IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v29y2012i4p441-454.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The construction of an alternative quinoa economy: balancing solidarity, household needs, and profit in San Agustín, Bolivia

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew Ofstehage

Abstract

Quinoa farmers in San Agustín, Bolivia face the dilemma of producing for a growing international market while defending their community interests and resources, meeting their basic household needs, and making a profit. Farmers responded to a changing market in the 1970s by creating committees in defense of quinoa and farmer cooperatives to represent their interests and maximize economic returns. Today farmer cooperatives offer high, stable prices, politically represent farmers, and are major quinoa exporters, but intermediaries continue to play an important role in the local economy. Meanwhile, some farmers rebuff the national cooperatives and intermediaries in favor of a denomination of origin and closer association with local cooperatives. This article, based on 4 months of ethnographic research, explores the reasons for the continued presence of intermediaries on the market landscape and how farmers have worked to create a quinoa economy embedded with fair trade values. Farmers demand stable prices, flexible standards, provision of services, and promises of maintaining the distinctive qualities of San Agustín quinoa. They frame their trades in economic, utility, and solidarity terms to reflect their livelihood strategies, farming capabilities, and personal concepts of fair trade. Meanwhile cooperatives, development initiatives, and intermediaries each argue that their particular buying practices allow farmers to attain household goods, credit, and cash for food and economic security. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew Ofstehage, 2012. "The construction of an alternative quinoa economy: balancing solidarity, household needs, and profit in San Agustín, Bolivia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 29(4), pages 441-454, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:29:y:2012:i:4:p:441-454
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-012-9371-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10460-012-9371-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-012-9371-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alberto Arce, 2009. "Living in times of solidarity: Fair trade and the fractured life worlds of Guatemalan coffee farmers," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 1031-1041.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pedersen, Søren Marcus & Lind, Kim Martin & Xhoxhi, Orjon & Yazar, Attila & Jacobsen, Sven-Erik & Ørum, Jens Erik, 2020. "Introducing quinoa in Turkey – farmers perception in the region of Adana," Economia agro-alimentare / Food Economy, Italian Society of Agri-food Economics/Società Italiana di Economia Agro-Alimentare (SIEA), vol. 22(1), February.
    2. Winkel, Thierry & Núñez-Carrasco, Lizbeth & Cruz, Pablo José & Egan, Nancy & Sáez-Tonacca, Luís & Cubillos-Celis, Priscilla & Poblete-Olivera, Camila & Zavalla-Nanco, Natalia & Miño-Baes, Bárbara & Vi, 2019. "Mobilizing common biocultural heritage for the socioeconomic inclusion of small farmers: panarchy of two case studies on quinoa in Chile and Bolivia," SocArXiv qwtu5, Center for Open Science.
    3. Kristie O’Neill, 2018. "Traditional beneficiaries: trade bans, exemptions, and morality embodied in diets," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 35(2), pages 515-527, June.
    4. Thierry Winkel & Lizbeth Núñez-Carrasco & Pablo José Cruz & Nancy Egan & Luís Sáez-Tonacca & Priscilla Cubillos-Celis & Camila Poblete-Olivera & Natalia Zavalla-Nanco & Bárbara Miño-Baes & Maria-Paz V, 2020. "Mobilising common biocultural heritage for the socioeconomic inclusion of small farmers: panarchy of two case studies on quinoa in Chile and Bolivia," Post-Print ird-02381132, HAL.
    5. Cindybell Gamboa & Goedele Van den Broeck & Miet Maertens, 2018. "Smallholders’ Preferences for Improved Quinoa Varieties in the Peruvian Andes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-22, October.
    6. Dev Narayan Sarkar & Kaushik Kundu, 2018. "The overlap spaces of alternative economy and subaltern businesses: a study of emigrant peddlers," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 7(1), pages 1-24, December.
    7. Thierry Winkel & Lizbeth Núñez-Carrasco & Pablo José Cruz & Nancy Egan & Luís Sáez-Tonacca & Priscilla Cubillos-Celis & Camila Poblete-Olivera & Natalia Zavalla-Nanco & Bárbara Miño-Baes & Maria-Paz V, 2020. "Mobilising common biocultural heritage for the socioeconomic inclusion of small farmers: panarchy of two case studies on quinoa in Chile and Bolivia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(2), pages 433-447, June.
    8. Gamboa, Cindybell & Van Den Broeck, Goedele & Maertens, Miet, 2018. "Adoption of improved quinoa varieties among smallholder farmers in the Peruvian Andes," Working Papers 277984, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Centre for Agricultural and Food Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shannon Sutton, 2012. "Add Producers and Stir? (Re) politicizing Fairtrade participation," Working Papers 38, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    2. Albert Folch & Jordi Planas, 2019. "Cooperation, Fair Trade, and the Development of Organic Coffee Growing in Chiapas (1980–2015)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-22, January.
    3. Jess Bonnan-White & Andrea Hightower & Ameena Issa, 2013. "Of couscous and occupation: a case study of women’s motivations to join and participate in Palestinian fair trade cooperatives," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(3), pages 337-350, September.
    4. Oya, Carlos & Schaefer, Florian & Skalidou, Dafni, 2018. "The effectiveness of agricultural certification in developing countries: A systematic review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 282-312.
    5. Eleanor Fisher, 2009. "Introduction: The policy trajectory of fair trade," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(7), pages 985-1003.
    6. Aashish Argade & Sukhpal Singh, 2016. "Seeking Markets in Production Fields: An Assessment of the Potential for Fair Trade in India," Millennial Asia, , vol. 7(2), pages 131-152, October.
    7. Vincent Terstappen & Lori Hanson & Darrell McLaughlin, 2013. "Gender, health, labor, and inequities: a review of the fair and alternative trade literature," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(1), pages 21-39, March.
    8. Joni Valkila, 2014. "Do Fair Trade Pricing Policies Reduce Inequalities in Coffee Production and Trade?," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 32(4), pages 475-493, July.
    9. Vermeulen, W.J.V. & Kok, M.T.J., 2012. "Government interventions in sustainable supply chain governance: Experience in Dutch front-running cases," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 183-196.
    10. David Phillips, 2014. "Uneven and unequal people-centered development: the case of Fair Trade and Malawi sugar producers," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(4), pages 563-576, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:29:y:2012:i:4:p:441-454. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.