Chapter 6: Quechua/Aymara Perspective of Social, Economic, and Environmental Sustainability in the Bolivian Andes: Sustainability and Contradictions in Bolivia's Royal Quinoa Heartland

Bolivia's original Aymara and Quechua quinoa producers¹ exported 32,000 tons of hand-grown Royal Quinoa valued at $74 million in 2018. Nevertheless, they continued to fall deeper into poverty as low market prices did not cover the cost of their carefully planted, culturally driven production (IBCE, 2018, INIAF, 2018). Quinoa, now a global commodity, had seen increased competition from newly emerging quinoa growing countries with ample financial investment, improved production, and greater supply driving prices down. The more expensive, slow farming methods used by the Bolivian producers who followed traditional social, economic, and environmental sustainability practices were not valued in world markets. In Bolivia, the original quinoa homeland, once booming quinoa towns lay empty. Eighty-percent of inhabitants had moved to cities, leaving behind their native languages, traditions, and indigenous ways. Yet the culture and belief system lived on. This chapter examines Suma Qamana and how the Andean perspectives on social, economic, and environmental sustainability manifested themselves in the Bolivian experience of Aymara and Quechua quinoa producers. What follows is a story of Andean resilience in the face of globalization, and development gone awry.