The quinoa boom in Peru: Will land competition threaten sustainability in one of the cradles of agriculture?

For a long time, the Andean grain crop quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) was just another example of the thousands of little-known and underutilized plants. Today, however, quinoa is considered a superfood due to its exceptional nutritional value and its international demand has soared. One consequence is that in Peru, due to its position as the world's largest producer of quinoa, questions have arisen regarding the extent to which the expanding global demand for the crop is compatible with appropriate natural resource management. Regarding this issue, the present study uses descriptive statistics for each region of Peru to calculate the mean variation in the percentages of harvested production and harvested area of a range of native Andean crops from 1995 to 2014. The findings show that the boom in demand has led to the emergence of a new geography of quinoa production in Peru, which has been accompanied by the transformation of traditional farming practices and a trend towards increasing competition for land use. For all those involved, this phenomenon warns of the urgent need to create a sustainable interaction between socio-economic and environmental demands. This warning is particularly relevant given Peru's historical role in agriculture as a center of crop genetic diversity.