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I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Part 5. Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Part 3 here. Part 4 here.
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We are all in this together – by all sharing information, educating others and having honest, open dialogues, we can collectively work to make our world a safer, just and happy place in which everyone can live.
You have been interviewed as well. People can listen to this in a podcast. You have written for Trusted Clothes, too. Let’s plumb more depths in academic work, especially the impressive Fulbright work. Your research on gender and sustainable development for the Fulbright Scholarly Exchange. It has been that since March 2015. What is this comparative study on the impact of fair trade?
Basically, it is looking at the impact of quinoa – farming and growing quinoa – on the rural people that live in the quinoa region.
What are the findings so far?
It is a 3-year study. Fulbright likes to pay you to do something that you know anything about. I went last year never having worked in quinoa. I was familiar with it. My mother grows quinoa. I know what it looks like.
We eat it here. I am near the region where it is grown, but I never specifically worked there. It was great. I got to know the people. Basically, there were a lot of different things going on. There was an educational revolution going on.
So, all of the people on the countryside became literate. That impacted their ability to negotiate contracts. Quinoa used to be a disadvantaged food. It was shunned. When the Spanish came and colonized Bolivia, they made quinoa growing illegal because they wanted to have their own crops grown – wheat.
They banished quinoa, but it still continued to exist. It was considered sacred crop was given to the Andean people by the gods. It grows in remote areas. It is a national grain. People eat it almost every single day.
It was usually marginalized as ‘peasant folk’ food. With the push towards quinoa and the great discovery of ancient grains, quinoa became trendy and very popular. The Bolivians are pretty smart.
They realized that there was demand for the product. They valued it. They set their own prices. They are used to working collectively. They have these strong cooperatives. They did this all on their own. The government didn’t get involved.
Because they are literate, they can negotiate contracts. They created a rural area called Challapata. It became the quinoa Wall St., where they did all the pricing for world markets. They were developed there because Bolivia had the quinoa market.
They were the largest producer in the world and kind of the only producer. For years, they were really able to take advantage of this competitive advantage that they had. They’d raise their prices 20% every year because they could.
What happened was reverse migration because these were the poorest areas of Bolivia, people started coming back who had migrated to Argentina, to Buenos Aires, to Santiago, to Madrid in search of other work.
They are coming back now, farming land that was left fallow, and building parts of the village that are falling apart. They ended up earning more than the middle class in Bolivia. All of the money made was reinvested into real estate or vehicles. They didn’t go into debt.
After 3 or 4 years, the rest of the world caught up with them and started to look at ways for them to join the quinoa market because it was lucrative. Peru had a chemical program. An industrialized program supported by the government and working with USAID to do a non-traditional chemical quinoa production in their lands. Their desert.
Because it grows in desert environments. That was successful enough that I knocked out the market for the Bolivian quinoa. The prices completely crashed. So, I was there during the price crash. Now, the market has stabilized.
The Bolivians refuse to sell their quinoa at low prices. That drove the prices up again. Now, there’s been a differentiation, where organic and fair trade is important. You can get a higher price for it.
Bolivia – because of the constitution, people grow it anyway because that’s, in a way, the law. They have a competitive advantage with that because the Peruvian quinoa is not organic or fair trade. There’s consumer education, too. Consumers don’t know the difference between the different quinoas.
You noted the gods. According to the traditions and mythologies, what gods?
There’s a story about some women that came down, kidnapped some boys to this paradise. They got homesick and wanted to go home. They sent them with a sack full of seeds. That was the quinoa. They have multiple gods and god-like people.
I’ve seen some psychological studies, where in the development of children the animistic and spiritualist beliefs seem innate. Children are hardwired to see spirits in the world. They are innate animists in a way. The argument that has been by some is that if you leave children alone. They will invent some polytheist pantheon. It’s some evolved framework for conceiving of the world. Anywho, Bolivia provides 45% of the world’s quinoa.
They are producing more quinoa than ever. A lot of it is traded in the common market for everyone’s use. Their export prices are much different than the in-country prices.
They produce tens of thousands of tons, according to the FAO.
They do. All by hand. (Laughs) They are really hardworking people.
When I think about the first year-and-a-half of your study for the Fulbright Exchange, with the 3 years in total, what are the specifics predicted for the last year-and-a-half?
I have no idea. That’s the nice thing about it. It evolves. I chose a model called Circles of Sustainability that was created by the United Nations as a starting point. I’ve been a fellow on that project.
I’m having help guide me. It is a survey-based, participatory model. One of the nice things is I have all the cell phone numbers of all of the people that participated. I can go back and contact the people that took part in the study.
I am going to have them and redo the study. I am going to do it two ways. I am going to have them think about how it was back then a year-and-a-half ago. I will compare to how they think about the past and the way they reported it when it was happening.
So, that’s something that one of my cohort’s ideas. I am going to work with current groups of people to see the baseline of things now. I do ethnographic research. Some of it is participatory appraisals. It is being there, observation. It is seeing what comes up. I have the survey too.
Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?
I want to thank people for joining in with KUSIKUY and helping to spread the word, every re-tweet, share, link, like $ donated… helps with educating people about the alternatives to the clothing industry, supporting the knitters, and growing the KUSIKUY message/example. There are good, ethical, safe, clothing options in the world.
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Original publication on www.trustedclothes.com.
All images courtesy of www.trustedclothes.com.