"Urban foraging is a vibrant and important practice for many diverse communities. People collect plants and their parts (e.g., leaves, roots, and fruits) as well as lichens and fungi [...] to support livelihoods; provide essential foods, medicine, and materials for households; and to create opportunities to connect with nature and maintain social ties."

(Head, L., Atchison, J., Phillips, C. & Buckingham, K. (2014) p902)

 

 

Most people today when thinking about foraging, automatically associate the activity with the countryside. Very few people are aware of foraging in towns and cities, and assume the countryside is the only place to undertake the activity. There are many places to forage in urban areas, such as parks, church grounds, on private land, and places as obvious as the side of the road. So many people bypass perfectly good produce everyday, that will eventually go to waste. Over the past few years more and more people have been made aware of this produce going to waste, projects such as the Abundance Network have been set up, creating communities within towns and cities across the UK, which educate the public and promote the need to forage.

 

 

"Food shapes our lives, for better or worse. The way we grow, store, and eat our food creates cultural, ecological, and economic patterns that form how we as individuals and societies live and relate. The transformative power of food is absolute."

(De la Salle, J. & Holland, M. in: Duanzy, A. (2011) The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, p6)

 

 

"Half theworld's food is lost, wasted, or discarded along the chain from farm to shop to consumer to dump."

(London Evening Standard in: Duanzy, A. (2011) The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, p86)