Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren Bogle o bamb here. Quinoa has caused quite
Speaker 1: a lot of confusion during its short tenure on the
Speaker 1: worldwide scene. Raised four thousands of years in the Andean
Speaker 1: Mountain region of South America, it's only really blown up
Speaker 1: worldwide over the past decade. The United Nations Food and
Speaker 1: Agricultural Organization declared the International Year of Quinoa, giving the
Speaker 1: crop a big boost on the world stage. The declaration
Speaker 1: was intended as a way to highlight crops that were
Speaker 1: unknown and forgotten, at least to the wider world, as
Speaker 1: a way of promoting food security. But along with quinua's
Speaker 1: rapid ascent to the top of the health food chain
Speaker 1: came news reports that local populations in Peru and Bolivia
Speaker 1: could no longer afford to buy it, as the prices
Speaker 1: had doubled or tripled. But before we get into that,
Speaker 1: some basics. Quinoa spelled q u I n o A
Speaker 1: in case you've seen the word but never heard it pronounced.
Speaker 1: Cooks like rice, looks sort of like couscous, and pack
Speaker 1: a serious nutritive punch. It's high in protein, contains all
Speaker 1: the essential amino acids and is high in iron and fiber.
Speaker 1: It's eaten like a grain, but it's really more like
Speaker 1: a seed or a vegetable, and it's also gluten free.
Speaker 1: In short, it checks a lot of boxes for folks
Speaker 1: looking to eat fewer animal products or fewer carbs, but
Speaker 1: is its mainstream popularity hurting the people who grow it.
Speaker 1: Researchers have called through year's worth of data two thousand
Speaker 1: four from a national Peruvian survey to find out how
Speaker 1: the seemingly worldwide kinwa frenzy affected the quality of local
Speaker 1: citizens lives over that period. The air circumstances actually seem
Speaker 1: to have improved. We spoke via email with one of
Speaker 1: those researchers, Mark F. Bellamare, an associate professor of applied
Speaker 1: economics and director of the Center for International Food and
Speaker 1: Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. He said, in
Speaker 1: most cases, we find that rising kinwa prices have modestly
Speaker 1: increased the welfare of both kinwa producers and kinwa consumer
Speaker 1: in Peru. At worst, we find a small decline in
Speaker 1: welfare in some regions, but that decline is almost nil
Speaker 1: at less than one percent of total welfare. Welfare here
Speaker 1: is defined as the value of a household's consumption expenditures.
Speaker 1: Bell Amare explained, since consumption tends to be a function
Speaker 1: of income, consumption is a good proxy for income, but
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily all good news. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of concerns that could still affect the people who originally
Speaker 1: grew kinwa, bell Amare said. The first is that once
Speaker 1: the price of kinwa fell back down to its level,
Speaker 1: many small producers told us they were holding onto their
Speaker 1: grain and the hope that the price would spike back up.
Speaker 1: But this is highly unlikely to happen, considering that with
Speaker 1: the kinwa price spike in many new producers got into
Speaker 1: the kinwa production game, which lowered the price up, probably permanently,
Speaker 1: unless there's a new spike in the international demand of kinwa.
Speaker 1: The other problem is an issue of maintaining biodiversity. Very
Speaker 1: few varieties of kinwa are exported to places like the
Speaker 1: US and UK, especially compared with these some hundred varieties
Speaker 1: grown in Peru, and so if it's most worthwhile for
Speaker 1: producers to grow for export markets, those other local varieties
Speaker 1: might disappear forever. This phenomenon isn't good for the long
Speaker 1: standing health of crops, and it's not a new problem.
Speaker 1: Take the banana, but when I say banana, you probably
Speaker 1: think of a very particular variety of the fruit, like
Speaker 1: someone greatly enlarged and gently bent a yellow number two pencil.
Speaker 1: That's a Cavendish banana, and it's the only one many
Speaker 1: of us encounter outside of the tropics. It's popularity elbowed
Speaker 1: out other varieties and farmers came to rely on it
Speaker 1: as a stable export, which sounds great right up until
Speaker 1: a fungus that affects only that variety swept in and
Speaker 1: started destroying crops. If you haven't heard, Scientists are now
Speaker 1: racing to figure out a way to save it, and
Speaker 1: that's the danger of monocultures. The Irish potato blight is
Speaker 1: another example. That's why organizations like biod Adversity International have
Speaker 1: piloted programs to give native farmers incentives to grow the
Speaker 1: less in demand varieties of kinwa. So will kinwa ever
Speaker 1: where out it's welcome, It sure doesn't look that way.
Speaker 1: Where it used to be limited to health food stores
Speaker 1: and vegan restaurants, kinwa is showing up on mainstream menus
Speaker 1: now in place of rice or pasta as part of
Speaker 1: main entrees as breakfast cereal, or even added to soups
Speaker 1: and salads. Hopefully, with cooperation among exporters and researchers, conditions
Speaker 1: will only continue to improve for Kinwa's growers and for
Speaker 1: Kinwa itself. Today's episode was written by Alia Hoyt and
Speaker 1: produced by Tyler Clang for iHeart Media and how Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other nutritive topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com