The World According to Quinoa w/ Adam Gamwell

[00:00:00] Aneil Tripathy: Hi everyone and welcome to This Anthropological Life. As always, I'm Aneil Tripathy.

[00:00:05] Ryan Collins: I'm Ryan Collins.

[00:00:05] Adam Gamwell: And I'm Adam Gamwell.

[00:00:07] Aneil Tripathy: And today is gonna be a very special episode of This Anthropological Life. We're here today to interview and ask questions of our good friend and colleague in a long time: This Anthropological Life founder and content producer Adam Gamwell. So, he's gonna take us into the very fascinating and exciting world of quinoa, which I'm sure many of you guys may have experienced in your local Whole Foods or other store with food. It's all over the place.

[00:00:37] Ryan Collins: One of the things about being an anthropologist is that we all engage in field work and we specialize in a certain area of our focus. And Adam's particular area is of real recent interests, especially in terms of world politics, economics, and thoughts about hunger for the future. So, I think Adam's got a lot on his plate to cover today and I really see the excitement bouncing off him right now. So, Adam, what are your thoughts coming into this today?

[00:01:02] Adam Gamwell: Well, I think, first off, thank you, guys. This is it's fun to have this kind of an episode and I'm excited that we can, you know, dive in each of our fieldworks in subsequent episodes, too. And I think you have an apt metaphor there, Ryan, that there's a lot on the plate with quinoa. And Neil, too, as you pointed out, that, you know, folks that have heard of it may have seen it at their local Whole Foods or Trader Joe's perhaps or even — what started surprising me when I began looking at this was you can get it at Costco too in bulk. So, really, quinoa is this food that's taken off in the United States as sort of a health food, as a health commodity. And that's kind of where a lot of people, if you've heard of it at all, know about it. So, my research starts partially with that, but also, again, looking into where quinoa comes from, which is in the Andes, Peru, and Bolivia, a little bit of Ecuador, parts of Chile, basically on the western coast of the Andes.

[00:01:52] Ryan Collins: Now, for our listeners, just what is quinoa to clarify?

[00:01:56] Adam Gamwell: Excellent question. Right. So, quinoa is a pseudocereal. And what that essentially means is it's a food for one. So, you can start there. And so, it looks kind of like a cereal grain like wheat. You may have the idea of wheat in your head. I'm gonna produce these little seeds and these are called quinoa pods. And then the scientific name is Chenopodium quinoa Wild. And so, it produce these little seeds that are actually in the beet or the Goosefoot family. So, they make the same plants as beets, as spinach, as kale. So, actually quinoa's over there. We think of it as a grain though, which is interesting. It's sold that way partly — and we'll get into this — because of the colonial history. It looked like wheat to — so they counted it as a grain. So, this really interesting idea that the quinoa is this, you know, this plant that grows again. It's got this really amazing variety of where it can grow in terms of altitudes. It'll grow with the coast towards Lima and Peru as well as up into the high reaches of the Altiplano region mostly in southern and central Peru as well as into Bolivia. And the Altiplano region is this, you know, it's in between the Andes Mountains makes a sort of there's the it comes down the left side of South America and then splits. And so, there's kind of a place in the middle between the two peaks of the mountain. This is the Altiplano, which sits, you know, anywhere from 3,500 meters to over 4,600 meters. We're talking like 12,000 to 16,000 to 17,000 feet — super high. Nothing else really grows up there. I mean, the main thing that ends up growing in this high part is quinoa and it has another cousin, which we can talk about or mention too called canihuas. It's like a smaller, browner version of quinoa as well as llamas. That's like basically all that grows up there. The llamas hang out. Some people live up there and quinoa grows.

[00:03:34] Aneil Tripathy: Do the llamas eat the quinoa or eat the other thing?

[00:03:36] Adam Gamwell: They can eat that, yeah. Then they eat some scrub brush. But there's actually this really cool symbiotic relationship for thousands of years between people, between llamas, between quinoa in that llama fertilizer or lama dung it becomes a fertilizer for the quinoa. Quinoa is food for people, for llamas. Llamas provide wool for people to stay warm. So, it's a nice, it's been a sort of a nice, you know, circular relationship between llamas, between people, and between quinoa itself and canihuas its cousin. And we'll kind of dive into that as we move forward. But again, so, it's a food, right? And so, one of the things that when we start talking about food studies and think about it is, Ryan, as you pointed out, like there's issues of what you're pointing towards or notions of food security, of nutrition. And so, what's food about, you know? And one of the best ways to start thinking about this is Sidney Mintz who's an anthropologist. He's got this great little line. Simple but it just says "Food is political," right? Who produces the food? Who the food's for? Who consumes the food? Who's allowed to have the food? Who do — to belong to?

[00:04:32] Ryan Collins: Well, certainly, I mean, we can absolutely see food as political. Go back to Darwin, right? The idea of natural selection is based off of the environment selecting for certain traits based off of the availability of resources and specifically your ability to access food.

[00:04:49] Adam Gamwell: Yeah.

[00:04:50] Aneil Tripathy: That could actually be one of the reasons why humans can drink alcohol, right? Because when we were first walking more on the ground, one of the big food sources was fruit that had dropped down from trees that was fermenting, right? So, if we were able to eat those, then we'd survive better.

[00:05:05] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. It's interesting, too. Even Sidney Mintz points out that up to a third of the food that we eat as humans is actually fermented. And so, we're really quite, you're both right, in that we've certainly adapted to eat fermented foods, you know? And, of course, when we think fermentation, we think of like wine and beer. But really, it's true. I mean, you can ferment quinoa. You can ferment soy. Kimchi is a very famous dish, which is fermented cabbage. Smells pretty curious to me but it's quite a good way to eat and actually fermentation kills a lot of bacteria, even though it has a different form of bacteria. But our guts have evolved to eat fermented stuff. And so, it's interesting. Again, you're right that there's these questions of like, who has access to these kinds of things? And so, you know, the evolutionary bent is one way to think about it and then we can move on top of that that people start making decisions about what food is, what's it worth, how do we value these kinds of foods, you know? So, quinoa had this really interesting, I mean, really dramatic, fascinating history, right, that ties it from, you know, 7,000 years as it started was first begun to be domesticated and since then and we can say it's a domesticate now of 7,000 years 'cause, Ryan, you've told me before that domestication is an ongoing process, right? It's not just this one thing. You don't domesticate it once.

[00:06:13] Ryan Collins: Absolutely, even dogs you see today. Many of us probably have several in our household. They're continuing to be domesticated. And even some dogs will not lie on their back in submission where other dogs that are said to be more domesticate will do this and that's a sign that shows this difference and how that process affects different breeds differently.

[00:06:33] Adam Gamwell: This is really interesting to think about it. And like with environment, too, right? Again, that affects how domestication can take place because even when we flip switch over to quinoa — it's different than a dog, of course, 'cause this is a plant that grows in the ground versus a dog that grows on top of the ground. But so, quinoa and his cousin canihuas, they — I'm gonna talk about them a little together because canihuas has said to never be fully domesticated still today after even though it's been cultivated for about a similar amount of 7,000 years as quinoa. Quinoa more so but canihuas not as much partially because this is the way that the Andeans in the past chose to — when I say "Andeans," I just mean farmers that are working in the Andes — have chosen to sow the seeds. In terms of canihuas, they sort of just let it grow scrubbily. It's like a little scrubby brush. They let it grow as it will. They don't necessarily plant it in a row like we may think of corn or potatoes, right?

[00:07:19] Ryan Collins: Right. So, thinking about the domestication, quinoa, the quinoa that you're talking about, does it need the farmer to be produced or is it something that still will occur on its own?

[00:07:30] Adam Gamwell: That's a great question.It depends on the environment. And so, largely the quinoa that we're talking about, the stuff that grows in the Altiplano, which is, you know, again, we're talking 12,000 feet or higher, will grow by itself. Like having the llama dung helps. And so, really, if you were to take the farmer out of the equation, as long as there's llamas, which is, which are natural, they hang out there anyway. They're very high, you know, altitude-dwelling camelids like camels or sheep. They're still there in the sheep and camel family. Llamas, together with quinoa, could grow each other in essence. Now, this says this is a unique phenomenon because we're saying this is only one plant here. That's pretty crazy that llamas could eat off of this entire thing. Could they do it? And so, we may think that llamas may be in some ways responsible for domestication. This is actually one of the theories of how quinoa entered the human foodstream is like llamas were eating it anyway 7,000 years ago and then in their dung the seeds would get dropped near where people were living and then the plant would grow.

[00:08:24] Aneil Tripathy: And they kind of came along with the llamas.

[00:08:26] Adam Gamwell: Yeah.

[00:08:26] Aneil Tripathy: People domesticated the llamas and they got quinoa as a bonus.

[00:08:29] Adam Gamwell: In some ways, right? Or in some ways, all three domesticated each other, right? 'Cause llamas start showing up. You say, oh, you've got some nice-looking fur. We'll get that. We're gonna keep you around. Keep them in pens and then suddenly, a quinoa starts showing up, too.

[00:08:40] Ryan Collins: Absolutely. It gets back to, again, the idea of natural selection and environment playing into these developing ecological habitats. So, once you have one when you basically, when you enter a new agent into any arena, the habitat's going to change but those changes could set off on a big wild hit a code a set of reactions.

[00:08:59] Adam Gamwell: Right. Yeah. You know, it's like you can't predict it beforehand, right?

[00:09:01] Ryan Collins: Exactly.

[00:09:02] Adam Gamwell: And so, well, you know, when we have the gift for of hindsight, right, it's like we can say, oh, it seems like I went this direction. But that's actually one of the things I like about anthropology, too, is that it tells us to not necessarily seek causality because things are related, right? I mean, it certainly could be this. Isn't that why it's a theory, right? It's certainly plausible that the mixture of llamas plus people plus quinoa and dung is how it began to become domesticated. But even if you think about that, I mean, there's a pre-human involvement history at which llamas interacted with quinoa before people did, right?

[00:09:31] Aneil Tripathy: Which could have gone in a multitude of directions.

[00:09:33] Adam Gamwell: Sure, yeah. And so, I mean, who knows? Maybe llamas slowly brought it up the mountain over the past, you know, 20,000 years before that, you know? It's just it's interesting to think about, you know? There's like, once you get beyond the human. And that's also why I like looking at food because food is something that we all need biologically. But how it shows up culturally or even how we talk about it theoretically like this, like did llamas bring it over? Did people bring it over? raises so many great questions that go beyond just the human, right?

[00:09:57] Aneil Tripathy: Especially in terms of where the agency is, right? And who should we be attributing these certain types of environments that get created, right? Of course, people are involved here, but then we also as we've been going over have the llamas as actors and quinoa itself as an adaptation.

[00:10:13] Adam Gamwell: Right. And so, and I think a good way to think about agency in this context 'cause it can be hard sometimes to, if we say agency, the plant has agency. Someone who doesn't think anthropologically or think about agency the same way we might, that does sound really weird. Like what is the plant doing? But a kind of a way to think about that is that the plant has, as a material entity, has its own requirements. It needs a certain amount of nitrogen from the soil, needs a certain amount of sunlight hours per day, needs a certain amount of soil composition, etc. whatever. Because it has those requirements, it has the capacity or we can say the agency to affect how people can interact with it, right? People can't just take it and throw in just faith and then have it keep growing, right? And so, because of that, again, this is it's sort of an expanded idea of agency that it has a capacity to direct how people can interact with it, right? Same with llamas, too, in that way.

[00:10:59] Aneil Tripathy: And with agency, probably a good definition for all you guys out there. Agency a lot of times is seen as the capacity to act independently and to make almost free choices. So, when we are talking about llamas having agency or quinoa having agency, we're kind of trying to acknowledge that it's not just people running the whole show, right? It's this kind of multitude of actors in this situation.

[00:11:21] Adam Gamwell: But even that's where we're getting back to the notion of evolution we've been talking about, right? As an environmental factors, right? This isn't just people choosing to evolve, right? And you as you said, Neil, even about fruit falling from a tree, that's an environmental factor that people then — thankfully, we're able to, you know, evolve that our guts could then eat that kind of food.

[00:11:35] Aneil Tripathy: Became forest alcoholics.

[00:11:37] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. That could be the other show we have: forest alcoholics, you know? So, quinoa it goes on this really interesting journey, right? So, again, we're seeing that it's this question of how did it even get there in the first place, right? There's at least three agents. We have llamas, we have Andean people, and we have the plant itself. And so, we look back into the main two indigenous groups that live in this area are the Quechua and the Aymara. Particularly the Quechua live into Peru and up north into Peru. Then you get around south of southeast of Peru is where Lake Titicaca is, which is the highest navigable lake in the world. Very beautiful, very blue. And then so basically, modern-day Peru and Bolivia are split by Lake Titicaca. Like the border goes through that. And so, around Lake Titicaca is the higher confluence of Quechua and Aymara indigenous group. And this these are linguistic groups that really encompass a lot more but this is sort of them consolidated since the Inca Empire and the Inca sort of is the kinda the famous group run. Yeah. They were around from the 1300s into the 1430s when the Spaniards showed up.

[00:12:40] Aneil Tripathy: 1530s.

[00:12:41] Adam Gamwell: 1530s. Oh, yeah. Right. I was thinking in my head. Right. The 1530s when the Spaniards show up a hundred years later. So, they had kind of a short reign in terms of world empires, which is interesting. But they had a huge impact in sort of how we think about what is the Andes today anyway, right? And they have left interesting legacies in terms of road systems that are still in place today that, you know, are a good 600 years old. It's fascinating stuff. But we'll get to the Inca certainly. But for now like the idea is before the Inca, we're talking of the Quechua the Aymara that there's a really interesting book that came out called the Huarochirí Manuscript. And Huarochirí is a city that's in Peru and it was it became a colonial city. But what was famous here is they collected the oral histories or mythologies of the Quechua and by Spanish priests. And there was certain groups of people that were really interested in getting them. And so, they the idea is that this is one of the more, you know, I'm gonna use this word in air quotes that you can't see authentic cases of writing down of what these were old traditions were commonly used in this region. And they were written down in Quechua in Spanish and then they weren't translated until English until 1991, which is interesting. They've spent a long time outside of the US or English-speaking world. And quinoa shows up in a number of these myth stories, oftentimes with the trickster fox, which is really cool to think about for a lot of American their Native American mythology. And it was known as chisiya maya in Quechua, which means the mother grain. And it basically held this sacred position as one of the most important plants for the Inca. But then also preceding that, among the more disparate Quechua groups and what the Inca did with one of the groups when they sort of pulled the foods together, they had sort of a triumvirate of sacred foods, which were quinoa, maize or corn, and potatoes. And potatoes are also like quinoa are from the Andes in terms of they were first sort of if you wanna say domesticated or cultivated in the Andeans Mountains. You know, we think of like the Irish potato famine and like french fries from McDonald's. But really, these, all these things came from the Andes. Maize, of course, is from entral and parts of South America, too. So, really, if you think about two of the most famous world food staples, corn and potatoes are from the Americas. And so, it's really kind of cool to think about how these two things now, like, I mean, if you've ever heard the documentary King Corn or how popular their french fries are, right? Just the potato as a world food staple, you know? I mean, in terms of like the top most important foods in the world, these two of them are from right down the road.

[00:15:10] Aneil Tripathy: Oh, yeah. It's an incredible impact, right? And it's an impact that's fascinating because we almost refuse to acknowledge its the real of full power of this, right? The fact that so much of our diet is corn, especially in the United States and actually in South Korea as well where you have, based on these certain trade networks and how our systems of food production have developed, you have, you know, as you're saying, Adam, these certain species have just dominated almost what we eat.

[00:15:39] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. It's really kind of cool. I mean, I know we're gonna, it's gonna be confusing 'cause I'm gonna jump around in time but even like today, I mean, the Andean governments are very interested in sort of controlling these resources.

[00:16:08] Aneil Tripathy: Potatoes.

[00:16:24] Adam Gamwell: You know, quinoa certainly and we'll talk about what the difference between those two in terms of controlling the resources are but for now — I mean, for example, the Bolivian government in 1993 signed this sort of this, they ratified this convention on biological diversity in which that they would sort of control the movement of the genetic code or the genetic strains or what are called germplasm, which are seeds that are viable that you can plant outside of moving outside of the country. And they would only do so now if they would like, if some of the profits of moving these plants elsewhere would then return to the farmers who originally cultivated, which was a really interesting connection between sort of governmentality or government thoughts of how we're gonna control resources, the farmers themselves in the Andes who are traditionally outside of the governmental sphere, as well as world markets where things are traveling to. And so, the example I'm thinking of is that there's a Swiss company that has a development agency in Bolivia and they are allowed to cultivate four genetic codes of potatoes outside in sort of in farms in country in Switzerland but only if they give 5% of profits from what they produce back to the farmers. And so, not the government but the farmers —

[00:18:00] Aneil Tripathy: And that's government-mandated.

[00:18:04] Adam Gamwell: Yes. It's government mandated. So, there's really interesting things happening in terms of like who owns these resources and how they're gonna be controlled. And what's really kind of draws me in is this is totally, as I see it, related to latent colonial anxieties that sort of stem from the original appropriation of the potato by the Spaniards as well as sort of how quinoa's being approached today as a global commodity. And I know we're kind of bouncing around in time but so to come back like quinoa was the sacred plant to the Incas.

[00:18:30] Ryan Collins: Right. I want hear more about this. So, if you think comparatively with Meso-American cultures, corn played a huge role. But also, as a staple means of diet, beans and manioc for the ancient Maya, together those three crops were called the three sisters, sometimes the fourth sister would be the chili pepper.

[00:18:48] Adam Gamwell: It's a good sister to have around.

[00:18:51] Ryan Collins: Exactly. And it helps make not only good, tasty dishes as we all know and of experience, but it creates something that allows for the correct amino acids and proteins for your diet so you can persist off of this. So, in regards to quinoa, is that something that may have been considered for the Inca or for other groups beforehand as in connection with the potato or something else?

[00:19:15] Adam Gamwell: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question that you ask. And, of course, what's so cool about like the three sisters diet and so, for Meso-American cultures as well as the idea of quinoa and potatoes and maize for Andean diets is that, of course, they didn't know anything about genetics or nutritional content of food, you know? They knew this made you feel good and made you strong, you know? And they had different ways of describing that, but that's why it's so cool because there was this, you know, understanding over time of how these foods works together to actually give you a complete diet, you know? To give you the amino acid profile you need of the entire proteins that your body can't produce but requires to live and to thrive, to build muscle tissue, etc. What's crazy about quinoa and this is what we've learned, you know, basically from scientific testing since the sixties, only 1960s, is that quinoa itself is a complete protein. Like, you know, when you eat beans and rice together or manioc and beans, that's what sort of activates them each other to sort of turn on the amino acids that gives you the complete thing. By itself, quinoa is a complete protein and what that means is it provides an adequate level of all amino acids that the body needs but doesn't require. This has to do with where it grows, of course, 'cause maize and potatoes grow a lot lower in mountainscapes or much lower towards the coast. Quinoa grows in these really harsh conditions. Again, I mean, I said there's a spectrum that can grow from coast to mountains but the majority of it grows up in the mountains themselves. And this, the environment or the ecological niche that it evolved to work in, is super harsh. I mean, the Bolivian Altiplano and the Peruvian one, I mean, if you go up to the 16,000-feet mark, I mean, there's frost 250 days a year or 250 nights a year we should say. That's a lot of cold. Rainfall is like 55 or less millimeters a year.

[00:21:01] Ryan Collins: Wow.

[00:21:01] Adam Gamwell: Like very little rainfall, very cold, windswept. Like think about chapped lips times a million, you know? Like a really harsh climate. The soil is particularly sandy or loose. When you get down into southern Bolivia, it's salty. And so, like the nutrient content of soil is very different from what we think about having this rich, black loam soil, you know, to grow potatoes in the US or something. But quinoa of all plants adapted to live in this environment and because of that it, you know, sort of stores everything in itself. And what's really kind of cool to think about in a bigger sense, too, and just how quinoa is even made, you know, traditionally, and this is, you know, potatoes and corn are important in this thing because when they could grow them, certain potatoes can grow up where quinoa does and they would actually rotate fields, you know, so you'd have four or five fields going at any one time. And, you know, one field would have quinoa. The next year, that same field you would grow potatoes and then you would grow corn if you can get them in the same altitude or you can grow different kinds of tubers or Andean, you know, tubers are kind of like potatoes are a tuber, certain kinds of plants. But they'd actually rotate the fields around so that one field could rest anywhere between four to 10 years of having nothing growing. And then, you have quinoa it and then move around. But also because what's really kinda cool ecologically is that there was so little rain that quinoa actually used two years worth of rain stored in the ground to grow itself. And so, they literally have to move it. They couldn't keep it in the same field 'cause it required two years worth of water, you know? Which is still an incredibly small amount of water required to grow these plants. And these cran, these plants grow between three and six feet tall. They get, they're pretty, they're tall, you know? They're tall as a person. But so what's really interesting is that, you know, they're recognized as, again, this, there's something about it. They, you know, of course, they didn't say this is a complete protein or it's got, you know, the lysine content is above this thing or something, you know? But they recognize that there's something about the energy capacity. They would eat this and they'd have energy, right? And they, and it's actually, I mean, nowadays you can, quinoa is it approaches in terms of protein quality like human breast milk or milk 'cause, so it actually can work as a substitute 'cause, again, most times like the catch with people living up the mountains, they wouldn't be, you're not actually gonna eat llama all the time because they're also scarce. And then like llama meat is eaten sometimes but quinoa is more of the main protein source. Also 'cause it grows a lot faster than the llamas if you think about it, you know? And stores easier than meat although you can freeze dry everything. I mean, actually, the Quechua and the Aymara like mastered freeze drying. It's like that's why they invented it. And the Inca did, too, in like these really cool strongholds in which they would build castles or — we call them castles and they're like stone buildings that they would build the slits in windows so that the wind would blow right in the specific angle where they could put potatoes or quinoa or whatever on the ground. And so, the frost wind would blow it every night, slowly freeze drying it. Potatoes, the amazing that the Inca would do this and that they would freeze dry — quinoa last for 10 years freeze dried. Potatoes would last 20 years. So, they literally never had a famine. Granted they only lasted about 120 years, you know, unfortunately. Before the Spanish came, you know? But like the sort of agricultural coolness, you know, that they would put together here was really fascinating. And they, you know, they invented freeze drying in this way in that always had stores of food leftover, you know, just in case. But even before that, I mean, talking about, you know, in smaller hamlets before there was this sort of this, unified Inca empire was the idea that even how this food could be sorted, like the notions of freeze drying was part of it, too. So, you could always store the food for a long, you know, up again up to 10 years, you know, for just quinoa. And so, food was always a, you know, sort of really well taken care of thing that you'd have access to, which is really kind of cool.

[00:24:41] Aneil Tripathy: And also when they have, you know, items like quinoa, which is as a superfood, right? As you're saying, you could just, you know, survive off of that if you really need to end of the day. And then, of course, all these qualities that we've been describing that have grown up with quinoa are now being utilized in marketing, right, in this explosive growth of the quinoa market in the US and Europe. I was just checking, you know, on Walmart, you can buy Wild Oats Marketplace Organic traditional quinoa for $4.29 an ounce that they described as USDA organic, good source of protein, fiber, and iron; and great for you. Of course, now, we have this, you know, these long histories of human understanding of these types of crops being commoditized, right, and people trying to maximize the ideas that we have with them for selling purposes.

[00:25:36] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. And that's one of the, you know, conundrums that my research starts stepping into with quinoa is that really up until the 1960s, quinoa production was really quite low. And so, again, diving into our, the Spanish thing real quick, like essentially the short version of the story is that the Spaniards, you know, when they came over, they saw all these different plants and they basically just said, this is, you know, it was banned by the church royal for growing quinoas banned. At first, all foods were seen as inferior to Spanish wheat and barley and oats. But then, the potato obviously as we know and maize, too, was adopted and became world staples. And it took time, of course, for them to be able to, they had to again, you know, crossbreed them and plant them in Spain to get them to grow first. And they tried that with quinoa, too. But quinoa didn't work again 'cause it requires a certain altitude, height, sunshine, etc. It's got much more specific requirements than do potatoes or maize. And so, again, it was just sort of denigrated as a peasant or sort of like a, you know, they, this sort of they called it Indian food, right? And it had a low status that, you know, people of Spanish noble descent, quote unquote, like wouldn't want to eat, right? It was seen as it was and sort of basically became forgotten. It was ignored, which is course erotic because we chose much less, you know, powerful carbohydrate, potatoes or maize while quinoa sort of sat. But also again, the altitude, you know? Potatoes and corn are also bigger, much easier to see than, you know, you've seen the quinoas. They're really tiny, you know? You put a bunch of them together, you can still see you've got something, but it doesn't look anywhere near as substantial as a potato, right? And so, I mean, aesthetically it looks different and also, again, where it would grow is sort of just forgotten about 'cause it grows up mostly up in the mountain. Exactly. And all cultivation that basically could grow lower in the mountains was replaced by wheat 'cause wheat was the tribute to the Spanish crown. So, a lot of crops were switched over in terms of what was produced.

[00:27:24] Aneil Tripathy: And basically for a political purpose.

[00:27:25] Adam Gamwell: Absolutely.

[00:27:26] Aneil Tripathy: And that they, that's what the crown is accepting.

[00:27:29] Adam Gamwell: Right. Exactly. And so, basically production stayed pretty low for 500 years, you know? There was a couple expeditions here and there. Alexander von Humboldt is a famous example that went there in the 1800s and he wrote about that — or it might have been the 1700s but I think the book came out in the 1800s. But, you know, he wrote that quinoa is to the Andeans or the Quechua as cotton is to the Arabs or as wine is to the Greeks, you know? So, he like, he even spoke about these quinoa fields, you know, still being like, you could tell they're important. But, you know, how they had been approached up until that point by the Spaniards were sort of just shunned.

[00:28:07] Ryan Collins: Exactly. I mean, the political implications of this are sort of staggering because you have this shift to barley and wheat and other types of grain. And that's, you know, Spanish appropriation to say, you are now under our control and we are wanting this. But it's also a shift away as sort of forgetting of the quinoa that came before because that was the political staple of the previous empire.

[00:28:29] Adam Gamwell: Indeed. So, it's almost appropriate and that's a great way to think about it, right? That it like it was necessary in some ways for the Spanish to erase the authority of the Inca Empire by getting rid of their main crop, right?

[00:28:39] Ryan Collins: Exactly.

[00:28:40] Adam Gamwell: And as I said, chisiya maya, the mother grain, it was the first grain that the Inca Emperor himself planted every year to welcome the sun, you know? And then corn and potatoes were planted after that, but there's a golden spade it was said that, you know, he would pierce the earth and they would place one quinoa seed and that was the first plant that, you know, so clearly had implications for Inca authority as well as, again, how they would anchor themselves in terms of plants, too, right? And how people use plants and other materialities to relate themselves to the world and claim statuses.

[00:29:08] Ryan Collins: Exactly.

[00:29:08] Aneil Tripathy: I think with this history also, it's fascinating now how contemporary quinoa companies are using this history to market it. Another one of the quinoa brands available at Walmart, it's called Ancient Harvest Quinoa. So, trying to harken back to this idea of nobility connection with the Inca.

[00:29:27] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. Let's jump into that because that's a really great thing to think about. And so, what I was saying is that like, you know, since up until the 1960s basically quinoa was, you know, production was low and actually, it almost stopped, which is really interesting again, around the sixties in Peru and in Bolivia, too. I mean, partially because Western, it's really interesting. There's almost what we might call a double colonialism, right? So first, the Spanish came in and said, no quinoa, you know? Kind of forget about it. And then, it happened again following World War II with the Marshall Plan and that, you know, with the creation of the of institutions like Fair Trade and World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, etc, and all these things that were going to try to help, quote, third world countries get out of poverty. And so, development efforts that came from that, of course, and interestingly, like also involved selling cheap exports of wheat. The United States overproduced wheat after World War II and then they would export that, which just undercut any production costs of making anything in the Andes. And so, wheat began to be taking over as the more common staple things that people would eat and quinoa didn't have, they didn't have the same sort of market access and didn't have the same kind of market at all actually. And so, production was going lower. And then on on top of that, there was, you know, threat of Sendero Luminoso, which is a terrorist organization so-called that basically just like used indiscriminate killing in the Andes. This is a really terrible thing in the seventies, particularly around Ayacucho, which is in the southwest of Peru and one of the major quinoa-producing regions.

[00:31:03] Aneil Tripathy: Was this The Shining Path?

[00:31:05] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. It is The Shining Path, yeah. Sendero Luminoso is The Shining Path. And so, and they were hoping to overthrow the government, but they did so unfortunately by indiscriminately killing everybody, which doesn't seem the best way to make a new populace want to be a part of your organization but. So, I mean, the thing is there's a lot of threats against sort of being in the countryside and there was mass migration to cities to try to find work because there's no more minimal labor or money to be, you know, there's no money to be had basically when Western exports are coming into your countryside and you can't afford to produce any food because this is so cheap. There's no reason to like buy Andean.

[00:31:38] Aneil Tripathy: The US was basically dumping —

[00:31:39] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. Crop around the countries. Exactly. So, this huge threat of like some people moved to cities and so basically farming was being abandoned rapidly, too. And so, a couple agricultural scientists in the sixties saw this, you know? They were watching these things happen and they said, we've gotta do something about this. We have to, we need to change the tide in some ways. And so, they started doing agricultural scientific research on Andean crops on things that just came from the eighties. And there's a ton of biodiversity. I mean, and I forget the numbers exactly, but I think, you know, of like, of the labeled or classified, you know, 124 ecological zones that support biodiversity on earth, the Andes have 84 of them. So, it has a huge amount of types of plants that come out of there, types of foods that can come out of there. And so, these scientists started doing research on this, on these plants, particularly quinoa and canihuas, its cousin. And that's again started to sort of change the page of history as it were, the page of how people started to understand quinoa 'cause again, it had been denigrated as this low-class food. People wanted to eat these cool imports, noodles, and crackers, and stuff from the United States or whatever to have a sort of a, quote, modern diet, right? Be living in the city. And farming was seen as a thing of the past. And that was, again, a big development agenda thing is to push people off of subsistence farming into wage labor. But then, the research started being done and like international symposium, you know, began to take off and like looking at quinoa and they decided that we're gonna do these kind of symposia every year. So, food science stepped in and said, let's look at this. And that's when they started realizing the genetic diversity of the potatoes in the Andes, the genetic diversity of quinoa in the Andes, the different kinds of plants that we have available to us. I mean, just for example, that in terms of varieties of both, there's over 3,000 genetic varieties of potatoes and 3,000 genetic varieties of quinoa in the Andes. Right around the world, we have, you know, you got four or five that you see moving around. There's more than that. But like in general, the main kinds of potatoes that we eat in the United States, there's like two varieties that we eat from, you know? And that's actually what happened with the Irish potato famine, too, is they had one kind of variety of potato.

[00:33:45] Ryan Collins: And there's something like 3,000.

[00:33:46] Adam Gamwell: Yeah, there's over 3000. Exactly. And so, that tells you something that, and this is also, again, you look at, we're talking about agricultural strategies. How do the Andean survive like drought or, again, I said the rainfall's very low up in the north part of the mountain anyway or the top part of the mountain. But anyway, there's these really cool adaptive strategies that they would actually plant a bunch of different kinds of each plant in the same plot, you know? In some ways, because some were more aesthetically pleasing than the others but because they recognize that if there was a drought or a frost or the frost came early or it came late or there's too many rains or whatever, certain varieties would still survive.

[00:34:20] Aneil Tripathy: This kind of shows the ridiculousness of the concept of survival of the fittest, right? Especially when you have constant change in seasons, you need a multiplicity of things, right? And of course, the phrase "survival of the fittest" even comes from Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin. Recognize, right, that in evolution it's not, you know, an all win out. It's just kind of a slight edge in one particular time and then things can constantly change. So, you know, having a strategy of diversity is such a, I think, more powerful and really helpful agricultural.

[00:34:52] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. It's great to think about. And as an anthropologist named Karl Zimmerer that one of the things that he's got a really good great book called Changing Fortunes and it's about Andean crop diversity. And but about the human practices that are part of that 'cause what we like to now think, you know, we're talking about this thing. They would choose for ecological adaptation and that's part of it. But really some of it, as I said too a minute ago, is like they actually chose some of these plants because they thought they looked better, you know? They had social value. And that matters too because, you know, we like to think about, oh, you're gonna choose the most robust plant. That isn't the case necessarily, as you're saying both like survival of the fittest is a way of thinking about it. But that, again, that if you think about it, that's the sort of cold, rational, calculating mentality that we don't operate with, that people don't in general.

[00:35:34] Ryan Collins: Exactly. So, two things because there's so much going on now and part of me it just wants to operationalize a couple terms but get back to something very interesting you said. And as Aneil was talking about fitness, I think we should put out there that fitness is not only the ability to reproduce and create viable offspring but fitness is actually measured not by your offspring, but your offspring's offspring. So, this is something that has to be generational at least three times. So, if you're monocropping, you can produce something that, you know, you get your next generation. But if that famine hits, then that's done. That's it. So, it's not as fit as you might think. And that really connects back to what you were saying. Secondly, food science this seems like a great marketing cost for quinoa on one hand. But marketing in this sense might just be your way of also talking about food cosmologies. In other words, like recreating the sort of history and the social necessity of this crop bolstering its sort of a claim and creating a new past, directing us to a new identity for this. Save your food, if you will.

[00:36:45] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. And I will. That's a great point. That like there's something about this marketing that's not just about, as we would say, pure capitalistic value, right? There's not just something about money here. And that's what both you're both pointing at. It's like there's these companies that are selling quinoa now and even as you pointed Walmart, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Costco, whatever in the US Ancient Harvest brand or another importers. There's Andean Naturals, which is a really interesting company we can talk about. But these, groups are tapping into this, as you said, this sort of new history, right? It's that the history existed in some ways but as we've talked about many times in the show, right, the history has to be made. It's for the present, right? And we're tapping in a certain kinds of Andean history. We're telling a new story, even using historical ideas about what this food is and why it matters, right? And if you think about what tying this to the Inca Empire does, right, this erases the colonial history saying this was a peasant food that was no good, right? And it just, it's like let's hop, well, let's skip the past 500 years like where production was low and let's look at this actually really mattered and so much so this was the mother grain. This was the grain that the Inca planted every year first, you know? So, there's something about it. So, there's this interesting mixing of food, you know, culture of the idea of being, as you said, this food savior that has this capacity to feed and it mean something.

[00:38:02] Ryan Collins: It's very much integrating into the global scene. I mean, we think about a growing global cosmology today. We have world heritage sites movements to create certain places that are not just of cultural significance but of world significance. If this is something that should extend beyond all cultures, do you think that quinoa is now starting to be part of that system?

[00:38:24] Adam Gamwell: I think it's — I like the way you say that. I think it's entering that cosmology certainly. I mean, since the 2000s, I mean, this has been the official quinoa boom, as they call it. I mean, there was like a spike in prices in 2018 and 2013 where they, I mean, they've literally gone up fivefold in the past 10 years. Now, which I was actually surprised the prices you said for Walmart because normally, a bag for a pound of quinoa is $6 to $9 for organic, quote, traditionally produced, right, that kind of stuff. So, interesting that Walmart is obviously trying to compete into that by low ball market. Yeah. Which says something. But I mean, the price has skyrocketed. I mean, you know, what's really kind of cool in Peru, just to give some numbers that like Peru exported its first crop to the United States, you know, through Andean Naturals, talking from information that they've produced, that worth $380. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of money and it's not. In 2014, that was $40 million. $380 to $40 million in 11 years. That's a huge increase in 10 years, you know? So, just kind of that notion that we're seeing this huge skyrocket in price of how much this is worth in terms of export production. I mean, Peru from 2013, I mean, up until 2014, Bolivia was the world export producer. At the end of 2014, they produced 80,000 metric tons for export. It's a lot of quinoa — or I'm sorry, 80,000 in general. And I think then about 45 of that went to export. But Peru took over and now produce 87,000 tons at the end of 2014, which is a staggering amount. It's particularly staggering because they nearly doubled how much they made from 2013. In 2013, they had somewhere around 40 or 45 or 46, and then they moved that to 87. So, that is a huge increase. And that also involves organic and non-organic, which we can think about, too. It wasn't just this, you know, this traditional, quote, organic kind of production 'cause there's multiple kinds of production happening. This matters, too, when we're talking about this idea of the marketing of the saviors organic. There's different forms of production happening and the non-organic sector is actually growing a lot faster than the organic sector, you know? Organic factory might be worth more in using Fair Trade things and that has its own issues. But the nonorganic is the one that we're seeing more of. And that raises some really interesting questions. Again, what's quinoa doing, as Ryan said, is entering this global cosmology and certainly these work, I'm throwing a lot of stuff out. We're throwing a lot of ideas out here, but as you can see, like the price has gone up, the profile has gone up, questions of what it can be used for. I mean, in 2013, the second time the price spiked was also consequently during the International Year of Quinoa. The United Nations put on this, they do an international year of something every year. And this year, actually, 2015 is soils, which is kind of cool. And last year, 2014 was family farming. So, 2013 was quinoa. So, they do new stuff every year.

[00:41:13] Ryan Collins: Soils. So, just curious more about soils if you wouldn't mind explaining a little bit about that real quick.

[00:41:19] Adam Gamwell: About soils?

[00:41:21] Ryan Collins: Yes. What's the significance of soil?

[00:41:24] Adam Gamwell: Excellent question. Or quinoa or potatoes, right. 2008 was potato. The, I mean, the UN just chooses if you wanna think about to cosmologically raise something up to the view of the world. The UN selects one or two things per year, and this year is soils. And so, in soils as, I guess, I mean, think about that's like, this'll sound weird, but the bedrock of agriculture, right? It's like the thing that agriculture has to happen through. So, talking about what kinds of soils plants need, what kinds of compositions of soil around the world, should we use fertilizer, llama dung versus commercial fertilizer?

[00:41:57] Ryan Collins: Oh, fantastic. I'm gonna have to incorporate this into my NSF grants.

[00:42:00] Adam Gamwell: That's fair. Yeah, you know?

[00:42:01] Aneil Tripathy: Hey, you know what I think is fascinating, Adam, with this story of the explosive growth of quinoa and thinking about the changing of the production style, what country this is being produced on, the scale of it all, is this ultimate really impact the even the way that we consume quinoa. So, I was just looking at Andean Naturals and the big new product that they're trying to come up with is quinoa protein concentrate, right? And they described this as a 70% complete quinoa protein, which would be a great way to boost protein content in nutrition bars, shakes, and snacks, right? So, they're basically providing a base ingredient that other companies could come along and, you know, use this quinoa protein in our, you know, very expensive sometimes, you know, shake shacks where you have, you know, the superfruit smoothies and all these kinds of things with like energy bars. So, it's almost, you know, finding a way for quinoa to gain a cosmological place, right, in this very high-value food system.

[00:42:59] Adam Gamwell: Right. And I think what a lot of people may not know, which is, it's a good part to add to this story that we're constructing, is, you know, how quinoa came to be in the US 'cause I think that's a great — you're right 'cause we've said "superfood" like eight times and people are like, okay, I've heard of that. I've heard the word "superfood," right? Well, what is that? And what is a superfood versus a food food, you know? And even how this notion came about this, I mean, this is again from the 1970s and onward in that basically, you know, the food system was largely industrialized in the United States, you know, since the early 1900s when refrigeration was invented, when bottling was invented. I mean, canning had been around but like, you know, industrialized bottling. And so, so the industrialized food processes made the, you know, things possible. William Cronon writes about this, too, actually, and like and the use of railroad cars when they invented refrigerated railroad cards then that sort of obliterated time and space, he says. And that you could then move meat across the country when you otherwise couldn't used to not be able to do that. So, diets would be changing and people became distanced from their food. And so, it's a really kind of interesting thing. But then, so really up until the 1970s, this, I mean, of course, this was ushered in as like this new era of modernism that we can have foods from across the world, some really interesting ways of moving new products across the planet.

[00:44:09] Aneil Tripathy: And we'd have no famine anymore also.

[00:44:11] Adam Gamwell: And that's the idea, right? That we could easily transport wheat or meat or whatever, you know? And so, but the system became increasingly industrialized. I mean, you may have remembered with Upton Sinclair as The Jungle that came out, I think in the 1920s, right? That was one of the first vocal critiques of what happens in the meat industry and like, you know, those horrific stories of people losing fingers in the sausage machines and the, it just keeps going, you know? And so, these, you know, punctuated horrific moments like that. But they're really not until the 1960s and seventies when authors like Wendell Berry, who was a naturalist or Frances Moore Lappé started writing these really interesting critiques of industrialized agriculture by saying that there's actually not only four ways to eat food. But this also leads to a they didn't use these words but I'm saying these like the sort of the lazy uninformed citizenry in that actually this was fighting against democracy because people didn't know where their food came from. They didn't know about nutrient contents. They just wanted to have sort of the easiest, you know, the idea of like the Russell Stover lasagna put in your oven was seen as like the pinnacle. But now, suddenly, mom is now free talking about gender roles. The microwave, right? So, this whole movement was like really up until the seventies largely uncritiqued in a general scale. And so, there's a really famous book by Frances Moore Lappé called Diet or Small Diet for a Small Planet, talking about eating like — now, we can talk about the locavore movement and Freegansim and, you know, veganism, vegetarianism, all these different forms of political eating coming back to our original point that food is political. So, these like, so basically these critiques started building up and people suddenly became much more aware of like we have to talk about nutritional content, food, where it comes from. And this again, this isn't, this is not the invention of Fair Trade, but Fair Trade exists a little bit since the forties. But again, that you can see picking up with the idea, too, of like, oh, actually consumers can also affect the well-being of producers, right? This is a specific way of seeing the world, which we don't have to get too much into that right now. We can do an episode on neoliberalism or something to tie that in there. But like, the fact is that, you know, the part of this cosmology, if you will, is that consumers by either choices as we, this is what we grew up, we live with now in the United States for a lot of people that we can vote with our dollar, right? And so, notions like this that we as consumers have the power to then sort of affect the well-being of farmers, of people that produce food, and also to understand where our food comes from, you know, and how people are treated when they make it.

[00:46:24] Aneil Tripathy: And affect our own health.

[00:46:26] Adam Gamwell: Right.

[00:46:26] Aneil Tripathy: So much of this comes down to the individual and our idea of, you know, I need my iron content, my protein content.

[00:46:31] Adam Gamwell: Exactly.

[00:46:31] Aneil Tripathy: And everything from the foods.

[00:46:33] Adam Gamwell: Right. And that and then you add onto to that this notion that we, you know, if we're critiquing industrial food, though, that means we should have organic food. We should have food that is produced by hand. Slow Food movement that came out from Italy, you know? So, this whole, again, this US and European-based cosmology of food started coming out, critiquing industrialized agriculture, back to the land movements ideas that we can sort of have organic, traditionally produced food that should treat farmers well, etc. etc. And so, quinoa entered into that world from agricultural food scientists sort of making it a little more famous by saying it has an awesome protein content, it has a complete amino acid profile. It has, you know, high in magnesium, high in iron. It's got a high and a bunch of great, I mean, it's really a power-packed food. So, it fit the idea of this emerging notion of superfood because it was produced largely and still today largely is produced by hand, small-scale farms. They're getting bigger because the boom's getting bigger, which we can think about, but it fits this idea of like sort of traditional production, small scale farms, organic people living in harmony with the land. Again, this is a very specific cosmology, right? This is how people can live and it's the best way to live, right? So, quinoa like matched that bar for bar, you know? It was like healthy and also like tapped into like people living in peace with the earth and like whatever the mentality that basically western consumers and distributors and buyers were looking for. And so, I mean, quinoa came to the United States in the eighties. Actually, speaking of agricultural scientists, because some agricultural scientists from Colorado State University and Arizona State University were looking at basically like, one guy brought a the 50-pound sack back from Peru in the seventies and had his friends try it. They loved it and they said, this is great. We loved it. I think we could field test it to produce it here, you know? But how do we get it here? You can't. And so, then they began field testing the products and they invented the Quinoa Corporation, which is what, Ancient Harvest, that's their brand now, still around today again. And that came out in 1983. So, they've been around, you know, for 22 years now. And they're the original importer of quinoa to the United States. But again, it's to me, and also for my fieldwork and my project, again, food science is such an important part of this 'cause in the sixties, it turned around production from nearly nothing in the Andes to producing it as this like letting it be legible or seen claims made about it being a superfood as well as in the United States. It did the same thing. Food scientists brought it over by saying this actually is a healthy thing. And they're the ones that have been responsible for trying to grow it in Colorado and Washington state. And a little bit grows in Nevada. A little bit grows in Colorado. But I think it's White Mountain Farms, actually. You can buy their quinoa. It's in Colorado. But, I mean, it sells out instantly 'cause it's like comparatively, you know, 2% of the world's supply. 98% still comes from — or sorry, 92% still comes from Peru and Bolivia. 8% comes a little bit from the US, a little bit from parts of Europe and Ecuador. But so, it's really kind of cool. So, food scientists on both sides of the fence, if you, there's a imaginary fence, right, in the Andes and the US. Like both took this thing and like made it legible in two places. And that in interestingly, you know, speaking of agency, quinoa had the ability to adapt to both of these forms of information, right? This genetic code is can be mapped out. It's super diverse. It's robust and healthy in terms of protein content, nutritional content as well as it matches the nice idea that this is a slow food that's produced by hand by people in harmony. Really interesting. So, these cosmologies sort of crash together. And we see this interesting rise we're talking about, the International Year of Quinoa talks about both of these things. And when it's sort of trying to sell quinoa as this potential answer to global food insecurity because it, again, it's bioadaptable in that it can grow in many places. But, of course, it takes a lot of time to crossbreed it because, again, it really is adapted to these high altitudes. So, it can kind of grow in Colorado really high up. There's potential that it could grow in certain mountainous regions, depending on soil and light content. But then also, so the IYQ, the International Year of Quinoa, was telling this idea that could be a potential answer to food security but also that we need to celebrate the indigenous Andeans that have grown this for thousands of years. Kind of give them their due, you know? They've been sort of shat on for, you know, for 500 years since the food got, you know, shunned. And so, we need to give them their day in some ways, too, which is really kind of cool to celebrate, you know, traditional producers. But, again, this also began, this specific cosmology that's this sort of being sold and then we have this tension that, Neil, you've been bringing up a few times that this is also a marketable commodity, right? And this is, you know, kind of where I'm jumping in, too, is that how does this happen? Like where this mix between it being this global food savior as well as like this hot new commodity and can it be both?

[00:51:07] Aneil Tripathy: I see.

[00:51:07] Adam Gamwell: I mean it is, but that's one of the questions.

[00:51:08] Ryan Collins: Exactly.

[00:51:09] Aneil Tripathy: It's really a fascinating thing how — I mean, this whole story that you're describing almost shows the success of quinoa and it's elective affinity almost for these cosmologies coming together. And another thing that's I think really fascinating with what's been happening lately is — and in my mind, this almost might be one of the cosmological effects of the internet — is that you have these articles, right, like The Guardian coming out with things saying, can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? So, with this massive success and this, you know, almost sensationalization of the power of quinoa, we have this backlash, right, of people saying that this is creating a real raise in prices, which is then hurting these Bolivian farmers, improving farmers as the UN is trying to support them. And I know that you've had real experience going back and seeing the conditions, right, that might really go against what these articles are saying.

[00:52:05] Adam Gamwell: And that's, yeah, that's one of the most fascinating parts about this debate, right? Is that again, how does popular press come in? And then on top of that, like what are, and that's as you as that article points out, which is actually one of the most famous polemical fame, like popular press articles out, does point to this question of like, obviously it's the consumer that's doing this in some ways, right? Obviously, can the vegans stomach this unpalatable truth about quinoa, meaning that it's raising prices because it's a hot new commodity. But, of course, then it's making it too expensive for subsistence farmers who traditionally ate it. Again, saying the consumer is not is somewhat has can affect the producer, right? And, again, this is this neoliberal idea, right, that we can we have a direct connection with what we buy from.

[00:52:46] Ryan Collins: Exactly. I think at this point you've really set the stage for this project because you've brought us now to the present after this 7,000-year history of this crop, cash crop, for better or for worse. And so, now that you're about to engage in this field work experience, what are some of the things that you are looking forward to? Some of the things that you might even be not looking forward to as well?

[00:53:13] Adam Gamwell: That's a great question. So, one of the things that I'm most interested in with this project, and so, like thinking about the tension we just raised between being commodity versus this food security, there's actually a third angle that we should I should mention, too, and that there's this Peruvian gastronomy movement that's really kicked up since 2007 was when the official, the APEGA, which is the Peruvian Society for Gastronomy. And when they first began by a Peruvian chef, Gastón Acurio. And like and he, you know, he's like the Anthony Bourdain of Peru, you know? He's wildly famous. He's trained in Madrid. He's trained in Paris. Travels the world. He's got a string of restaurants, you know, high-end stuff. And so, what we're seeing is like on the other end of quinoa being this, you know, this peasant food, it's now part of this gastronomy boom that's like basically Anthony Bourdainization of Peru. Like this is like Lima as like the hot new spot for chefs, for restaurants. And so, quinoa has really in some ways — it's not responsible for the movement but like it's certainly ushered in by saying there's new global interest in what's going on with this, you know, how Peruvian cuisine can be this new thing that is that's linking the world together as, you know, both markets as food security as something sexy to hang out with. And like, so for when I'm heading to Peru here in March in 2015. And so, my stuff is looking at sort of this mix between how does quinoa emerge or how like how do qualifications — we'll talk about qualifications — like how is it qualified by different ways, by farmers themselves, by food scientists, and also by marketers? And so, I'm reading the gastronomy for the notion of marketers because it is that quinoa doesn't just exist as a thing, right? Obviously, there's this at minimum attention between food security — should farmers be able to eat it subsistently? Should it be for everybody? And commodity like this is fueling a new gastronomic cuisine boom that mixes people together or that it's a $6-9 bag at Whole Foods or $4 at Walmart, you know? And how do these three groups — 'causeit is looking at producers, how quinoa's produced now because obviously the gastronomy movement and Walmart, we're seeing the consumptions at, we're at the site, we see it come to the United States, right? It's packaged as either like this nice Peruvian cuisine or a nice little bag you can add to make some soup, you know, add to your soup. But how are producers living with this? This is kind of the question The Guardian raised like, you know, can farmers, you know, are farmers living better or worse? And the answer is they're living better and worse, you know? It's both. And that's kinda the anthropology thin,g too. And that's one of the things to look at is how they're dealing with this boom. Like what does the boom mean to them? But also, again, as I said that to me and the history I've been researching is that food science is so important to this story, not just because these, you know, different scientists sort of changed the course of how we think about quinoa. That does matter in an immense part. But like production now is this mixed process between genetic seed banks, between, you know, farmers planting different seeds and talking with scientists about, you know, should we put irrigation technology in? I guess I should say, when I say food scientist, I mean a mix of people like agronomists, which work like with irrigation technology or how to till the soil, like using a tractor if you can fit one or, you know, hand tillers; geneticists that document the seeds; nutritionist that say what kinds of protein content are in these plants.

[00:56:27] Aneil Tripathy: Kind of a number of scientific specialists.

[00:56:29] Adam Gamwell: Right. Yeah. So, I'm kind of lumping them as food scientists, you know, and how these different groups work with farmers. And that's, you know, what I found when I was in Peru doing a little preliminary field work in 2013. That was really, that was the way that I even accessed farmers was through these sort of intermediary market scientists that are this incredible mix o, that's like quinoa produced now at this intersection. That's sort of what sort of inspired my project is that — so, when I go down to Peru here in March, I'm gonna begin actually in Lima, in the city, by looking at the gastronomy movement and see what's sort of what's kicking up, you know? What's hot this year in terms of Peruvian gastronomy and how that's sold and how quinoa is a part of that or not because quinoa is sort of one of the base things that helps kick this thing off, you know? So, what's, you know, what's grandparent quinoa doing with the new the hot new baby commodities, you know? As well as work with agronomists and food scientists at universities to see partially how they teach about agricultural science because it's gonna tell me something about how they're gonna interact with farmers when they're actually with farmers, right? And then the idea is to work with farmers also, particularly ones that work with scientists to see how they interact and what kinds of knowledge is knowledge systems or if when I say cosmologies, they may bring together, you know? Are we talking about the notion of Pachamama, the earth as a living being? And do both scientists and farmers use this kind of language in that we need to respect Pachamama? In my hypothesis, not a hypothesis, but I mean, I expect that yes, that's gonna come up actually in both contexts and just see how different sort of ways that people talk about the earth, about food production, what practices they do that come out together. Because the idea, even as you said like that, you know, quinoa sort of captured the idea of being this organically produced small scale farm, you know? That's the idea it became famous on in the United States. But today, what we see is that the production is actually really, again, quite mixed between agronomists by pesticide salesmans, by certain kinds of farmers, by people that move from cities back to farms because there's enough money to make in quinoa production. There's a lot of shifts happening in terms of how agriculture takes place. And on top of that, this notion of these market brokers that bring these guys together, that bring the farmers, bring the food scientists together, that brand or sell quinoa in certain ways. Ancient Harvest as an, you know, or the Quinoa Corporation as an importer or Andean Naturals is also an importer. But, again, how these groups sell quinoa. I mean, quinoa didn't wasn't produced for export until 1983 by ANAPQUI, which is the National Quinoa Producers Association in Bolivia. I'm getting a little fact-heavy here, but like think about that point, though, is that like it wasn't made by export because of marketers in the US but actually, a producers association was formed by Bolivians in Bolivia —

[00:58:58] Aneil Tripathy: As the first impetus.

[00:58:59] Adam Gamwell: Yeah.

[00:58:59] Aneil Tripathy: I mean, this I think it'll just be such a fascinating project, right, 'cause you're looking at all these multiple intercultural connections, which I think anthropology as a discipline really evolved to study, right? It evolved to study what happens in these cross-cultural encounters when people from such different backgrounds come into contact and deal with one another and influence each other's knowledge systems and ways of looking at the world.

[00:59:24] Ryan Collins: Exactly. It's really world systems and it's truly fascinating.

[00:59:28] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. And not in the — sense, but yes it is. It's a system of the world exactly, right? Yeah, it's like how these things worked together and came together. And I think part of it, too, that I'm excited about is, as you're both saying, is that like this isn't, you know, US science coming down saying this is how you should document these plants, but this is how Andean science happens by Peruvians, by Bolivians. That's kind of a way to think about this is like that how these things happen is like both a mix and also locally happening in Peru and Bolivia, right? You know, 'cause one of the ideas is like, oh, the, you know, science, you know, began elsewhere, you know, like the enlightenment in Europe and that's where the scientific method of empiricism came from. We treat those as these neutral entities, right? But truly, I mean, these things happen as we make them, right? How the empirical, I mean, obviously, like observing something is one thing but then like how science takes place. Like we can't just talk about it as if scientists came and discovered something, the nutritional continent of quinoa and then sold it to the United States, right? But, again, as we've been saying, there's a really complex and mixed history how farmers even choose to use their kinds of knowledge and how that affects what science happens. But just to give a quick example that — anthropologist Gabriela Soto Laveaga has a really great book called Jungle Laboratories. And she looks at the development of the pill, which is, you know, the birth control pill that came out in the 1950s in the United States. And that's the point. It sounds like, oh, this is invented in the United States but the pill actually comes from the barbasco root, which is from the Tabasco region in Mexico. And it was only discovered because certain pharmaceutical companies, like they didn't even show up to look at this thing until rumors of how indigenous people worked with this kind of root, which they actually used to kill fish, oddly enough. And it was a good shampoo also, too. Like how knowledge of that sort of spread through these like weird interstitial networks until finally, you know, some scientists caught wind and both Mexican scientists and US scientists and pharmaceutical companies. And I mean, really the short thing is that like, you know, the US sort of won out in terms of telling the story but what she goes back and tells is this really great history of like how science really sort of meandered its way and only because of indigenous knowledge in the first place could this even sort of be, quote, discovered, right? Not necessarily doing the same thing with quinoa, but it's the idea that like that how these networks as we're saying happen, like it's not a straightforward path, you know? In hindsight, it looks like it is. But I think there's a really great story to tell here, you know? This totally complex web of, you know, as a world system or as world systems happening, right, of how things interconnect. A whirlpool in some ways, you know?

[01:01:57] Aneil Tripathy: And that's such a powerful mission as well, right, to break down the essentialization that happens in so many of these stories based on systems of power, right? And the people who usually end up with the power at the end of the day try to make the story as clear-cut as possible. But then as anthropologists, right, we really hope to go in and break up these things and really see what's happening, right, kind of the real essence of this.

[01:02:20] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. And I think that's the power I think what all three of us are doing with different parts of our work is because we're we want to take apart these entities that seem inevitable. And that's the thing with capitalism, with power structures, with the collapse of the Maya Empire, it's like we can just say, or even the formation, right? We, these things that we take — or what is it? These truths we hold to be self-evident, right? We anthropologists come and say, actually, let's look at what these truths are, who's espousing them and why? Who's winning by doing that? Who's losing by having these truths espoused?

[01:02:46] Ryan Collins: Exactly. It's all processed attempt to view facts, truths as if they're monolithic entities that can't be understood as anything that was ever nonexistent or anything that could ever be torn down. But it's our job to show that these processes change and the political, social, cultural —

[01:03:09] Adam Gamwell: Economic, all of it, yeah.

[01:03:10] Ryan Collins: The implications of it all center down and change the way in which we all interact with each other.

[01:03:15] Adam Gamwell: And that's and I think kind of a fun way to say this is how what we look at is how the universal comes to take place in particular instances and this only happens because it happens particularly and then also these particular things can then come and seem to be universal, right? And we kind of move back and forth between these, right, these scales of like how do individual people, how are small groupings, how are groups in this village or this town or this production site or whatever, working specifically day-to-day, how do they set their lives up? And then how does that then get filtered into what we may think of as this sort of universal Maya Empire, right? Or the quinoa complex or financialization of markets, right? These things happen in day-to-day activities, right? And then we sort of collapse those to tell history and say this is the big story, but really, yeah. We're trying to put these we're trying to sort of dig into how do these pieces happen in day-to-day lives? How did the universal come out of the particular?

[01:04:08] Aneil Tripathy: Put the whole puzzle together. Well, thank you so much, Adam. It's been wonderful diving into the world of quinoa with you and we'll be very excited to hear what comes from all your work in the fall in the months to come.

[01:04:20] Adam Gamwell: Yeah. I wanna thank you guys very much. This is a lot of fun, I mean.

[01:04:23] Ryan Collins: Exactly. There's still a little bit of time before you take off, so we hope that you'll be able to join us for a few more episodes before then.

[01:04:30] Adam Gamwell: Oh, yeah. I'll be glad to be on board.

[01:04:32] Ryan Collins: But we should say it now since it's a topic. But, you know, good luck with this endeavor. This is going to be a really amazing project and we're proud to have you here.

[01:04:40] Adam Gamwell: Hey, thanks man. Yeah, thank you guys both. Yeah.

[01:04:42] Aneil Tripathy: Well, thank you, Adam. And now, so on This Anthropological Life in the next couple episodes, we'll really be diving into all of our different research topics as we have with Adam today. Next week, we'll have Amy Hanes' research coming up. And then after that, I think Ryan will be up at the bat with his work in archeology. And then, I'll come in with climate finance and lots of fun stuff to come. And stay tuned, guys.

[01:05:08] Ryan Collins: Caring about chimpanzees. Wondering if a Maya Empire ever existed and save finances. We've got a lot of good topics on board, so tune in and we'll be here to present on it.

[01:05:21] Aneil Tripathy: Yeah. We'll see you guys soon. Have a good one.