Stuff: A history of the modern world
This class took us through time and space in a survey of world history through objects. It explored major themes of the modern era: imperialism, decolonization and neo-imperialism; war, violence, and genocide; cultural and religious change; racism; evolving norms of gender and sexuality; mass incarceration; changing patterns of consumption and inequality; and challenges to the environment. Each of the course’s lectures focuses on a single object—objects as varied as rubber, barbed wire, the head-scarf, and the banana—to trace the trends, ruptures, and linkages that define the modern world. The final task was to create a lesson plan. I chose Quinoa.
Quinoa has transformed from a niche health store product to a mainstream grain over the past two decades, emerging at the center of the debate on sustainability and conscious consumerism.
Is this counter movement effective in curbing capitalism’s ills? Rising western demand has had varying effects on previously isolated South American indigenous communities suddenly thrust into the global market, complicating this question.
Quinoa also encompasses the complexities of food security at odds with food sovereignty—should these small-scale, culturally important foods be protected from mass production when it has the potential to alleviate worldwide hunger?
Keywords and Concepts: (defined in the context of the lecture topic)
Conscious consumerism
A global trend that describes the increasing demand for environmentally and socially sustainable goods.
International Year of Quinoa
The UN declared 2013 to be the International Year of Quinoa to bring attention to quinoa’s role in food security, nutrition, and poverty eradication.
Sustainability
The production of quinoa using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, local communities, and animal welfare—the tripling of quinoa prices incentivizes non-traditional practices.
Food Sovereignty, Security
Food sovereignty is having a voice in the food system to define how healthy and culturally important food is traded, produced and consumed, and food security is having enough to eat.
Environmental degradation
To take advantage of higher prices, farmers are turning over older forms of agriculture (llama grazing, crop rotation) to pursue a quinoa monoculture, putting pressure on an already fragile ecosystem.
People and Place Names:
Altíplano
South America’s barren Andean plateau spanning parts of Peru and Bolivia, where quinoa is one of the few foods that grow in the windswept, cold conditions. Francisco Pizarro The Spanish conquistador who denigrated Incan culture by forbidding quinoa cultivation as a form of cultural suppression.
Joanna Blythman
Food journalist and author of the 2013 Guardian article "Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?", which drew controversy because of her claim that the peasant staple had become unaffordable, and quinoa market was driving poverty in the region.
International Trade Center
The joint agency of the UN and WTO that promotes fair trade quinoa cultivation because their research found high prices improved welfare of rural farming communities.
Salomón Salcedo
A senior policy officer of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization who is active in the quinoa globalization debate.
This lecture is very contemporary—perhaps too contemporary, as it exists around a decade ahead of our last object, sex. However, I think quinoa has many substantial connections with the previous two objects, bananas and plastic. It touches on how capitalism is transforming in the 21st century to become more self-aware, and how attempts to curb its effects has moved into the mainstream with conscious consumerism. It also discusses damaging north-south exchanges (like the banana trade) but in a context where well-intentioned, ethics-led consumers are the people driving change, and also where the Latin American countries themselves hold a significant amount of power (ownership of germplasm, intellectual property rights over quinoa seeds).
Destinations
Bruin Plate
Among the many quinoa destinations in Los Angeles, this location is the nearest and dearest to UCLA students. Its slogan is “Eat well, be well” and is one of the first health-themed university dining halls in the country. As the website boasts, “Dishes at Bruin Plate include an array of familiar and exotic foods…” in which quinoa features regularly, along with acai berries, farro, and other “superfoods.” The existence of such a dining hall indicates a mainstream demand for ethically and sustainably produced goods, particularly by the young generation. Everything from the buzzword descriptors on their website to the posters around the dining hall show how the definition of healthy living has expanded to merge with conscious consumerism.
Mulholland Drive
Though South American countries do have ownership of their native quinoa seeds, including all rights to its production and use, there are a handful of governments (including the US) that hold small, freely shared collections. However, the varieties of their collections are limited and only distantly resemble commercial quinoa. Wild quinoa (a more bitter variant) can still be found in many places, including Los Angeles. On the sides of the road past Mulholland Drive, the weedy plant, known as the pitted goosefoot, fills the vegetation. Growing with Los Angeles’ droughts and extreme heat is a testament to this plant’s versatility, making it very valuable in the search for resilient crops as climate and growing conditions change. Yet researchers often find themselves faced with political barriers—in the 1990s, Bolivia accused a US university of “biopiracy” when scientists patented a hybrid derived from a Bolivian seed, and the restrictions are even more stringent now. This stand-off connects with the concepts of food sovereignty vs. food security discussed in the lecture. For the residents of the Altiplano, this food is so central to their identity and livelihood that it was used specifically as a tool of colonial suppression. Opinions vary on whether their right to share quinoa on their own terms supersedes worldwide hunger needs, but when a region with such a storied past of exploitation (e.g. the original Andean potato) takes provisions to prevent such mistreatment, all parties agree that their position is justified.