Altiplano Quinoa Heartland

Quinoa was domesticated around Lake Titicaca some five thousand years ago, and the Puno altiplano remains the centre of Peruvian production - a plateau at nearly four thousand metres with frost, drought and thin soils, where quinoa's tolerance of all three is why it was bred. It is not a grain but a chenopod, related to spinach and beet, and it carries a bitter saponin coating that has to be washed or scoured off before eating. Dozens of landraces are grown, in colours from cream through red to black, and the fields turn deep red and gold before harvest around April and May. The international boom in quinoa demand from around 2008 raised prices sharply and changed the economics; the widely repeated claim that this priced Andean families out of their own staple has been examined by researchers and is substantially overstated, though the boom did drive intensification and land-use change.

What you actually see

• The fields - altiplano plots turning red and gold before the April harvest.
• The landraces - dozens of varieties in cream, red and black.
• The processing - washing and scouring to remove the bitter saponin coating.
• The boom - the price surge from about 2008 and what it did to the region.

When to go

April to November for travel; harvest around April and May is when the fields and the threshing are visible. Cooperative visits need arranging.

Honest expectations

At nearly 4,000 metres, cold and hard on the unacclimatised. Farms are working operations, not visitor attractions - visits must be arranged through cooperatives. The claim that the export boom starved local families is a simplification often repeated as fact.

Nearby

Puno, Juliaca and the Titicaca shore towns are all in the growing region.