Hyper-Targeted Verbal Prep for
Maximum Efficiency

Yet only in the past two years have I embraced the gathering of wild food as an almost daily activity. Like many others, I am uncomfortable with ultra-processed food, which is disembedded from soil, climate, culture and place. A handful of corporations control the bulk of agricultural inputs such as seeds and fertilisers, and also the global food trade. Our cheap food, produced in large volumes for high profits, emerges from battery farming, chemical dependence, pollution and the exploitation of labour in globalised value chains. The cheapening of food, and life, in the industrial food complex is symbolic of our distancing from nature. This distancing is at the heart of the climate crisis. Modern-day hunter-gatherers or foragers that I know are part of the boomerang effect of McFoodification. In the UK, online foraging communities like Wild Food Larder (membership 210,000+) and Mushroom Spotters UK (membership 93,000+) have new people joining every day. These online groups are free, open to all, and a source of information and community-based advice. There is also an emerging foraging market, with organic retailers selling coveted foods such as wild garlic and chanterelle mushrooms at a premium. Somewhere between community-led initiatives and market-facing ones are a slew of foraging walks and courses, and foraging chefs, who also have an online presence. Here, the new or intrepid forager can get advice on what to forage and when, while dipping into hyper-local, organic produce. Hedgerow jams and jellies, elderflower or nettle cordials, blackberry gin and apple cider, ‘chicken of the woods’ mushroom pies, dandelion syrup and herbal oils are part of this new, yet old and quaint, foraging universe.