Political ecology | Student essays | No. 2 - Urban foraging
Moderator’s Note: As has become customary, I am posting a selection of student research notes and essays prepared for a political ecology seminar I teach during fall quarter at the University of Washington. Taught as an advanced reading and discussion seminar, the course involves heavy reading loads and weekly writing aimed at development of analytical and critical skills. All of the students prepared a total of eight (8) critical reading summaries. They also produced the essays presented here which are synthesized from quarter-long topical research projects and presented in the form of a series of 2000-word posts.
Some of these posts are autobiographical in nature and draw from personal life histories and experiences – but they are not self-indulgent empty exercises in navel gazing. The students of the so-called Millennial Generation are critical realists not because it might be an intellectual fad but as a matter of historical and structural circumstances. This is a group of serious-minded concerned young people who insist that they are going to be more than the embodiment of an increasingly generalized state of precariousness. They refuse to be mere dupes in a tragedy involving the most extreme social inequality and concentrated corporate abuse of wealth and power that we have seen since the Gilded Age.
The second post in the Autumn 2013 series is a report prepared by Alex Potter, who is a Drama major. Alex focuses on the political ecology of food self-sufficiency in urban context. In this report, he is concerned with the growing practice of foraging in the city for medicinal, ceremonial, and edible wild plants. Beyond connections to urban ecology and food self-sufficiency, Potter explains how: “The most worrisome thing about urban foraging…is that it has seemingly been co-opted by elites exoticizing dandelions and garden snails as part if a local gourmet cuisine.” He is also concerned that many plants eaten by foragers are rendered toxic by urban pollutants. He examines various possibilities for organizing urban foraging as an equitable aspect of a more sustainable urban food system.
Urban foraging – cultivating connections to the land in a concrete jungle
Alex Potter | Seattle, WA | December 21, 2013
Chances are you do not “live off the land”. You live in a city; work sitting down; and only have a general idea of where your food comes from. That certainly describes me. I am a child of the city. I have never lived outside a large city and probably never will. I have no direct ancestral roots or indigenous knowledge of survival in the Pacific Northwest, but I might respectfully benefit from the knowledge of others. As I walked to school and work every day I saw plants everywhere but now I am beginning to see food and medicine. Everywhere in the city we are surrounded by naturally occurring food sources Best of all this is ‘free’ – in the sense that it is an “unpriced” natural asset to use the language of neoliberal economics. Marx would counter that it is best understood as part of natural material conditions for the reproduction of humanity’s species life.
Over the last few decades, city dwellers have in ever-rising numbers taken to the streets, sidewalks, medians, parks, creeks and flood plains, tree lines, and other open spaces to collect food. They don’t shop at the supermarket. While many critics dismiss the urban foraging “movement” as a hipster fad, I believe that it is more complicated and represents a unique but essential activity that people can engage in to cultivate a relationship with the land – our concrete jungle becomes no less than a familiar urban ecosystem.
A quick Internet search results in thousands of links to news reports, Google Scholar hits, blogs and zines, .pdf libraries, and social media sources related to urban foraging. It’s become a cultural meme and a social movement pushing its way out of New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and Detroit. There are websites, apps, 501c(3) organizations, and teaching evangelists supporting and promoting urban foraging as an entertaining, educational, and sustainable community-building practice.
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| Dumpster full of bagels. Credit: Wikipedia. |
My understanding is that there are groups split around two main types of activities: The dumpster divers forage for castaway prepared foods and outdated fresh produce, while the urban foragers collect wild plants, tubers, herbs, and berries. The dumpster diving community, if we can call it that, is not a formal social movement while the urban foragers can tap into the rich local knowledge of ethnobotany and a burgeoning local food movement that embraces foraging as another option. Dumpster diving can become an active source of political activity when shelterless people engage with groups like Food Not Bombs and other activists to deal with their own hunger and malnutrition.
But not all dumpster divers are shelterless (homeless) and this has led to problems. Dumpster diving has become a food fad and is now routinely criticized and told to back off since lifestyle practitioners, compared to the shelterless, are not suffering from a lack of access to food. The foragers, in contrast, do not appear to have as direct a conflict with urban local and slow food dilettantes and their fetish for free food sources. Dumpster diving and urban foraging produce benefits but they come with unique legal complications and diving has been exposed to police violence and harassment of vulnerable persons.
In this post, I focus primarily on the urban harvesting of flora and fauna from various niches in the landscape ecology of the city – as there are fewer legal ramifications compared to the practice of sifting through the food waste of urban households, grocers, and restaurants.
There are an estimated 96 billion pounds of edible food thrown in the trash each year in the US alone (Giles). This represents a more than significant amount of food that could make it into the stomachs of starving people before it is wasted, but doesn’t. It is also a waste of biomass that is relegated to a landfill, rather than properly inserted back into the carbon lifecycle. A Huffington Post “Daily Collegian” writer, Nathan Pipenberg, spoke of his first experience, saying, “I’ve thrown out moldy bread and bought jars of peanut butter that I lost in the fridge for a year before chucking them, unopened. None of that bothered me as much as unknotting a bag to find about 30 pounds of fresh bread, rolls and bagels inside” (Pipenberg).
While it is disheartening that businesses are not coming up with ways to dispose of their unused product in a way that benefits people in need, the fact of the matter is that dumpster diving is illegal. Cities need be better policies and outlets for businesses to give away unused products, rather than trashing them – and that help is being taken up by groups like Seattle’s Food Not Bombs group that dispenses unused Pike Place Market produce to those in need. Like Pipenberg says, “there’s one discovery that will stick with you after the smell washes away and you accept your questionable habits -- there’s a lot of food in those things. Good, clean, healthy food that we can eat. Loads of it. And it ends up in the trash every day” (Pipenberg).
Urban foraging is not evolution; its adaptation. In 1992, the FAO estimated that 62 percent of people living in developing countries procure their food directly from their local environment. An estimated 300 million people rely on forests for their annual food consumption (McConnell, Inthavong). Finally, FAO estimates - that include indigenous communities inside industrialized nations like the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia - show that close to a billion people utilize wild flora and fauna in their diet (Aberoumand, 2009).
These statistics show that the “urban foraging” movement isn’t occurring in a vacuum. This is a return to values of local sustainability that many communities around the world – including inside the United States – never stopped valuing. Just because the ecosystem has changed somewhat, does not mean that the idea of living off the land is a unique discovery of the urban foraging movement. So, the first order of business for the urban foragers is to thank all of those hunters and gatherers that never stopped – and are now passing their knowledge to those who are asking for it. Regardless of how it started, urban foraging holds opportunities for all walks of life to not only have better access to fresh food, but also build a better relationship with their home environment.
Issues with current foraging practices
While there are a lot of benefits to urban foraging and harvesting, it is by no means a foolproof practice. There are issues with urban foraging stemming from everything from over-foraging to injury and death due to toxicity.
Without proper education, over-foraging can spoil the entire process. Over harvesting, or harvesting the plants wrong, can cause a lot of environmental degradation. KUOW quoted Dewey Potter of the Seattle Parks department, saying that: “We’re engaged in a multimillion-dollar effort to restore 2,500 acres of urban forest by the year 2025, and a tremendous amount of that effort in that situation is done by volunteers. And we had a situation where a newly restored area was stripped bare of its native plants by people foraging” (McNichols).
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| Wild crops from Central Park. Credit: Urban Times |
The thing to keep in mind is that this is all based on education. People aren’t destroying these areas on purpose (hopefully) – they simply do not know the correct way of going about harvesting plants in an urban landscape. In a New York Times article exploring urban foraging in New York City’s parks came to the conclusion that “regular foragers — especially those who write and teach about the practice — say that they are sensitive to the environment and that they focus on renewable items like leaves and berries. Besides, they say, much of their quarry comes from invasive species that squeeze out native plants” (Foderaro).
As I mentioned before, foraging cultivates a relationship with the local environment. So, with more foragers, come more capable stewards of the land. “The idea is that educated foragers can help protect urban land. Groups like City Fruit help bring a level of stewardship to the trees they harvest from. Anthropologist Poe says most foragers end up returning to the same spots again and again. “It’s a place where they know the entire plant population and what is valuable to them. And so they end up tending these areas””(McNichols).
While over harvesting can definitely be an issue when it comes to urban foraging – the real issue is education. With a cognizance of the land’s ability to provide, and the knowledge that an individual’s practices can directly affect that ability for everyone, comes a realization of responsibility and a commitment to it. It doesn’t matter how educated you are though, if the first thing you pick off of the street gets you sick, or even kills you.
Risk of injury and death is a serious issue due to the a couple things: naturally occurring toxic plants, and plants made poisonous by chemicals. In cities, there is a great risk of anthropogenic factors causing harvests to be inedible or even toxic. From pesticides, to fertilizers, to industrial waste – cities are a hotbed for toxic chemicals that are easily soaked up by the plant life all over the city. Richard Lee, the director of the San Francisco Environmental Health Regulatory Program states that, “no one knows how much pesticide has been applied to certain spots” (Wahlgren). Pesticides and other chemicals are hard to notice, and can be easily forgotten about in lieu of freely available berries or sprouts.
Plants can also be harmful to people in their natural form – be it from known toxicities or personal sensitivities in the person. A good example for around here is nettles. In their natural form, they are little more than an annoyance, but after cooking they can be quite tasty. Edible plants that aren’t normally viewed as toxic, can elicit negative reactions in people who are not naturally predisposed to digesting them.
David Craft – an expert in urban foraging – after mentioning his negative reaction to raw cattail shoots, goes on to say that: “Lots of other foraged foods have their quirks too. This causes a dilemma, because foragers who have not yet turned entirely hermitic will want to share their goods with others. Most people are wary of trying knew foods, and these quirks do not help.” (Croft 28). While there are risks, they seem to generally be worth it – urban foraging deaths have yet to make it to the news. Urban foraging can benefit the livelihoods of everyone, most notably those who do not have access to fresh produce due to their socio economic status – education is key, though.
Who is really benefitting?
While many promote urban foraging and harvesting as a means to get more fresh produce into homes and food banks, no one seems to be teaching the shelterless how to forage. There are many examples of paid classes, tours, and handbooks about urban foraging – I have yet to see someone targeting the shelterless as a demographic group that might benefit from urban ethnobotanical education. Maybe someone has. Maybe someone is doing that right now, but one thing is for sure – no one is talking about it.
Solid Ground – an organization that helps organize community harvests through private landowners, only seems to look to other homeowners as volunteers. These home owning volunteers, the owner of the fruit producing tree, and the local food bank all receive equal thirds of the harvest. Wouldn’t it benefit more people in need if the volunteers were also the ones that needed the produce the most – essentially allowing two thirds to go to those in need, while a third goes to the land owner? While there may be issues with this approach, I think that – in general – the more stakeholders you have directly involved in working on a project, the more likely the project will succeed.
Moving forward
The most worrisome thing about urban foraging is that – as a movement – it has seemingly been co-opted by elites: exoticising dandelions and garden snails as gourmet haute cuisine
While there are those who profit from foraging or participate because it is seen as an exotic fad to give the “upper class” involvement a bad name, many others defend it. In one Guardian Australia article, Mike Eggert, a chef that forages for his own ingredients, responded to a concern that his food would be covered in dog urine in the best way possible. He said, “Everything is covered in piss. I don’t want to eat anything that hasn’t had the opportunity to be covered in piss by something. Do you really want your food to come from such a sterile and plastic environment that it’s never had the chance to be exposed to a living animal, whether it’s a fly, a bee, a dog, a bird? That should be your barometer. If it’s had something urinate on it, it’s good to eat” (Rigby).
While examples of such foraging evangelism are heartening, bourgeois support is essential if a movement is going to advance a legislative agenda. For urban foraging to be truly successful, it has to utilize public lands. Private homeowners can organize harvest groups, like those done by Solid Ground, but there is too much opportunity on public land for large-scale community harvesting.
With full-scale local government support for urban harvests communities can simultaneously reduce a city’s carbon footprint, alleviate fresh food deficiencies in local food banks, and foster community through an improved relationship with the land and neighbors. This can only be accomplished with the support of the middle and upper classes – groups that usually are the first ones to vote “no” on community approaches to problem-solving like tent cities. With the involvement of local governments, communities can perhaps come together to foster better relationships across class differences and with the land they all live on, while eating healthy and living sustainably.
Works Consulted/Media
· Wild Food School
- Seattle Vancouver BC Foraging Handbook
- Credit: Solid Ground
Works Cited
Collegian, The Daily. ““I Am a Dumpster Diver, and I Eat Trash”” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Apr. 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
Craft, David. Urban Foraging. [S.l.]: Service Berry, 2010. Print.
Foderaro, Lisa. “Enjoy Park Greenery, City Says, but Not as Salad.” Newyorktimes.com. The New York Times, 29 July 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Giles, David. “Dumpsters, Forbidden Fruit, and the Social Afterlife of Things.” E-AnthropoLog. University of Washington Anthropology Deptartment, Spring 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Lohan, Tara. “My Adventures in Urban Foraging.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 09 Sept. 2009. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
McConnell, Laurel, and Bounmy Inthavong. Urban Foraging. Rep. Waterloo: University of Waterloo, 2010. Print.
McNichols, Joshua. “Urban Food Foraging Goes Mainstream In Seattle.” KUOW News and Information. KUOW News and Information, 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Poe, Melissa. “Foraging Wild Foods in Urban Spaces.” E-AnthropoLog. University of Washington Anthropology Department, Spring 2011. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Prall, Derrek. “Seattle ‘food Forest’ Planted for Urban Foragers.” American City & County Home Page. American City & County, 10 June 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Rigby, Myffy. “Urban Foraging: Uncovering the Secret Fruits of the City.” The Guardian. The Guardian, 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Susmiak, Cara. “Foraging Is Green Eating at Its Purest.” Chicagotribune.com. Chicago Tribune, 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
Wahlgren, Eric. “Urban Foragers Turn City Parks Into Produce Aisles.” DailyFinance.com. Daily Finance, 2 May 2010. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
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