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An Andean ’’supergrain" known as quinoa is soaring in popularity across the world――the wholesale price jumping sevenfold since 2000 ― and has been
a boon to the poor farmers here in the dry and rocky soils of Bolivia's semiarid highlands where most of it grows.
The diminutive seed of the flowering plant, which powered Inca armies only to be elbowed aside by the wheat preferred by colonizing Spaniards , is unmatched in nutritional value.
President Evo Morales ' government had deemed quinoa a “strategic" foodstuff, essential to this poverty-afflicted nation's food security. It is promoting the grain and has included quinoa in a subsidized food parcel for pregnant women.
Yet the higher prices quinoa is fetching have had an unanticipated impact where the grain is grown. Some local children are showing signs of malnutrition because their parents have substituted rice and noodles for quinoa in the family diet, said Walter Severo, president of a quinoa producer's group in southwest Bolivia.
“Only 10 percent of it stays in Bolivia. The other 90 percent gets exported, “said Rural Development Minister Nemecia Achacollo.
“Quinoa provides 10 essential amino acids, is loaded with minerals and has a high protein content――between 14 and 18 percent. The U.N. Food and Agricultur
e Organization said it is so nutritious it can be substituted for mother's milk.
“This food is about the most perfect you can find for human diets," said Duane Johnson, a 61 year―old former Colorado State agronomist who helped introduce it to the United States three decades ago.
Quinoa isn't a cereal. It's a seed that is eaten like a grain, but is gluten―free and more easily digestible than corn, wheat, rye, millet and sorghum. And it can be substituted for rice in just about anything―front soup to salad to pudding to bread. Quinoa has been cultivated in the Andean highlands since 3000 B.C., and grows natively from Chile north to Colombia, mostly in Peru and Bolivia.
In 2000, Bolivia exported l,439 metric tons valued at $1.8 million (148.66 million yen). In 2009,exports totaled 14,500 tons, worth more than $25 million(2,064 billion yen), principally to the U.S., Japan and Europe.
