Quinoa trend pricing Bolivians out of the market

[Fat Guy]

According to a recent New York Times article, the rise in quinoa consumption in the richer nations has made it too expensive for many Bolivians:

Now demand for quinoa (pronounced KEE-no-ah) is soaring in rich countries, as American and European consumers discover the “lost crop” of the Incas. The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer 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.

[Darienne]

We just began to eat quinoa last year and love it. My summer go-to salad is based on quinoa, thanks to Cathy as in What Would Cathy Eat?

Any suggestions about what to do in a positive way?

Are not our domestic eating corn prices somewhat of a paralle, though with much less drastic results, with the the increasing production of fuel-oriented corn crops?

[technophile50]

Are not our domestic eating corn prices somewhat of a parallel, though with much less drastic results, with the the increasing production of fuel-oriented corn crops?

According to the USDA 2010 corn crop figures, 5400 million bushels went to animal feed, 5480 million bushels went to industrial, food, and seed(mostly high fructose corn syrup and cornstarch; smaller amounts to corn chips, corn bread, seed corn for next year, birdseed, etc), and 4400 million bushels(~29 percent of the crop) went to produce ethanol. The ethanol comes from saccharification of the starch and fermentation; the residue, distillers dried grains and solubles, which contains all the original protein, vitamins, minerals etc originally in the corn, is used as animal feed.

Making ethanol gave 32 million metric tons(~1257 million bushels) of animal feed as a byproduct in 2010, about 23 per cent of the total corn used for feed. Making ethanol from corn doesn't take away as much feed as oil company propagandists would like you to believe. Much of the rising prices for food are the result of higher energy prices - diesel for farm equipment and transportation, natural gas for the production of nitrogen fertilizer.

The United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs issued a report in March 2010 that discounted biofuels impact, stating “Available evidence suggests that biofuels had a relatively small contribution to the 2008 spike in agricultural commodity prices.” And in a July 2010 report, the World Bank stated that “the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors may have been partly responsible for the 2007-08 spike,” according to NCGA president Bart Schott.

[Fat Guy]

Letters to the editor regarding this article.

[Jeffery C]

The law of supply and demand is controlled by us. It does not control us. If demand for a product rises, people are willing to pay more for that product, hence, people selling the product can raise the price for that product. I am sure the farmers selling it at that higher price to the distributors willing to pay the higher price do not have to sell their entire crop to those distributors buying it at that higher price. Hypothetically couldn't the Bolivian government subsidize some of the quinoa to be sold to their own populace? I am not sure how commodities are traded in that country, but I am sure we (and they) can figure something out without having to give up buying such a wonderful grain.

Edited March 27, 2011 by Jeffery C (log)

[jorach]

If quinoa is such a valuable crop why don't more Bolivians grow more of it?