Why Andean Farmers Turn to Maca in Peru's Dry Season

July 16, 2026

Right now, while most of the U.S. is sweating through July, the high Andes are having a very different kind of month. Peru's dry season runs roughly from May through September in the sierra, and above 4,000 meters that means frost most mornings, thin dry air, and brutal swings between blazing midday sun and nights that drop well below freezing. It's not the tropical Peru people picture from postcards. It's closer to high desert.

This is exactly the season, and exactly the altitude, where maca grows. Lepidium meyenii is one of the only food crops that tolerates that mix of cold, wind, and thin soil on the Bombón Plateau in Junín, the region that still produces most of the world's maca supply. Farmers plant it during the rainy months and pull it from the ground once the dry season sets in, right when fieldwork gets hardest and the days get coldest.

A root built for hard months

Maca has been part of that seasonal rhythm for centuries. Families in the highlands have traditionally roasted the root over coals, boiled it into a thick, sweet porridge called mazamorra, or simmered it into a hot drink to get through long days of herding and harvesting at altitude. It's a starchy root, not a stimulant, so the "energy" people describe isn't a caffeine-style jolt. It's closer to steady fuel, the kind you want if you're walking uneven ground at 4,000 meters carrying tools before sunrise.

A single serving of gelatinized maca powder runs about 20 calories with roughly 3 grams of carbohydrate, plus small amounts of iron, potassium, and calcium. Nothing exotic on paper. What makes maca different from, say, a potato is a set of compounds unique to the plant called macamides and macaenes, along with glucosinolates that give it a faintly mustardy, peppery smell when it's fresh. Researchers think those compounds are behind whatever effects maca has beyond basic nutrition, but "think" is doing real work in that sentence.

What the research actually says

Here's the honest version. A 2016 systematic review looking at maca and sports performance found a handful of small trials, including one with competitive cyclists, showing modest improvements in time-to-exhaustion. A separate review of maca and mood in postmenopausal women reported some reduction in anxiety and depressive symptoms compared to placebo. Fertility research is mixed and mostly limited to small studies in men with borderline sperm counts, not a broad population.

None of this rises to the level of a settled clinical finding. Sample sizes are small, most trials run a few weeks to a few months, and maca researchers themselves tend to call for larger, longer studies before drawing firm conclusions. We're not going to oversell it here. What we can say is that a food crop with a multi-century track record of being eaten specifically for stamina during the hardest physical months of the year is at least worth paying attention to, even if the modern research is still catching up to the tradition.

Why the timing matters

There's a reason this isn't framed as a summer heat piece. Peru's coast, where Lima sits, actually gets cool and gray this time of year, a season locals call the garúa. It's the highlands, hundreds of miles inland and thousands of meters up, that are living through the dry season crunch right now. If you've ever wondered why maca shows up so often in energy and stamina conversations rather than, say, cooling or hydration ones, this seasonal backstory is a big part of the answer. It was never a summer crop. It was a survival crop for the cold months.

Our Maca Root capsules use gelatinized maca, which is processed to make the starchy root easier to digest than raw powder, at 1,500 mg per serving. It's the same idea behind that traditional roasted or boiled root, just in a form that doesn't require a fire pit or three hours of simmering.

A few cautions worth knowing

Maca is a cruciferous plant, in the same family as broccoli and mustard greens, and cruciferous vegetables contain goitrogenic compounds that can interfere with thyroid function in people who already have thyroid issues. If you have a thyroid condition, talk to your doctor before adding maca to your routine. It's also not something we'd recommend during pregnancy or while nursing without medical guidance, and anyone with a hormone-sensitive condition should check in with a doctor first, since maca has been studied for hormonal effects even though results are inconsistent.

If you're looking for other traditional energy support from the same part of the world, our Camu Camu capsules lean more toward antioxidant and immune support than stamina, and both sit in our Energy & Vitality collection alongside a handful of other Andean and Amazonian staples.

We're not doctors, and this isn't medical advice. Maca has a long history of traditional use in the Andes, and some early research is interesting, but it's not a cure for anything and it won't replace sleep, food, or a real winter coat if you happen to be working a field at 4,000 meters this month.