1. Introduction
Since the Neolithic revolution over 12,000 years ago, hunting and gathering societies have gradually turned into agriculturalists all over the world [
1,
2]. It is now rare to encounter human societies that subsist on hunting and gathering, and they are mainly in the tropics or the far north [
1]. However, historically human foraging of wild foods has been practiced by nearly every rural society in the world, e.g., in times of famine or war [
3]. Producing high-calorie crops to feed large populations using modern farming techniques is efficient but it involves high consumption of fossil fuels and uses pesticides and herbicides that are harmful to the environment [
4,
5]. Thus, the attention of a growing, ecologically aware public movement, particularly young food activists, is turning towards alternative food systems, such as organic farming and wild food alternatives [
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. This has contributed to the growth of foraging teaching and new influences in its practice [
14,
17].
Although the caloric contribution of wild foods to local diets is quite low compared to staple cultivated foods, these species contribute to diet diversification [
10]. These forgotten food resources have, in fact, been shown to contain equally, if not higher amounts, of nutrients than the main commercial crops [
11,
12,
13].
Agriculture in the British Isles started about 8000 years ago [
20], initiating a rapid change from foraging to farming. However, some wild foods—i.e., nettle (
Urtica dioica L.), fat hen (
Chenopodium spp.), sorrel (
Rumex spp.), fruits, and nuts—continued to be consumed alongside farmed grains and livestock during the Middle Neolithic [
21,
22] and actually until recent pre-war times [
23,
24,
25,
26]. The practice of using foraged foods is also documented in the cookbooks written during the Middle Ages [
27,
28]. However, cookery books at this time typically reflected the upper echelons of society whose preferences were often for imported, rare, or exotic species, the acquisition of which reflected high social status [
29]. Commonly available “peasant fare” was rarely recorded until the printing press, available from the 15th century, popularised books, making them cheaper to produce and more widely available [
30,
31]. Cookery book records between the Middle Ages and the 1930s occasionally mention such dishes as dandelion leaf salad [
32,
33] but with such rarity that it could be presumed that the use of foraged foods had almost died out due to demographic pressure, as suggested by Albala [
34], and during the mass transit to cities during the Industrial Revolution.
The United Kingdom formed the first industrial society in the world and was already highly urbanised by the 19th century. Its local, indigenous foraging traditions probably suffered more loss than in other European countries [
26]. People actively involved in foraging declined to about 1% of the population by 1800 [
35] but the practice was far from extinct. Books recording foraging practices in the early part of the 20th century demonstrate that the use of wild foods had not died out completely. The inhabitants of the British Isles are usually pictured as a prime example of mycophobia; however, the collection of edible wild mushrooms was locally practiced, even in the Victorian times [
36,
37,
38]. Cooke’s first book on the identification and preparation of edible fungi was reprinted six times from 1862 to 1898, and another on fungi reprinted up until 1920, implying that mushroom picking remained a popular practice. Some interesting uses of famine plants—including the underground organs of wild plants—occurred in the 19th century, and the use of wild vegetables by rural communities was still in evidence into the 20th century [
23,
24,
25,
26]. Obviously wild plants were also used for human nutrition during the Irish famine (1840–1841) [
39].
In Britain, foraging continued as a pastoral pursuit up to and throughout the Second World War. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries published a popular guide to edible and poisonous fungi from 1910 (first edition) to 1945 (sixth edition) that was popular enough to require two further reprints in 1947 and 1950 [
38]. During the war, urban children were evacuated to the countryside and many had their first experiences of brambling (collecting blackberries) and related pursuits [
40,
41]. At this time, rosehips were gathered to provide an extra source of vitamin C. However, during the 1950s and 1960s, with the onset of intensive agriculture, society’s focus was on the new and old traditions slipped further away.
In the 1970s, a growing “back to nature” movement developed in the U.K. Authors such as Seymour [
17], Mabey [
24], and Duff [
42] published literature on the use of wild plants. In the 1990s, recipes for foraged foods were popularised by British chefs [
43]. Television programs such “Cook on the Wild Side” (1995 and 1997) and River Cottage’s foraging segments (1999–2009) brought the experience of foraging to a wide national audience, and in 2004 Oxford Brooke University held their Symposium on “Wild Food: Hunters and Gatherers” [
34].
Interest in foraging and wild foods in the British Isles has steadily grown since then. Meanwhile, within the last two decades, a large number of papers were published in other European countries to document their disappearing foraging traditions, summarised by Łuczaj and colleagues [
3]. In some countries such as Poland, Belarus, Sweden, Estonia, Croatia, and Hungary, it was possible to trace the changes in foraging traditions due to numerous historical sources from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century [
44,
45,
46,
47,
48,
49,
50]. A host of ethnogastronomic publications also come from Spain, Italy, and Turkey [
51,
52,
53].
Wild food and foraging have been researched and documented from a number of different perspectives. Many contributions fall within the research area “non-timber forest products” (NTFPS) [
54]—despite the fact that wild foods come from a diverse range of habitats, not just from forests. This approach recognises the economic importance of wild foods in local economies but often fails to acknowledge the social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual aspects of foraging. Others highlight the practice as one that supports factors such as psychological wellbeing and cultural heritage, alongside economic practices [
55].
Foraging movements are even present today in city agglomerations throughout the world, and initial attempts to publish papers on these activities have been made, e.g., in Seattle (USA) [
56,
57], Berlin (Germany) [
58,
59], and London [
60]. Moreover, there is a wide range of reasons behind urban gathering. It can be a part of established local culture [
61,
62], practiced by children looking for snacks [
63], or caused by famine or war [
64]. Urban studies have also been carried out on the toxicology of wild edible plants gathered in city areas (e.g., San Francisco) [
65]. A new research area is also emerging on the recent popular trend of gathering wild foods among health-conscious people [
3]. We have seen first publications concerning the motivation for gathering wild foods in Austria [
18] and Spain [
16]. Lee’s thesis is the earliest attempt to study people foraging in Britain [
5]. Recently a study of contemporary wild plant foraging in Czechia was also published [
66].
A large, public source of information—both written and pictorial—that records the main dynamics of this trend is available online through social media sites, such as Facebook and Instagram (
Figure 1), as well as via published books and websites. The original authors of this content are also some of the leaders of today’s foraging movement. These are people writing books on wild edible plants, making TV programmes, and organising foraging and cookery workshops. As their popularity grows, the “culture” that they create becomes more celebrated, with particular plant uses and dishes becoming fashionable, e.g., amongst chefs in high-end restaurants.
In the British Isles, the growing popularity in foraging for wild foods is driven by a number of factors including, but not limited to, a desire to spend time in and interact with nature, an increasingly “foodie” culture and the practices of fine dining restaurants which follow in the footsteps of pioneers such as Fearnley-Whittingstall [
67], and a drive towards more localised food systems and sourcing more sustainable food [
68]. The use of wild foods in restaurant settings is particularly prevalent in nature-based tourism destinations, where a growth in “food tourism” highlights the importance of more sustainable, locally sourced and produced food. In these cases, wild food is celebrated as the pinnacle of local and sustainable produce and adds a kind of gastronomic authenticity to the products on offer [
69]. Wild food is taking a prominent role in conversations about food provenance, where a higher value is increasingly placed on food which is harvested or produced as close to the source as possible [
70]. Thus, wild food is an important part of the “terroir” concept reinvented by Nordic Cuisine and the Slow Food movement in general [
71,
72] Examples such as this highlight the role that wild foods might take in rural (and urban) economic development, in connecting food with local place identities, and in contributing to alternative food systems that highlight local food products and the sustainable use of natural resources [
73,
74,
75,
76]. Wild foods are an increasing component of restaurant menus. It is not only haute-cuisine restaurants serving them [
3] but also local restaurants that offer regional foods [
69,
70]. Unfortunately, we do not have publications directly recording foraged foods served in British and Irish restaurants.
Despite the drop in widespread popularity of foraging in the 19th and 20th centuries, a thriving community of people that both practice foraging and teach it to other people exists in the British Isles today. The growing popularity of foraging supports the growth of a professional wild community of instructors who run workshops teaching laypeople how to safely forage for wild foods, as well as how to prepare those foods in the kitchen for fresh and preserved use. Additionally, this professional community is home to a growing number of entrepreneurs working with wild foods in the delivery of wild food and drink products, and services. These include restaurants and “pop up” dining events dedicated to wild foods, drinks such as specialist gins and liqueurs, preserves, and the supply of fresh wild plants and fungi [
15].
Many of these wild food professionals are members of the Association of Foragers (AoF), an organisation started in 2015 to promote professionalism and provide support to members. The idea originally arose from Andy Hamilton, John Rensten, Monica Wilde, and Mark Williams, early leaders teaching foraging in England and Scotland, who were joined by a further 21 founding members at a “meet-up” in Bristol in 2015 (including Łuczaj and Wilde). This became an unincorporated association that rapidly grew to around 130 members by 2020.
The instigation of a formal association was twofold. Firstly, members enjoyed the experience of community, knowledge exchange, communication, and fellowship. Secondly, foragers realised that access to public land for foraging was facing challenges from local government and landowners. Although collecting wild vegetables and fruits along paths and roadsides is generally non-problematic, some clashes arise, especially in areas managed by local government and conservation institutions (they are listed in detail in the Discussion part of the paper,
Section 4.3). A formal association created a visible body with a public voice to debate some of the growing restrictions to foragers—such as denial of access to public land when wanting to forage or lead classes. Many foragers felt strongly that they had a higher purpose to reconnect people with nature, and issues of land rights over the commons have been hotly debated within the group at many meet-ups. Having created a formal organisation with formal “principles of practice” that members have to comply with, the association proactively leads on issues such as sustainable harvesting, land access, safety, conservation, and other matters that could easily become part of future byelaws and legislation [
77].
As there have not yet been any papers attempting to give the overall characteristics of the foraging movement in the British Isles, the aim of this paper was to carry out the first description of it. Our objective was to perform a detailed survey of the members of the Association of Foragers that could give us answers to the following research questions:
- -
Who are the leaders of the British foraging movement?
- -
What is the origin of their knowledge, their inspiration?
- -
What are the most frequently promoted wild foods? Are they traditional British foods, foreign traditions, or novel uses?
- -
Do foragers experience problems with gathering wild food?
- -
How do they assess the impacts of their gathering?
2. Materials and Methods
To accurately characterise the innovation and influence of modern-day foraging, we selected a cross section of people teaching foraging or organising small-scale gathering of wild foods. Large-scale producers of a few of the most commonly gathered wild products were not included. In the course of the study, a few methods were used: participant observation, in-depth qualitative interviews, and a structured questionnaire.
Łuczaj, the lead author of the paper, took part in three gatherings of the AoF (December 2015 in Bristol; 2018 in Dorset; 2020 in Tan-y-Cefn, Rhayader, Wales) and in some smaller informal meetings—e.g., a meeting of foragers in Kent in 2019, as well as a course organised by one of the foragers. The author also personally knows over 50 foragers from all parts of the British Isles and has had numerous conversations with them during the last 6 years. Moreover, he has been regularly visiting the UK since 1997 and has spent some time working or living in Norwich, Somerset, and Glasgow. He also organised foraging workshops in Norwich, Norfolk, in 2002 and 2003. Throughout this time, he has had ample opportunities to see how the foraging scene in Britain has been developing. The second author, Wilde, a Fellow of the Linnean Society, has been teaching foraging for 17 years, and has been a founding member and committee member of the Association of Foragers since its inception. She personally knows most of the association members and has attended all of its annual meetings. The final author, Townsend, has been foraging in Scotland for many years and teaching for the last 4. She is a member of the Association of Foragers as well as a social scientist currently researching foraging practices in Scotland.
In January 2019, the questionnaire (
Appendix A) was distributed to the foragers gathered at the Annual Meeting in Ardkinglas, Scotland. Seventeen of the members responded in writing. Later, 3 interviews were gathered in a meeting in Kent, and 6 more at the Annual Meeting in Wales in February 2020 (
Figure 2). Ten more questionnaires were gathered later from other AoF members who either forgot to fill them in during the above-mentioned meetings or could not attend, but are nevertheless active and early members of the association. The questions are itemised in
Appendix A. Altogether, we included 36 respondents (including the second author of the paper).
Most foragers have basic to advanced skills in plant and fungi identification. We were not able to collect voucher specimens of the listed taxa, but the respondents often provided the botanical names of the plants. To avoid any doubt, only the genus name was used if the entry was unclear. Plant taxonomy follows the Plant List [
78], fungi—Index Fungorum [
79], and algae—AlgaeBase [
80]. As there is no standardised list of scientific and authority names for all animals, the names followed those used in specialist publications in Britain for specific animal orders.
3. Results
3.1. Social Characteristics
Both sexes are well represented among British leading foragers (19 males, 17 females). Eight of them have a BSc or MSc in biology, herbal medicine, or ecology. Some people declared degrees in other disciplines (e.g., physics, gastronomy, arts, anthropology, or psychology). Nine people declared they have not got any “related skills” and are entirely self-taught. The average age of the respondents was 49—median 48.5, minimum 29, maximum 74. They had on average 9 years of experience in teaching foraging.
The foragers run courses in various parts of the British Isles, but the southern part of England as well as Scotland are the most covered (
Table 1).
3.2. Most Commonly Gathered and Taught Wild Foods
The plants used by foragers for their personal use (102 taxa or categories) and those taught in their courses (100 taxa or categories mentioned) were found to be nearly identical (
Table 2). The Sørensen’s similarity index was above 98%. The instructors usually draw immensely from their own everyday experience and use similar plants at home.
The foragers teach and use mainly wild vascular plants, with the addition of some sea algae, as well as fungi. Animal food is used rarely. The five most commonly foraged wild foods are wild vegetables: wild garlic Allium ursinum L., elder Sambucus nigra L., nettle Urtica dioica L., common hogweed Heracleum sphondylium L., and blackberry Rubus spp. The most commonly used fungi are chanterelle Cantharellus spp., bolete Boletus edulis, and hedgehog mushroom Hydnum repandum. The most commonly used algae are dulse Palmaria palmata, kelp Laminaria spp., and thongweed Himanthalia elongata.
The choice of food proposed by the instructors for consumption in the case of a catastrophe is similar to that mentioned above (
Table 3). As many as 102 species or food types are used. More animals (20 taxa compared to 5) and plants with underground edible organs are mentioned (5 species compared to 1).
Outside the plant, algae, and fungi kingdoms, some small sea animals are consumed on seashore courses (
Figure 3). Insects and other land invertebrates were hardly mentioned.
3.3. Roadkill
Roadkill is consumed by only some of the foragers (22 out of 36), both by men and women. (Eight men and six women had never tried roadkill.) Men listed many more species (4.1) compared to women (1.7), although the difference was not statistically significant (Mann–Whitney
U test,
p = 0.25). Pheasant (
Figure 4), various species of deer (mainly roe deer), rabbit, hare, badger, and grey squirrel are the most frequently reported kinds of roadkill (
Table 4). Altogether, 34 species were recorded, out of which there were 18 mammals (including one case of a dolphin killed by a boat), 15 birds, and 1 fish (dropped by a bird).
3.4. Poisonings and Indigestion
Only 15 out of 36 foragers reported that indigestion or a minor poisoning problem was experienced first-hand during their courses. Altogether, there were 19 dangerous situations or indigestion recorded, plus 7 cases mentioned as “heard of” from other foragers (
Table 5). Out of 18 taxa mentioned, half (9) were fungi and 8 were vascular plants. Each taxon was mentioned by only one respondent at a time, apart from seaweeds. Three respondents mentioned that seaweeds were a rare cause of indigestion among course participants. A few course organisers mentioned single situations of one person having an upset stomach without an apparent reason (
Table 5). The problems can be mainly divided into two categories: minor indigestion (usually after eating fungi or seaweed dishes) and allergic reactions.
3.5. Sources of Inspiration and Knowledge
Foragers’ own experimentation; knowledge from books, websites, social media, and films; and the knowledge of other experts constituted similarly important sources of knowledge (34.5% ± SD = 23.2, 34.3 ± 21.0, and 28.5 ± 19.4%, respectively). Knowledge acquired from traditional uses by locals in rural areas or people overseas seemed to play a minor role (9.7 ± 11.2%).
When asked which people had inspired them, the leading positions were held by Roger Philips, Richard Mabey, Miles Irving, Fergus Drennan, Monica Wilde, and Mark Williams (all of the former are British foragers), as well as the American forager Pascal Baudar. Among the varieties of media types, published books dominated almost exclusively, including many American authors.
Respondents listed few names as their direct personal teacher (only 17), and only Miles Irving was listed three times, with three other people mentioned twice. A further 47 names were mentioned as people who had inspired the foragers. Fergus Drennan was mentioned 11 times, followed by Roger Phillips (10 times), Monica Wilde (9), Mark Williams (9), Miles Irving (8), Richard Mabey (5), and Pascal Baudar (4).
There was also a large amount of experimentation mentioned during the interviews conducted (i.e., trying different processing techniques, recipes, plants parts, or even new species). Very little is taken from indigenous populations and most AoF members have either no (or very limited) experience with living with indigenous groups, foraging, or cooking with them.
3.6. The Law
Only eight foragers have never had any problems gathering food or running courses. Most foragers have experienced minor problems, such as occasional individuals concerned about the sustainability of the harvest. These were often solved or explained on the spot. Cases where problems were encountered only concerned southern England, predominantly coastal parts of Kent (problems with collecting sea kale in a site of special scientific interest (SSSI)) and the New Forest in Hampshire (see
Section 4.3 for a discussion of these disputes). People from Scotland and Ireland in particular emphasised that they did not experience problems with their activities (although by-laws in Phoenix Park, Dublin, state that foraging is not permitted—albeit not heavily enforced).
3.7. Sustainability
Most people were confident that their activity has little impact on the environment. Only a few cases of observed overharvesting in the U.K. were mentioned by eight people. Altogether, 14 taxa or group of taxa were mentioned. Four taxa were mentioned twice, these being elder fruits (Sambucus nigra), ceps (Boletus edulis and related taxa), sea kale (Crambe maritima), and chaga mushrooms (Inonotus obliquus). Other taxa mentioned were Allium ursinum, Batis maritima, “berries in towns” in general, Crithmum maritimum, Juniperus communis, Mertensia maritima, Morchella sp., Myrrhis odorata, and Salicornia europaea. Seaweeds (Laminaria spp.) are destroyed by mechanised harvesting rather than by individual harvesters. A third of the mentioned species are restricted to coastal ecosystems. In some cases, the concern was about the very existence of the species in certain locations (wild vegetables by the sea), in others about the availability to other foragers or animals (shrubs with edible fruits and ceps).
5. Conclusions
Foragers in Britain are a relatively homogenous group in terms of the origin of their knowledge, which is usually a combination of learning from literature, self-experimentation, and learning from colleagues. A lot of recipes and ideas are circulating among them that quickly spread via modern media, which leads to homogenisation of the knowledge and creates a post-industrial foraging cuisine. This includes both local traditions and exotic influences concerning the choice of species and recipes. This culture is created rapidly mainly by the access to social media and personal exchanges between the foragers, partly through the AoF meetings. The exchange has grown rapidly since the establishment of the association.
The core of the species prepared and served as food during courses are common wild vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, and seaweeds. Only a few consume sea animals and roadkill. Poisoning cases are very rare, and all of these to date have simply been minor indigestion.
Most foragers are well integrated and understood by their local communities and they do not experience legal problems with collecting wild foods. It is only in a few areas of (predominantly) southern England that some members of local communities and some landowners are against foraging, imagining that it will deplete nature. This fear is not grounded as most foragers have adopted the “principles of practice” of the AoF in order to become members, and they teach and promulgate sustainable and responsible harvesting. Future research could explore the contested spaces that foragers inhabit in order to understand the debate around land access and sustainability from diverse perspectives—including those of foragers, land managers, conservationists, and laypeople. As the growth of foraging continues to rise, so too does its profile, and it will be necessary for different stakeholders to reach shared understandings in the years to come. Hopefully, the foraging movement in Great Britain and Ireland, integrated by the existence of the AoF, can manage to find a sustainable form of using nature for the benefit of local communities and individuals. The AoF can provide the function of an intermediary between all the interested stakeholders, i.e., amateur and commercial foragers, foraging teachers, landowners, and nature conservation institutions, encouraging those institutions to understand that foraging is widely practiced in many countries without damaging the environment and should be supported in a reasonable form, rather than banned.