Title
The quinoa boom in Peru: Will land competition threaten sustainability in one of the cradles of agriculture?
Date Issued
01 December 2018
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Pumi G.
Talamini E.
Padula A.
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
For a long time, the Andean grain crop quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) was just another example of the thousands of little-known and underutilized plants. Today, however, quinoa is considered a superfood due to its exceptional nutritional value and its international demand has soared. One consequence is that in Peru, due to its position as the world's largest producer of quinoa, questions have arisen regarding the extent to which the expanding global demand for the crop is compatible with appropriate natural resource management. Regarding this issue, the present study uses descriptive statistics for each region of Peru to calculate the mean variation in the percentages of harvested production and harvested area of a range of native Andean crops from 1995 to 2014. The findings show that the boom in demand has led to the emergence of a new geography of quinoa production in Peru, which has been accompanied by the transformation of traditional farming practices and a trend towards increasing competition for land use. For all those involved, this phenomenon warns of the urgent need to create a sustainable interaction between socio-economic and environmental demands. This warning is particularly relevant given Peru's historical role in agriculture as a center of crop genetic diversity.
Start page
475
End page
480
Volume
79
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Agricultura Biotecnología agrícola, Biotecnología alimentaria
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85052918920
Source
Land Use Policy
ISSN of the container
02648377
Sponsor(s)
The authors are grateful to the Brazilian National Council for Research and Development – CNPq (Grant Number: CNPq- 306375/2012-5 ) and CAPES PEC-PG for their financial support, and thankful to Professor A. Mujica from Quinoa Genetic Improvement Program at UNA-Puno and A. Humpire from National Institute of Agricultural Innovation (INIA-EEA Santa Rita-Arequipa-Peru) for their helpful information. The authors are also grateful to Professor S.E. Jacobsen, from Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen, for his valuable comments in the first draft of this paper.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus