The quinoa debacle and industrial ag

From Technorati.com

This article in the New York Times clearly exemplifies the market problem with industrial agriculture. Few haven't heard of the ecological disaster that industrial scale agriculture has wrought. Fewer are aware of the cultural mass destruction that occurs because the large western market economies latch on to a staple food of some indigenous culture and scale it up to meet some boutique demand for dieting or holiday party dip. The unintended consequences (there are always unintended consequences) otherwise known as externalities, tend to further the decline of said culture.

And so it goes with quinoa.  This Andean staple has become a western superfood and the Bolivian and Peruvian peasant now has to decide between cheap junk food and the now more expensive grain of their ancestors. Life, and global markets, are indeed a bitch.  There are so many examples of economic globalization forcing export-based monocultures on country after country in order to pay off their debt. This debt, from World Bank loans as part of structural adjustment programs that Jerry Mander has so eloquently derided, becomes the sole focus of their economy. If such a state does not retool their economy by plowing up local sustenance crops to establish palm oil plantations or some other damaging monocrop, they would then be in violation of their agreements and be subject to sanctions.

So really the global food market really hits in two ways like a one-two punch from an MMA champ. First, the local historically appropriate staples are eliminated so that rapeseed, oil palm, or some other global commodity can be grown with all of the obvious ramifications to the local diet which now must be met with frozen meals, cheese curls, or fast food hamburgers. Not so well know is the significant damage such monocrops have on the local ecology by filling wetlands, cutting rainforests, creating erodable open soil which when then eroded become less likely to ever be rainforest again.

But the second punch comes when even if the populations want to feed themselves with the historically appropriate foodstuff, it is no longer grown locally and is three times as expensive as it used to be.  What an abomination.  We in the west need to recognize these relationships and move to focus exclusively on the 100 mile diet those foods that are grown locally and appropriate to the climate. Can there be trade in food? Of course, limited no doubt and only to supplement and complement one's own regional diet, and then only with other communities that engage in the same sustainable and ethical practice.