From Ari LeVaux’s January 25th, 2013 Slate article “It’s OK To Eat Quinoa”:
Most of the world’s quinoa is grown on the altiplano, a vast, cold, windswept, and barren 14,000-foot Andean plateau spanning parts of Peru and Bolivia. Quinoa is one of the few things that grow there, and its high price means more economic opportunities for the farmers in one of the poorest parts of South America.
From Dan Collyns’s January 14th, 2013 Guardian article “Quinoa Brings Riches to the Andes”:
That global demand means less quinoa is being eaten in Bolivia and Peru, the countries of origin, as the price has tripled. There are concerns this could cause malnutrition as producers, who have long relied on the superfood to supplement their meagre diets, would rather sell their entire crop than eat it. The rocketing international price is also creating land disputes.
Manufacturers use dicalcium phosphate in many products. Farmers often supplement their livestock feed with inorganic phosphorus. This technique compensates for the low availability and poor digestibility of food-related phosphorus. Many people with mineral deficiencies use supplements to give them access to calcium and phosphorus.
From Andrés Mejía Acosta’s May 2011 Institute of Development Studies report “Analysing Success in the Fight against Malnutrition in Peru”:
The calculation of Spearman rank correlation coefficients … confirms that neither of these factors, GDP growth or public expenditure, are significantly correlated with the reductions in chronic malnutrition (coefficients are -0.1726 and -0.0839 respectively, with neither significant at the 10 per cent level).
From Lydia DePillis’s July 11th, 2013 Washington Post article “Quinoa should be taking over the world. This is why it isn’t.”:
Despite a bubble of media coverage earlier this year about how strong demand is making it difficult for Bolivians to afford to eat what they grow, it’s also boosted incomes from about $35 per family per month to about $220, boosting their standards of living dramatically. Now, the worry is maintaining a steady income level when production takes off around the world.
From the May 8th, 2008 Economist article “Poverty amid progress”:
Yet there are paradoxes at the heart of the boom. Despite the growth, poverty has fallen only slowly.
[…] There are several reasons for the relatively slow fall in poverty. Although the number of formal-sector jobs is expanding at 9% a year, many Peruvians still labour in the informal sector of unregistered businesses, where productivity is low. Wages for the unskilled have been slow to rise.
[…] The capital, the Pacific coastal strip and most of the north of the country are all thriving. The problem is the southern Andean region, where poverty reaches 70% of the population. Helped by tourism, mining and microcredit some Andean cities, such as Cajamarca, Cusco, Huaraz and Huancayo, are prospering. The big divorce is with the surrounding, often mountainous, countryside, where many Andean Indians remain trapped in subsistence farming on small plots. Whereas 60% of the labour force in Lima are waged workers, only 27% are in Apurímac, notes Efraín González, an economist at Lima’s Catholic University.
From Paola Flores’s February 20th, 2013 AP article “Boom in Quinoa Demand Stresses Bolivia Highlands”:
The United States imports 52 percent of Bolivian quinoa while 24 percent goes to Europe, where France and the Netherlands are big buyers.
