The Quinoa Bust: The Making and Unmaking of an Andean Miracle Crop

by Emma McDonell

Quinoa rose to global stardom pitched as an unparalleled sustainable development opportunity that heralded a bright future for rural communities devastated by decades of rural-urban migration, civil war, and state neglect. The Quinoa Bust is based in a longitudinal ethnography centered around Puno, Peru, the main quinoa production area in the world’s chief quinoa exporting country. This book traces the social, ecological, technological, and political work that went into transforming a humble Andean grain into a development miracle crop and also highlights that project’s unintended consequences. The Quinoa Bust shows how even efforts based in the best of intentions—counteracting the homogenization of global food supply, empowering small-scale farmers, revaluing local food cultures, and adapting agricultural systems to climate change—can generate new kinds of oppression. At a time when so-called forgotten foods are increasingly positioned as sustainable development tools, The Quinoa Bust offers a cautionary tale of fleeting benefits and ambivalent results.

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2025