I often find myself in an uncanny position when I stand in a supermarket betwixt the abundance of food:
How have we naturalized the idea
that we can only buy food (from a supermarket)?
People usually look down upon those who either forage for or grow their own food. I know this because I experienced it firsthand in both cases. I usually get the response (in my home language Afrikaans):
"Eet jy bossies??"
This directly translated reads "Are you eating weeds?"
I grow so-called weeds and forage for them. I use them extensively in my cooking. I do research on lost foods in our modern society in old recipe books.
This has not always been the case, that is, people extensively used these so-called weeds in their cooking throughout the years of human existence. Only recently (I would argue) have we normalized the idea that food is grown in non-natural ways (think extreme monoculture crops) and sold in massive supermarkets for copious amounts of money (because the consumer carries the burden of paying for the cold chain and packaging costs).
And this is where I find myself: in the middle of the food section seeing the same crops every single day throughout the year. No matter in what store you find yourself you will find the same broccoli, the same green-yellow-red peppers, the same English cucumber, and so on.
You will, however, never see indigenous African spinach (e.g., amaranth/marogo leaves), you will never see African indigenous sage, or indigenous rosemary. (I find myself in South Africa, for context, and we usually buy our food from establishments similar to the rest of the world. there are, however, smaller shops where one might find more variety and local foods.)
And this is where my little (tomato) thought experiment begins:
Imagine a world where food abundantly grew
on the corners of our streets, where fruit and nut trees
decorated everything, and urban foragers harvested
and picked these food sources for us?
I am not thinking about going back to a time when capitalism/neo-liberalism was not a factor. Not at all. Going back is not an option. Plus, why would we want this? It is rather regressive and stagnant.
Instead, we should harbor what we have, that is, vast amounts of knowledge and people without jobs. We have so many streets lined with trees that throw their leaves off which we can use for composting, which will be the initial compost in which we can begin to grow new plants/trees.
There are these tomato plants growing in my partner's family's garden. Every night, we eat from these plants. They take about 1-meter by 1-meter space.
Imagine if we lined the streets with these tomatoes rather than concrete, grass, or tar.
Imagine if we grew these various tomatoes wild on the sides of the roads.
This is just tomatoes; think about all the other plant varieties and tree varieties.
Moreover, these are just the sides of the road, imagine if people started growing their own vegetables and fruits in their homes as well.
The food grown in these "community gardens" can be distributed or shared, and restaurants can use them. Menus can be broadened to incorporate fresh but also indigenous crops. And so on.
But this leads to a very interesting and fascinating idea for me who is obsessed with composting: All the scraps will be collected and turned into compost. This compost will be used to grow cuttings and sprout seeds. New plants will continually be made and planted. The idea of seasonal foods will return. No, you cannot get strawberries out of season.
I walk past a bunch of leaves and all I see is the potential compost I can make from it. I walk past a bunch of leaves and all I see is the potential jobs one can create in our country where jobs are scarce. I see the potential for jobs for those who can collect the scraps and leaves.
I see so much potential; yet nothing happens of this nature.
It is, therefore, up to a select few to make this happen, to create the space for this to flourish.
I live in a utopian world, in my head. But maybe we can do something like this on a small-ish scale at first; to turn the thought experiment into a reality.
I hope that this will inspire you to do something similar.
The musings in this post are my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300.
