By Richard Hall
Sustainability Studies student
If you are hungry, just look around and with a keen eye, and you will find food. Even though the American food economy has made sure to keep people eating and hungry for more and more store shelves full of options, others are hungry for something different.
Foraging for food is a practice by which our ancestors lived and died. However, since the advent of agriculture, and later, industrial agriculture and modern food science, many of us don’t typically go looking for food in nature. As the rise of organic and sustainable food has grown, there are those people that have gone back to nature to find food, quite literally, at its root.
Joshua Murray, a Michiana local, is out finding food all over our urban landscape by exploring vacant lots, bits of forest that still remain within the city, and neglected trees in local yards. Joshua recently spoke with the South Bend Tribune saying, “I took up urban foraging as a hobby about three years ago…as a way to put something a little different on the table at home.”
Within those three years, he has gone onto to create a local Facebook page for Michiana foragers called, Eat Wild. This page allows foragers to relay where food can be found, what is growing during each season, and how to work with potential property owners.
Murray says, “I assume trees on tree lawns are on municipal property and can be picked freely. We respect others’ properties and encourage people to go out and talk to property owners. Almost all of the homeowners we’ve spoken to and met along our course have been very generous with their trees…Most are even glad that someone can use what they don’t…Our rules are simple. We’re here to take only what we need, do no harm to the plants and to clean up after ourselves.”
Murray is also a main contributor for this area on fallingfruit.org. This site is set up like any other web-based map, except that it shows users where to find free food. There are over 105 locations within the South Bend/Mishawaka area where people can find a variety of fresh produce that isn’t being eaten.
By utilizing the untapped resources within our own community, people can help feed themselves at zero financial cost to themselves. In a country that has underappreciated hunger issues and is still recovering from a recession, this is one more small solution that could do a huge amount of good. As Joshua puts it, “There’s really a lot of stuff out here if you look for it.”
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