Urban foraging is the practice of collecting naturally-growing plants and herbs for food within town and city environments. Through the wealth of positives it provides, urban foraging could be a key component in securing future food security across the globe.
For some people, particularly in developed countries, foraging for food has connotations of a low social status and is associated negatively with under-resourced communities. Nevertheless, urban foraging remains a wide-ranging practice, including in developed countries. In Austria’s capital, Vienna, for example, 64% of people visiting public urban green spaces (UGS) foraged for food there.
Urban foraging may even have positive mental health outcomes: some evolutionary psychologists and historians believe that although many modern humans live in cities, we are still subconsciously connected to our hunter-gatherer pasts, creating a psychological disconnect that may leave us feeling alienated and depressed.
The disconnect is also physical. People increasingly shop in sterile supermarkets instead of growing their own food or visiting community food gardens and markets. In this context, foraging for food helps us to reconnect with the land. In developing countries like South Africa, it also offers alternative pathways for sustainable development, encourages adaptability and resilience, and promotes a diverse diet.
Making a case for urban foraging in South Africa
Globally, access to wild resources is linked to improved well-being, particularly in under-resourced communities, and recent research from South Africa highlights the potential benefits of well-regulated urban foraging in public UGS.
According to the study’s authors, apartheid spatial segregation has made it harder for marginalised communities to access economic opportunities, including land-based livelihoods. With this in mind, foraging households often have access to more diverse food sources and nutrition. They add that properly planned, implemented, and regulated planting and foraging in South Africa’s public UGS can promote food sovereignty.
Giving people this kind of agency over their food supply encourages, amongst other things, knowledge transfer, social cohesion, and healthy lifestyle choices. The authors believe that urban foraging can help to bring neighbourhoods together to look after public spaces, improve waste and infrastructure management, and set up neighbourhood and biodiversity monitoring programmes.
Urban planting and foraging have great potential as part of wider city greening and urban rewilding efforts, increasing the societal benefits provided by both public and private UGS. Green spaces have, for example, been shown to increase mental well-being and safety in urban areas.
Green spaces set aside for foraging can also generate many environmental benefits, including cooling of “urban heat islands”, preventing flooding and erosion, and increasing biodiversity.
Many foraged plant species both support and depend upon important pollinator species like bees and other insects, and birds. In urban environments, they can therefore provide vital habitat, as well as green corridors to facilitate the movement of wildlife between UGS.
Using “peripheral green infrastructure” like verges, school premises, and the edges of parks and playgrounds, meanwhile, helps to build these wildlife corridors and offers free and open access to important nutritional resources. It also increases visibility and awareness of sustainable foraging. Furthermore, notes the study, these areas “would serve multiple purposes of fencing, shading, and resource provisioning”.
Collaboration and regulation key
Urban foraging is particularly at risk of being replaced by industrial economies in the developing world. The researchers believe that key to establishing and maintaining sustainable urban foraging is effective collaboration between municipal structures like the Community Services and Parks departments, managers of public green spaces, and community representatives.
Promoting sustainable foraging in public spaces will require legislative and policy support. The study notes the need “to institute tenure rights, devolved governance systems, and collaborations for co-management of foraging spaces and species with different actors”. It adds that regulations will help to encourage and enforce sustainable harvesting practices, and protect public urban green spaces.
The lack of effective regulation and management of a formal foraging sector would likely create a situation complicated by disputes and conflict over resource allocation. It would also leave public UGS open to theft by those looking to profit from these resources, either by selling the harvest or using trees as timber.
For these reasons and more, rules and regulations – as well as effective enforcement – will be essential to grow a sustainable urban foraging culture. The research suggests that if people see foraging as a legitimate activity governed by fixed rules and regulations, they will be far more likely to engage in this sustainable and equitable way of securing food. Foraging initiatives therefore have the potential to make a meaningful difference in the quality of life and food security of our urban communities.
