Rural societies in developing countries are not passive in the face of agricultural globalization.
Hindsight and interdisciplinarity enlighten the bases of their proactivity and sustainability.
We reconstructed the socioecological panarchy of Bolivian quinoa growers since 1970s.
Commons governance and off-farm pluriactivity are critical to control latent unsustainability.
Particular panarchy configurations give early-warning indicators for critical regime shifts.