Exploring Urban Edible Foraging: Navigating Megacity Landscapes
Urban foraging is essential for promoting biodiversity. It makes use of underutilised resources, reduces food waste, fosters people’s connection to nature, and contributes to community resilience and food security by supplementing local diets with fresh nutritious produce. This piece reflects on foraging edibles in big cities.
In January 2022, I did my fieldwork in the East Kolkata Wetlands situated on the eastern fringes of Kolkata. I engaged with many individuals or groups of gatherers who were harvesting wild edible greens, clams, and crabs. Following their trail route led me to discover concealed repositories of knowledge pertaining to local wetland species, their medicinal attributes, practical uses, and methods for incorporating them into everyday diets.
A 67-year-old local woman remarked: “It’s challenging to find these greens in the market nowadays; people seem to have forgotten the importance of consuming diverse foods! While handpicking each of these edibles takes time, it is undoubtedly worthwhile for the sake of our health, nutrition, and income.”
This prompted me to reminisce about my experiences in Hyderabad, India, where I encountered urban dwellers engaging in the collection of edible greens from local parks. Unfamiliar with the concept of urban edibles and foraging at the time, I found myself captivated by the exploration of urban foraging. Therefore, as a part of my PhD project with Research Training Group 2654. I am investigating the significance of urban blue infrastructures and their impact on the local food systems within cities.
Foraging opportunities in blue spaces of mega-cities
We frequently come across discussions on foraging opportunities in rural landscapes. My focus lies in studying the major and influential cities in India, namely Bengaluru, Kochi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. These cities are not only vital in financial terms but also hold ecological significance for the country. While each city possesses unique ecological characteristics, they are consistently grappling with the challenges of rapid urbanization.
Despite this, water remains a crucial component of these urban areas, leading to substantial annual allocations of funds for the maintenance of waterbodies. Our research aims to uncover the people’s reliance on these waterbodies for wild food, a facet that is often underestimated and inadequately documented. Consequently, the vision of urban planners and policy makers for the conservation or restoration of these waterbodies often lacks consideration for the intricacies of food systems.
In late April of the previous year, I embarked on a journey to seek answers to my research inquiries. Commencing in Bengaluru, a city situated in the southern part of the country, our initial focus was on conducting a pilot study of all the waterbodies within the city. We aimed to scrutinize the various food provisioning roles these waterbodies played in catering to the needs of the society. The fieldwork experiences often demonstrate their potential as fertile grounds for fostering valuable ideas.
As we delved deeper, it became evident that different neighborhoods held distinct perceptions regarding wild edibles and foraging practices related to nature connectedness, nutrition and income or social cohesion and well-being.
We were intrigued! And our realization prompted us to specifically choose three waterbodies from three diverse neighbourhoods within the city — one urban, one peri-urban, and one situated in a gentrified or high-income area. This way, we could compare and contrast the influence of urban waterbodies on the utilization of edible wilds, the practice of urban foraging and food provision differences related to neighbourhoods within the cities.
Eliciting stories about urban foraging
Urban foraging has been a longstanding tradition in Bengaluru, but amidst globalization, memories of the past often fade, and there is a reluctance among the citizens to discuss the practice of collecting or foraging.
Using open-ended questions and a storytelling approach, we created a platform for long-term residents, migrants, and visitors to break the ice, gain assurance, and encourage them to open up. Through these interviews, each oral history participant shared unique experiences spanning from childhood to adulthood. They reflected on the transformations that the city’s wild greens and edibles have undergone.
One poignant story came from a 59-year-old woman: She recounted her journey from childhood foraging to losing touch during her professional life, and now rediscovering her connection with the lakes through renewed foraging trails.
In addition to oral history and open-ended interviews, we also conducted structured interviews with visitors to the lakes, including those who did not partake in foraging activities. Engaging with non-foragers allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of the foraging narrative in urban settings and offered insights into why individuals no longer participate in this activity.
Our interviews were carried out in various languages across different cities, with Hindi and English serving as the common means of communication. While translators were instrumental, particularly in longer interviews, it was imperative that the research team or I could also interact in local languages to capture the nuances of the participants’ stories, as certain terms and expressions from their past were challenging to convey accurately in other languages.
In addition to our interview data, we also gathered local recipes for wild edibles whenever possible. The use of local languages was once again crucial in collecting these recipes. The process unfolded over the course of a month in each city, and after Bengaluru, I transitioned to Kochi followed by Mumbai and Kolkata.
While Bengaluru residents primarily foraged for edible greens and fruits, people in the latter two cities, Kochi and Mumbai, engaged in additional foraging activities such as fishing, clamming, and crabbing. Kochi and Mumbai, being coastal cities, exhibit distinct histories, ecologies, and cultural backgrounds.
Kochi stands out as one of the greenest cities, characterized by a laid-back atmosphere and a rich cultural and traditional heritage. A significant number of households in Kochi have access to backyard or community gardens, where they consistently cultivate and harvest edible greens. Consequently, the water bodies we examined in Kochi had fewer foragers focused on greens, but fishing emerged as a popular recreational activity among its residents. In addition to fishing, clamming and crabbing were also prevalent foraging practices in the region.
Mumbai, in contrast to the leisurely pace of Kochi, is renowned for its fast-paced lifestyle and holds the top position among the busiest cities in India. The continual surge of urbanization poses an ongoing challenge for green spaces in Mumbai, frequently subjecting them to the relentless pressures of development.
Despite the ongoing challenges, a national park not only contends with but also flourishes in the midst of the bustling city.
This national park serves as a habitat for numerous wildlife species and adivasi or indigenous communities , often overlooked by a significant portion of the city’s population despite its central location. These communities exhibit a lifestyle intricately connected to the forests and water, offering a captivating case study. In our research, we focused on three waterbodies within Mumbai — two situated around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park — one within its boundaries and the other outside — and the third situated in a wetland area near the coast. The usage of the selected waterbodies, water quality, and landscape vary significantly among these three areas.
Kolkata, resonating with the ambiance of Kochi, stands as another city rich in ecology, surrounded by water, and steeped in cultural traditions and ancestral wisdom.
Here, I listened to numerous local narratives about edible greens, underscoring their significant role in the everyday cuisine of the city’s inhabitants.
Some of these stories harked back to the Bengal famine of the year 1943, when residents resorted to experimenting with wild edibles picked in remote areas, in a desperate bid for survival. Remarkably, these greens and recipes continue to play a crucial role in the daily diet of the citizens.
Next steps
We are currently analysing our data on neighbourhood differences within cities to find the implications of availability of wild edibles and foraging opportunities in urban neighbourhoods. We expect to have our full results by May. Stay tuned for our next blog post on that.
Further readings
Basu, S., Nagendra, H., Vervurg, P. and Plieninger, T. Perceptions of ecosystem services and knowledge of sustainable development goals around community and private wetlands users in a rapidly growing city, Landscape and Urban Planning, 244, (2024). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2023.104989
Garekae, H. and Shackleton, C.M. Urban foraging of wild plants in two medium-sized South African towns: People, perceptions and practices. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening 49 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2020.126581
Shackleton, C.M., Hurley, P.T., Dahlberg, A.C., Emery, M.R., Nagendra, H. Urban Foraging: A Ubiquitous Human Practice Overlooked by Urban Planners, Policy, and Research. MDPI, (2017). https://doi.org/10.3390/su9101884
