Forget the rumors: quinoa’s international popularity hasn’t made the Peruvian grain too expensive for Peruvians, says NPR. Marc Bellemare, an agricultural economist at the University of Minnesota, and Seth Gitter, an economist at Towson University in Maryland, scoured data from Peru’s national survey, ENAHO, to find that as quinoa prices tripled between 2006 and 2013, the standard of living around the country also rose—especially for farmers.
Whether they grow quinoa or just eat it, Peruvians have continued to consume the grain. “The claim that rising quinoa prices were hurting those who had traditionally produced and consumed it [is] patently false,” Bellemare and Gitter said.
Andrew Stevens, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, also weeded through the same ENAHO data and found no change in calories, protein or carbohydrates in the Peruvian diet, refuting any claims that Peruvians are now forced to eat cheaper, less-nutritious varieties of quinoa. But Stevens, whose research appeared in the journal Food Policy, pointed out that quinoa only ever made up about 4 percent of the average household food budget in Peru. Compared to the more popular corn or rice, the grain’s importance is cultural rather than as a staple.
Some researchers, however, told NPR that the global demand for quinoa could still take a toll. More than 3,000 varieties of quinoa grow in Peru, but the international market has so far only been interested in a few of them. As farmers switch to more money-making strains, the overall diversity of quinoa falters, making the entire crop less secure against climate change.