From Wikipedia
JUNÍN, Peru — Thieves recently broke into a storehouse in this farming town high in the Andes, knocked the manager over the head and made off with 2,600 pounds of contraband. Trucks have been surreptitiously crossing the border, laden with an illicit substance bound forChina. And with the price of their signature crop soaring, once-poor farmers bounce along the unpaved roads in shiny new vehicles.
The precious stuff that has provoked sudden larceny and luxury here is not drugs, gems or precious metals. It is a pungent, turnip-like vegetable called maca, heralded as a cancer-fighting superfood and sold on the shelves of supermarkets like Whole Foods.
It is so popular in China for its perceived aphrodisiac effects that this year Chinese buyers showed up here with suitcases full of cash to buy up the harvest, inciting a gold rush and setting off alarms from Lima to Los Angeles and beyond.
As maca booms, some Peruvians fear that they are losing control of a valuable crop with a history that goes back long before the time of the Inca empire.
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