Why isn't foraging and foraged products more popular?
Obviously in cities, foraging isn't an option - but why isn't it more popular in rural areas and suburbs? Also, why aren't foods like acorn flour sold in stores?
To answer this question, you must be logged in.
Already have an account? Login.
By Signing up, you indicate that you have read and agree to Sage's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
Answers ( 1 )
For the same reason most people don't grow their own food, either. Farming, hunting and gathering (foraging) are difficult, uncertain and unpredictable ways to have enough food. Communities coming together to share skills and barter, then buy food and goods is literally how humans survive.
I know a person who is a gardener. She spends every day of the spring, summer and fall in her garden. She has pollinator-friendly plant in a wildflower patch, she has bee and butterfly areas, beautiful flowers and a massive vegetable garden. I helped her harvest ripe tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, carrots and other vegetables as she talked about how the cucumber just blighted on the plant this year. We got one cucumber. We spread all the produce out on her counter and I asked, "Could you live of this garden?" Totally seriously, she said, "We'd starve." We talked about timing for vegetables and canning and other preservation techniques, but bottom line, as huge as her garden is as amazing as the vegetables are, they are not consistent enough to live a year on, much less a life time.
Foraging is even harder. It's dangerous if you don't know what you are doing and there is no guarantee that what you find is not poisoned by a million different things...people, corporations, and natural processes. In an urban area, you can't just eat what you find. It could have metals or toxins from buildings, roads, human and animal wastes. You can wash off urine, but not lead.
Even the folks I know who do forage, so it seasonally as a hobby.
Because...and here's the zinger... if you want to live off the garden, your must live in the garden. It's a job. So is foraging. Ancient hominids spent literally every waking moment looking for food, like the animals in your yard do now. Most people, when give a choice, to spend few hours working, a few hours playing and a few hours sleeping would rather do that then spend most of their hours foraging for food.