Homework 1

Running head: WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH QUINOA IS GROWN? 1

What Are The Conditions Under Which Quinoa Is Grown?

An Exploratory Essay

Kevin Hunt

Goldey-Beacom College

WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH QUINOA IS GROWN? 2

What Are The Conditions Under Which Quinoa Is Grown?

An Exploratory Essay

I frequently eat organic brown rice and quinoa for breakfast in the morning because it is

fast—it comes in a microwaveable package that I can heat up in a matter of minutes—and (I

think) it is good for me—I’ve heard that whole grains such as brown rice are healthy, and I’ve

heard that quinoa is an ancient “miracle grain” that is high in protein. Because I mostly eat a

vegetarian diet, I know that it is important to look for non-meat sources of protein. However,

after reading some of the writings of food activist Michael Pollan, I have begun to think more

critically about the food I eat. For example, in his article “Six Rules for Eating Wisely,” published

in Time magazine, Pollan advises us to “eat food, not food products,” meaning that we should

eat food that is as close to its natural state as possible, not engineered in a laboratory and

produced in a factory. He also says that we should not pay attention to the health claims made

on food packages.

Pollan’s two pieces of advice got me to thinking about the microwaveable packages of

brown rice and quinoa I’ve been eating. Would Pollan consider this a “food product”? The rice

and quinoa have obviously been pre-cooked and engineered so that the package can be heated

up in a microwave oven, but at the same time, the contents seem to be fairly close to their

natural state. What about the label on the package that states that the contents are “USDA

[United States Department of Agriculture] Organic”? I have always assumed that there are a set

of standards that foods must meet in order to carry the USDA Organic label. But that raised

another issue in my mind. As I looked at the label more carefully, I found that the quinoa is

grown in Bolivia. How can the United States Department of Agriculture know whether the

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quinoa grown in Bolivia is actually grown under organic conditions? This initial thinking process

gave me a starting point for looking for more information. I was interested in finding out

answers to some preliminary but narrowly focused research questions:

 What are the conditions under which supposedly “healthy” and “organic” foods such as

quinoa are grown?

 How do we know whether these foods are truly “organic”?

To me, these questions are significant because every day, consumers are faced with

choices about what to eat. To make decisions on what to eat, we often rely on the information

on packages and on assumptions we make about that information. However, we rarely look

deeper into our assumptions about the background or reliability of the information we are

presented. This research project is my attempt to look more deeply and carefully into this issue.

To begin the process of answering my preliminary research question, I first wanted to

get an idea of how quinoa is produced in South American countries such as Bolivia (the country

listed on my microwaveable quinoa and brown rice package), and whether I could find anything

that discusses whether quinoa is produced organically. As a starting point, I went to Google and

typed “organic quinoa production” because I thought it would be fairly focused and it would

not give me an overwhelmingly long list of results. When using Google, I also knew that I

needed to look at my sources of information critically, and weed out any stuff that was

definitely unrelated and that didn’t appear to be from either mainstream media sources or

from the websites of credible organizations.

Despite my attempt to keep my initial search focused and narrow, my search provided a

huge list of information; however, I quickly scanned the list to see results from websites I could

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identify. The first source I looked at was a news article from the New York Times titled

“Quinoa’s Global Success Creates Quandary in Bolivia” and published in 2011. I began with this

source because the New York Times is a well-known, respected newspaper and the “quandary”

mentioned in the title suggested an interesting tension, which intrigued me even more as I

read: apparently, the global market for quinoa expanded greatly throughout the 1990s and

2000s, primarily in America and Europe, due to its high nutritional value. However, the rising

demand has also caused the price of quinoa to increase dramatically in Bolivia, so that “[f]ewer

Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising

fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it” (para. 3). This was an

interesting paradox to me, and I knew I needed to find sources that confirmed it as an on-going

problem that people are discussing. I knew I more concrete evidence of this problem because I

could not just rely on one source.

Before I began looking for other sources that confirmed the existence of this problem, I

first followed some of the links that were embedded in the New York Times article. The Times

article briefly described how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had

investigated quinoa as a potential food for long-range space flights in the future, and provided a

link to a 1993 NASA research report authored by two NASA research scientists, Greg Schlick and

David Bubenheim. Although the report is nearly 20 years old and is not directly related to my

focus on quinoa in South America, the report contained some useful descriptive information

about the nutritional value of quinoa. The authors note that while no food source can supply

humans with all essential nutrients for their health and well-being, “quinoa comes as close as

any other in the plant or animal kingdom” (p. 2) and is high in protein and healthful amino

WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH QUINOA IS GROWN? 5

acids (p. 1). This information is important for helping establish why quinoa is currently in such

high demand in Europe and the United States.

In addition to the NASA report link, the Times article also had a link to a 2003

information page titled “Quinoa, Lost Crop of the Incas, Finds New Life,” which is on the Rodale

Institute’s website. According to its website, the institute is a “nonprofit dedicated to

pioneering organic farming through research and outreach.” Not surprisingly, the information

page describes how a group of farmers began growing organic quinoa in Ecuador in the late

1990s and have successfully used organic farming methods. Although the source is from 2003

and the institute’s agenda is to promote—perhaps uncritically—organic farming methods, the

source provides useful background information about quinoa’s ancient roots in Inca culture.

This will be important as background and context in my research paper so that my audience

knows a little about the history of quinoa cultivation in South America.

After I looked at the links the Times article, I returned to my Google results, again

looking for sources that appeared credible (from mainstream media or easily recognizable

websites). In addition, I now looked at my sources with an eye toward finding sources that

might contain some discussion of the negative social problems of quinoa production. I next

found an interesting abstract to an article in the scientific periodical Journal of Agronomy and

Crop Science, which is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal I found on the Wiley Online Library

website. The abstract is a summary of an article published in August, 2012 and co-written by

eighteen crop science researchers mostly located in France. The abstract criticized the work of

another crop researcher, S. E. Jacobsen, who apparently published an article in 2012 that

described the negative effects of quinoa production in southern Bolivia, both on the diets of

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Bolivian people and on the environment. In this rebuttal, the eighteen scientists write that the

data Jacobsen published in his journal article “do not support any drop in quinoa crop yield

supposed to reflect soil degradation and…his demonstration regarding home consumption of

quinoa is ill-founded from both a nutritional and a cultural point of view.” This was interesting

to me because their rebuttal seemed to also contradict the problem that was described in the

Times article. In addition, the source addressed another issue—possible negative effects on the

environment—from growing quinoa. Unfortunately, the full text of the abstract must be

purchased from the Wiley Online Library (where it is located), so I have not yet been able to

read the details of their argument. (I will contact Rusty Michalak, the librarian, who can locate

the article free of charge.) However, after reading the abstract, I knew that I had to try to find

Jacobsen’s original article. I was intrigued because now I had two sides of the Bolivian quinoa

story that I needed to continue to look into. In addition, I had another related issue—the

possible environmental problems of quinoa production—that I needed to look into.

Before I could look for the article that was criticized by the researchers, I returned to my

Google results again, where I found an article that further addressed both issues of quinoa

production that I had identified —the impact on what people eat and on the environment in

Bolivia. The article, titled “Quinoa’s Dark Secret,” was in an online magazine titled Take Part,

which I had never heard of before, so I researched it. According to the Take Part website, the

magazine has a mission “to inspire and accelerate social change by connecting content to social

action,” so while reading the article I was aware that the magazine would present a view

toward exposing what the organization believes are social and economic injustices that are

negatively affecting lower income people. Similar to other articles, this article pointed out how

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the rising prices are forcing people to buy cheaper, less nutritious foods because they can no

longer afford quinoa. In addition, the article contains quotations from S. E. Jacobsen, the

researcher whose article about the negative environmental impact of quinoa production was

criticized. In this article, Jacobsen says that farmers are “losing their crop due to soil erosion,

increased pest problems (mice, birds, llamas, rabbits, insects), poor soil fertility.” A potentially

useful aspect of the article is Jacobsen’s proposed solution to environmental problems. He

advocates growing a wider variety of quinoa in areas throughout Bolivia, instead of just in the

mountainous southern Bolivia, and thus alleviating the environmental degradation of the soil.

In addition, in the article, Jacobsen is described as “one of the world’s foremost experts on

quinoa,” which lead me to want seek out more details of his research into quinoa production in

Bolivia.

Returning to my Google results one last time, I found an interesting response to the

New York Times article in a posting titled “The Quinoa Story: It’s Complicated” on the

Agricultural Biodiversity Blog, written by Luigi Guarino. Because I was not familiar with the blog

or the author, I checked the author’s credentials and found that he is a senior scientist at the

Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is an organization that provides funding for research to help

cultivate and promote a variety of crops around the world. In addition, Guarino has spent time

working with farmers in South American countries. The agenda of the organization is simply to

help farmers grow crops that will provide a safe, secure food supply, and the organization relies

on scientific research to help farmers out, so it is fairly objective and neutral. As the title

indicates, Guarino, presents a well-informed, reasoned response to the claims that quinoa is

creating dietary and environmental problems in Bolivia. The response is detailed and complex,

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and basically indicates that quinoa production is not absolutely bad or good; its impact on

Bolivia has been mixed. Because of the complexity of the argument, I will need to take the time

to unpack the information and see how it more closely relates to the claims made in other

sources.

Having found some interesting and promising sources using Google, I next went to the

databases specifically to find scientific research that had been carried out on Bolivian quinoa

production, and I also looked for Jacobsen’s article specifically. I found his article in the Journal

of Agronomy and Crop Science, titled “The Situation for Quinoa and Its Production in Southern

Bolivia: From Economic Success to Environmental Disaster.” As far as I can tell, this source is

really the only peer-reviewed study of the impact of quinoa production. In the article, Jacobsen,

who is a research scientist affiliated with the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, provides

specific data that show how the yield of quinoa has gone down due to poor soil conditions and

erosion. He also provides data showing that home consumption of quinoa has gone down. And

finally, he also proposes some solutions to the problem at the end of his article. Overall, his

article provides a wealth of information that I will have to cross-check against information in

other sources and also in the rebuttal article, which I must also locate in the databases.

At this point in my research, I have moved away from my initial questions about how

crops such as quinoa are grown, and whether we can be sure that quinoa from countries

outside of the United States are indeed organic. Instead, I have uncovered a lively debate about

the effects of quinoa consumption on the people in South America, mostly Bolivia, which has

changed my question to this: what are the social and environmental consequences of quinoa

production in South America? At this point, I don’t know the exact answer to the question, but

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I’m confident that I have identified key sources that present multiple sides of the issue. Because

I have found that this is a complex issue, I think I might have to narrow my focus to one of the

two issues that are part of the debate. I’ll either focus on the debate over the environmental

consequences or the social/dietary consequences of quinoa production. I don’t think I can

adequately cover both in a paper that is only ten pages long. In addition, I need to find some

sources that provide specific details about when quinoa was “discovered” as a healthy food

source in places outside of South America, and data that show how the production, as well as

the price of quinoa, has gone up since that discovery. In summary, my research so far has

revealed to me that what I eat can have an enormous impact on the lives of others and on the

health of the planet.

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References

Guarino, L. (2011, March 28). The quinoa story: It’s complicated [Web log post]. Retrieved from

the Agricultural Biodiversity web log: http://agro.biodiver.se/2011/03/the-quinoa-story-

its-complicated/

Holt, S. (2013, January 25). Quinoa’s dark secret. Take Part. Retrieved from

http://www.takepart.com.

Jacobsen, S. E. (2011). The situation for quinoa and its production in southern Bolivia: From

economic success to environmental disaster. Journal of Agronomy & Crop Science,

197(5), 390-399. doi:10.1111/j.1439-037X.2011.00475.x

Kimbe-Evans, A., Leventry, B., & Leventry, M. (2003, Sept. 3). Quinoa, lost crop of the Incas,

finds new life. Retrieved from the Rodale Institute website:

http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/international/features/0803/quinoa/incaorganics.sh

tml

Pollan, M. (12 June 2006). Six rules for eating wisely. Time. Retrieved from

http://www.time.com.

Romero, S. & Shariari, S. (2011, March 19). Quinoa’s global success creates quandary at home.

New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com

Schlick, G., & Bubenheim, D. (1993, November). Quinoa: An emerging “new” crop with potential

for CELSS. NASA Technical Paper 3422. Retrieved from the National Aeronautics and

Space Administration website:

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940015664_1994015664.pdf

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Winkel, T., Bertero, H. D., Bommel, P., Bourliaud, J., Chevarría Lazo, M., Cortes, G., . . . Vieira

Pak, M. (2012). The sustainability of quinoa production in southern Bolivia: From

misrepresentations to questionable solutions. Comments on Jacobsen (2011, J. Agron.

Crop Sci. 197: 390–399) [Abtract]. Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science, 198: 314–319.

doi: 10.1111/j.1439-037X.2012.00506.x. Abstract retrieved from the Wiley Online

Library: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-037X.2012.00506.x/abstract

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