A voice from India about using "uncultivated" foods

It is always better to get the message directly from the one who is actually involved in the action. I have for years reflected that as many as 90% of the world's population gets part or all of their daily sustenance from wild foods. I call them "volunteer vegetables"-- Madhavi, in the post below, calls them "uncultivated foods"-- I think I like "uncultivated foods" better.

Anyway, hear what he has to say, and then read my comments following. This is particularly pertinent for those who contend that you can't get enough nutrition to survive solely from plant foods:

In a message dated 10/29/2008 8:15:26 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, madhavisb@yahoo.com writes:

Dear All,
I've been reading posts from this group for ages and at first I only joined because I wanted to know what people in the "west" ate apart from buying from a super market. I was horrified when I met series of people from America and Europe who had never actually eaten what we call "normal" or uncultivated or wild foods. When I spoke with my mom about how fantastic this group was, she looked seriously unimpressed and asked me whether I'd completely lost it. And then it came to me that uncultivated or wild food is nothing new in our culture. It's always there, especially for the poor. The whole notion of 'weed' doesn't really exist.

It's only in the large cities like Mumbai/Bombay or Delhi that people are forgetting the range of veggies, roadside greens and tubers, uncultivated plants growing between rows of domestic farm crops, aquatic plants, small fish and shellfish in local ponds and streams, and small animals. But even here we still pick from nearby trees and parks and gardens. A very everyday domestic occurence is the picking of the buds, flowers and young leaves of the kachhnar tree (I think it's the bauhinia), the sainjan ki phali (means the fruit of the drumstick tree), and millions of other things that are incorporated in the diet without us actually noting them down. In rural India these are what sustain a large chunk of the families. Sometimes as much as 50 to 60 percent of the diet comprises "wild foods".

It is I suppose pretty much a labour intensive job collecting these and as a result they cannot possibly have any market value (which is sometimes a dashed good thing, considering what GM foods has done to a major portions of the indigenous plant varieties in this country, with active participation from the Indian government and the thoroughly stupid and ignorant bureaucrats).

In most rural areas agriculture of the poor is characterised by the celebration of bio-diversity of their lands. Sometimes a minimum of 8 to 12 crops are grown by them at the same time and space on their lands. The diversity of their fields and lands is their way of celebrating nature and establishing a communion with it. A major reason for this spiritual celebration of diversity is the fact that,over the millenia, uncultivated foods have been the source of life for the poor. Many types of green leaves are consumed as veggies and most are rich sources of calcium, iron, carotene, vitamin C, riboflavin and folic acid. There is a voluntary rural development organisation called the Deccan Development Society which has been working in Medak district over the last two and a half decades that has been looking into the role of uncultivated foods here. Another strange thing that happens here is that some wild plants are gathered and consumed by all sections of a local community and some are consumed by only a group/or a particular caste.

I realise that a large part of my post is not really relevant to this group but I keep getting the feeling that for the poorer people living in western countries it is cheaper to eat a McDonald's burger than to eat clean food. And it is only people who are well-to-do who can afford to go foraging or eat organic food. Warm regards
Madhavi

Most of this post is incredibly relevant to this group, especially those who are contending that wild plant foods don't provide enough nutrition to sustain people. Plant foods are not just leaves, which, granted, have few calories. However,they DO have a full range of vitamin and mineral nutrients, along with some protein, carbohydrates, and fats. But when people "graze" throughout the year, they eat not only the leaves, but also the roots, shoots, buds, fruits and other parts as they become edible. Many of these parts are much richer in calories. If you know a range of plants that produce different edible parts throughout the year, you are getting a range of nutrients AND calories in your diet. You are very seldom eating just leaves.

Uncultivated plant foods,as part or all of the diet, sustain a great majority of the people of the world every day of their lives, supplemented by occasional animal foods. A good bit of the world is vegetarian, and gets along quite well on the food that they automatically harvest as they walk by it. In most cases, as Madhavi said, they take this food for granted, and don't think of it any differently than they do the stuff they plant and cultivate.

When I taught at Cleveland State University, my students were assigned an oral history project in which they interviewed their older relatives to determine the wild foods they had once eaten, or in some cases were still eating. Most American kids didn't know what I was talking about, and asked me for examples. When I showed them pictures of the plants, they recoiled, exclaiming "Yuk, those are just weeds. Who would eat those?" Students from the Middle-East, Southern Europe, Germany and elsewhere also came up to me and thanked me for showing them what plants I was talking about. They said that they would never have thought of these plants, because in their countries they weren't "weeds" at all, but just part of the herbs they ate every day. Now that they knew the plants I was talking about, they could write volumes about their experiences with them.

In 2004, I had the honor to be one of the delegates and presenters at the first Terra Madre Conference in Turin Italy, hosted by Slow Food International. As part of my participation, I had organized a session on "Hunting and Gathering Economics-- The Role of Wild Food in the Cultures of the World." Sitting next to me on the dias, and presenting after me, was a Native Siberian, dressed elegantly in her elaborately-beaded tribal regalia. When she got up to speak, she told of their native diet of wild foods and hunted game and fish that had sustained her people since the beginning of time, and how the government was establishing rules to make foraging a criminal offense, punishable by jail time. She appealed to the 5000 delegates from 130 countries present at the conference to come to their aid in persuading their government to drop this pursuit.

When I taught in Europe back in the 1980's, I discovered the extent to which the common people in England, France, Germany, and Italy rely on the wild edibles that volunteer in their gardens and in the fields around them to add diversity and excitement to their diet. Italians can't wait till spring to harvest the young, mostly Asteraceous (sunflower family) greens for salads and cooked greens. Dandelions and chicories (which they call "Chigoda") are the chief ones, and in some places in rural Italy are almost the regional vegetables. The English and Belgians, when "weeding" their gardens, put all the uncultivated as well as cultivated edibles in their colanders, and take them inside to use in their cooking. One Belgian farmer's wife used stinging nettles from their farm to make two rounds of delicious stinging nettle cheese a week, which she sent to market. I bought a portion of it at the cheesemonger's stand in the weekly Kendal Market in the Lake District of England, and reveled in its tangy flavor.

As much as half of these people's yearly harvest is made up of plants which volunteer in their garden. Many even have a section they call their "wild garden", in which they encourage the growth of favorite wild vegetables so that if they come up short,in their "weeding", of the ingredients they need for a recipe they want to make that evening, they can go to this special plot and supplement their harvest. n.

So, thank you, Madhavi, for the first person testimonial about the value and commonality of these foods. The reality in most countries is that the bulk of the population is "poor". Very few are "rich", and only a relatively few more are even middle- or upper-lower- class enough to be able to afford to get all their needs met by purchasing them from stores. "Only in America" is it "cheaper to go to McDonald's for a burger than it is to eat clean food", as you say.

A final reflection on Madhavi's observation that in America it is "only people who are well-to-do who can afford to go foraging." It is not so much an economic issue as it is a mind-set issue. Here, poor people have become conditioned to the idea that only bought things have value and command respect. Foraging is viewed by those of that mind-set as a "dirty activity." It is an affront to their dignity to get their hands dirty harvesting "weeds" to eat. People who do that aren't respected, and respect is everything in their eyes. Besides, they wouldn't know which wild plants were which anyway.


Peter A. Gail, Ph.D.
President/Director
Goosefoot Acres Center for Resourceful Living
3283 E. Fairfax Road, Cleveland OH 44118