This series highights 6 agricultural crops found in SK. These Legacy Caches are placed for SCAR 2018. To keep your smiley from being harvested, please do not find or log before 5:30 Friday May 25th.
Quinoa; Quinoa was first domesticated by Andean peoples around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. It has been an important staple in the Andean cultures where the plant is indigenous but relatively obscure to the rest of the world. The Incas, who held the crop to be sacred, referred to it as chisoya mama or "mother of all grains", and it was the Inca emperor who would traditionally sow the first seeds of the season using "golden implements
Since the grain has become increasingly popular in countries where it is not typically grown, the crop value has increased significantly. The resulting 'quinoa boom' has had a pronounced effect on traditional production regions, while also leading to new commercial quinoa production elsewhere in the world. This has led to a debate about whether the global rise in quinoa consumption has had ethically positive outcomes for traditional regions.
While there may be no mountains in Saskatchewan; agriculture is a very important and prosperous industry in the Canadian province. The cool and dry climate of Northern Saskatchewan in particular, has a lot of similarities to the regions of South America where quinoa has traditionally grown. In 1992, Joe Dutcheshen, a pharmacist/farmer from Kamsack, Saskatchewan began testing different varieties of quinoa on his family farm. Dutcheshen, a third generation farmer from the East Central part of the province, wanted to diversify his farm to include non-traditional crops, and soon developed an interest in quinoa for its nutritional and frost tolerant nature.
There are many derivatives of quinoa including flour, pastas, puffed (similair to puffed wheat) and flakes.