corvusvulpes:

clatterbane:

screambirdscreaming:

So I just learned something that pisses me off.
Y’know quinoa? The ~magical~ health food that has become so popular in the US that a centuries-long tradition of local, sustainable, multi-crop farming is being uprooted to mass-produce it for the global market? Potentially affecting food stability and definitely effecting environmental stability across the region?

Ok, cool.

Y’know Lamb’s Quarter? A common weed throughout the continental US, tolerant of a wide variety of soil conditions including the nutrient-poor and compacted soils common in cities, to the point where it thrives in empty lots?

These plants are close relatives, and produce extremely similar seeds. Lamb’s quarter could easily be grown across the US, in people’s backyard and community gardens, as a low-cost and local alternative to quinoa with no sketchy geopolitical impacts. You literally don’t have to nurture it at all, it’s a goddamn weed, it’ll be fine. Put it where your lawn was, it’ll probably grow better than the grass did. AND you can eat the leaves – they taste almost exactly like spinach. 

This just… drives home, again, that a huge part of the appeal of “superfoods” is the sense of the exotic. For whatever nutritional benefits quinoa does have, the marketing strategy is still driven by an undercurrent of orientalism. You too could eat this food, grown laboriously by farmers in the remote Andes mountains! You too could grow strong on the staple crop that has sustained them for centuries! And, y’know, destroy that stable food system in the process. Or you could eat this near-identical plant you found in your backyard. 

What makes this even weirder and more frustrating, to quote my commentary on an older post about growing your own quinoa and amaranth? Growing native North American species instead is really not a new idea. Native people have already domesticated and grown these crops extensively, for thousands of years.

Another good option there, if you’re in North America: a native species very similar to quinoa, which will grow well in a much wider variety of climates, from Mexico to Northern Canada. People still grow it in Mexico, and it has been cultivated from the Eastern Agricultural Complex to the Rockies, and beyond. You grow it like the closely related quinoa, but it will literally grow like a weed in such a wide variety of climates. And doesn’t have the potential to turn into an invasive weed like quinoa could. Because it’s probably already growing in the vicinity. In fact, if you are living in an area where it used to be grown extensively, most of the wild plants of it now are probably actually an old larger-seeded domesticated variety. It was that common a crop in many places.

You can easily do a search for seed sources. There are also a number of native North American amaranth species which have a long history of cultivation and domestication in a lot of regions, so you might also want to check those out instead for similar reasons. There is likely at least one native species that will grow better in your area, without the risk of becoming invasive. While being every bit as good to eat as the types imported from South America.

The low value placed on and resulting poor common knowledge about many, many indigenous North American crops has helped drive the destructive demand for nearly identical “exotic” foods from South America. We don’t have to continue these patterns.

Although lamb’s quarter leaves should be cooked or eaten sparingly raw  because they are toxic if consumed in large quantities raw. 

Good addition, thanks. A little more info. The concern there is oxalic acid, like with spinach and a number of other greens. Cooking will break it down.

(That link is specifically referring to Chenopodium album and not C. berlandieri, but other species are similar. Including quinoa.)