Nonprofit organisation Falling Fruit has put together a worldwide map of locations where anyone can forage for food for free. Through sharing the culinary bounty available across the globe, the founders hope to facilitate intimate connections between people, food, and the natural organisms growing everywhere.
Food is a precious good, and yet, we are not always very capable of handling it well. Precious resources are binned every day, both by shops, producers, and consumers alike, while many people don’t have the means to buy their own. Growing more aware of the value of food and the nature that surrounds us might change that for the better.
While foraging makes up a very primal part of our instinct, our overwhelmingly urban way of living has made many of us grow unacquainted with the skill. And when seeing a fruit tree or vegetable plant with a produce ready to harvest, politeness – and laws – prevent us from doing anything. Yet often, those precious harvests end up not being picked by anyone and thus go to waste.
More knowledge, less waste
Non-profit Falling Fruit has made it its goal to make an edible map, locating as many trees, plants, and other possible food sources (such as water fountains) that can be freely harvested by anyone. Some of those are located on sidewalks in the city, others in overgrown gardens in the countryside. The idea came to founder Ethan Welty when he was looking for extra apples while living in Boulder, Colorado, yet having lived part of his childhood in France, where all kinds of foraging remain more popular in the countryside, also lay at the base of the concept.
“Our edible map is not the first of its kind, but it aspires to be the world’s most comprehensive. While our users contribute locations of their own, we comb the internet for pre-existing knowledge, seeking to unite the efforts of foragers, foresters, and freegans everywhere. The imported datasets range from small neighbourhood foraging maps to vast professionally-compiled tree inventories”, Falling Fruit explains.
The map, which is freely accessible to and adaptable by all those interested, has so far amounted to thousands of different types of edibles, distributed over millions of locations. The organisation hopes to increase people’s knowledge of all kinds of plants, while also increasing social and cultural connections across the globe. Moreover, Falling Fruits wants to inspire cities to build so-called food forests, filling their public spaces with edible plants that provide both food and a welcome bit of greenery in otherwise mostly concrete deserts.
