Скачать или смотреть Traditional grain becomes global hit

(11 Oct 2013) The global demand for a traditional grain grown in Peru and Bolivia is causing fears over its future cultivation.
Quinoa has been cultivated in the Andean highlands since at least 3,000 BC and is now a firm favourite in Europe and the United States.
STORYLINE:
Harvest time for quinoa in the fields of Bolivia.
The health benefits of this crop, known by locals as 'golden grain', have made it a big hit in the United States and Europe due to its high levels of protein and amino acids.
Such global demand for this grain has made the whole sale price jump sevenfold since 2000.
The increase in demand has increased production here in Bolivia and across the border in Peru, leading to higher prices for local customers and environmental concerns over its future-cultivation.
Here at a food fair in the Peruvian capital of Lima, people from the region of Puno are celebrating their most famous crop.
Puno produces around 80 percent of the country's quinoa, with 50 to 60 percent of the crop being exported abroad.
Despite the food fair featuring many famous foods grown in Puno, including their brand of cheese, quinoa is the star attraction due to its new-found international success.
Puno region president, Mauricio Rodr�guez, says that strong exports have made it tougher for the people of Peru to get their hands on the in-demand grain.
"Certainly, (we are) expanding the agricultural borders (to meet quinoa demand). I know that quinoa is rising in price, but that's why we have to produce more so that it won't go missing from the average table," says Rodriguez.
Before the quinoa boom, the grain sold for between $0.36 to $0.72 (1-2 Neuvo Soles) a kilo (2.2 pounds), but now the product has risen to between $3.96 and $4.32 USD (11-12 Neuvo Soles) a kilo.
Peru raised its production of quinoa from 29,640 tons in 2009 to 43,640 tons last year and exported $30 million USD worth.
Quinoa now seems to be the "it" food of the year, so much so, that the United Nations named 2013 the International Year of the Quinoa.
Producer Marino Ramirez says that the grain's popularity has meant that regular customers can no longer get their hands on it.
"Since it's International Year of Quinoa, as the propaganda says, then companies come and take it. So for example, before quinoa was for popular consumption, but now the regular person can no longer consume quinoa because the price has gone up," says Ramirez.
In response to the global demand, Puno's regional government is planning to expand agricultural land in order to grow more of the crop.
Peru Minister of Agriculture, Milton Von Hesse, says that crop rotation is the key to preventing damage to agricultural land and producing more of the grain.
"Quinoa producers are small family farmers and they have to rotate crops and if they don't, the land loses quality. Therefore, what the Andean villager usually does is crop diversification to mitigate risks," says Von Hesse.
But in Bolivia, the biggest global producer of quinoa, there are concerns that excessive demand for the crop could prompt farmers to abandon traditional farming techniques, thus endangering the arid hylands where quinoa is best grown.
Chief executive of Bolivia's College of Agricultural Engineering, Victor Ralde Montano, says they are worried the failure to control quinoa cultivation could put animal's such as llamas and alpacas at risk.
"This year, the coming years, there will be an excess demand globally. In fact, (growers) are rupturing some ecosystems (to meet demand) that are really going to be very difficult to revert in areas where camelids were raised, grazing areas."

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