 1: is its mainstream popularity hurting the people who grow it.

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Speaker 1: Researchers have called through year's worth of data two thousand

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Speaker 1: four from a national Peruvian survey to find out how

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Speaker 1: the seemingly worldwide kinwa frenzy affected the quality of local

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Speaker 1: citizens lives over that period. The air circumstances actually seem

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Speaker 1: to have improved. We spoke via email with one of

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Speaker 1: those researchers, Mark F. Bellamare, an associate professor of applied

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Speaker 1: economics and director of the Center for International Food and

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Speaker 1: Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. He said, in

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Speaker 1: most cases, we find that rising kinwa prices have modestly

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Speaker 1: increased the welfare of both kinwa producers and kinwa consumer

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Speaker 1: in Peru. At worst, we find a small decline in

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Speaker 1: welfare in some regions, but that decline is almost nil

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Speaker 1: at less than one percent of total welfare. Welfare here

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Speaker 1: is defined as the value of a household's consumption expenditures.

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Speaker 1: Bell Amare explained, since consumption tends to be a function

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Speaker 1: of income, consumption is a good proxy for income, but

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Speaker 1: it's not necessarily all good news. There are a couple

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Speaker 1: of concerns that could still affect the people who originally

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Speaker 1: grew kinwa, bell Amare said. The first is that once

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Speaker 1: the price of kinwa fell back down to its level,

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Speaker 1: many small producers told us they were holding onto their

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Speaker 1: grain and the hope that the price would spike back up.

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Speaker 1: But this is highly unlikely to happen, considering that with

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Speaker 1: the kinwa price spike in many new producers got into

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Speaker 1: the kinwa production game, which lowered the price up, probably permanently,

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Speaker 1: unless there's a new spike in the international demand of kinwa.

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Speaker 1: The other problem is an issue of maintaining biodiversity. Very

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Speaker 1: few varieties of kinwa are exported to places like the

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Speaker 1: US and UK, especially compared with these some hundred varieties

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Speaker 1: grown in Peru, and so if it's most worthwhile for

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Speaker 1: producers to grow for export markets, those other local varieties

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Speaker 1: might disappear forever. This phenomenon isn't good for the long

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Speaker 1: standing health of crops, and it's not a new problem.

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Speaker 1: Take the banana, but when I say banana, you probably

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Speaker 1: think of a very particular variety of the fruit, like

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Speaker 1: someone greatly enlarged and gently bent a yellow number two pencil.

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Speaker 1: That's a Cavendish banana, and it's the only one many

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Speaker 1: of us encounter outside of the tropics. It's popularity elbowed

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Speaker 1: out other varieties and farmers came to rely on it

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Speaker 1: as a stable export, which sounds great right up until

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Speaker 1: a fungus that affects only that variety swept in and

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Speaker 1: started destroying crops. If you haven't heard, Scientists are now

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Speaker 1: racing to figure out a way to save it, and

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Speaker 1: that's the danger of monocultures. The Irish potato blight is

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Speaker 1: another example. That's why organizations like biod Adversity International have

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Speaker 1: piloted programs to give native farmers incentives to grow the

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Speaker 1: less in demand varieties of kinwa. So will kinwa ever

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Speaker 1: where out it's welcome, It sure doesn't look that way.

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Speaker 1: Where it used to be limited to health food stores

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Speaker 1: and vegan restaurants, kinwa is showing up on mainstream menus

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Speaker 1: now in place of rice or pasta as part of

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Speaker 1: main entrees as breakfast cereal, or even added to soups

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Speaker 1: and salads. Hopefully, with cooperation among exporters and researchers, conditions

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Speaker 1: will only continue to improve for Kinwa's growers and for

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Speaker 1: Kinwa itself. Today's episode was written by Alia Hoyt and

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Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and how Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other nutritive topics,

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Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com