Consumption
Potato consumption in the 1960s stood at approximately 100 kg per capita, but had fallen to approximately 45 kg per capita by the mid-1980s. Potatoes had become expensive relative to cereals due to several policy factors, including an overvalued exchange rate, subsidies of domestic cereal crops, price controls, and other market restrictions (Scott et. al. 2000, p. 12). The Sendero Luminoso insurgency, lasting from 1980 until the early 1990s, caused serious disruption throughout much of Peru, and drove thousands of rural Peruvians as refugees into urban enclaves. By the late 1980s, the price of potatoes relative to rice had reached an historic high in Lima, by then accounting for roughly half of the nation's demand for purchased food. With the end of the insurgency and more market-liberalizing policies in the 1990s, the relative price of potato had declined with increasing production. By 1995, consumption had rebounded to 65 kg per capita (ibid.).