Although potato is Peru's most important food crop and has been essential to the diet of Peruvians for many centuries, production over the past several decades has been greatly affected by forces external to the communities where potatoes are grown. Production and consumption fell sharply from the 1970s through the 1980s, due largely to economic policies which made potatoes more expensive than imported and locally produced cereals. The Sendero Luminoso insurgency, beginning in 1980, caused tremendous disruption throughout Peru, especially in the Andean regions where most potato production occurs. With a more market-liberal economic policy and the termination of the insurgency in the early 1990s, potato production has rebounded, based primarily on higher average yields. As can be seen in the graph below, per capita production in 2007 was approximately 121 kilograms, the same as 1961. However, as the prices of other staple foods such as rice and wheat are rising sharply and the price of potato remains relatively stable, production and consumption of potato could well continue to increase over the coming years.