2.1. Getting Wild: The Continuum of Human-Plant Interaction
Through a literature review, Carolan notes numerous “turns” in agro-food studies that he describes as being less about “a specific theoretical framework as it is around a general way of doing agro-food scholarship” ([
30], p. 1). He engages with the notion of “wild” as being a part of the theoretical terrain of “wild” in food research and encourages researchers to “get wild” in the spirit of discovery ([
30], p. 15). Thus, rather than engaging in doing things “that tame…the future of agro-food research appears to lie increasingly in multiplication and of creating more entanglements not less” ([
30], p.2). He states “…humans…are, “co-journeying” with food and agriculture across multiple spatial scales and institutional settings” ([
30], p.5). This journey is continually remaking agricultural and food relations through the engagement with the natural environment and human culture [
31]. It is with this spirit that the article engages with the term “wild”.
Wild is not a simple concept, it can “evoke a sense of individualism and a bourgeois ethic of freedom,” and can imply something that needs to be tamed ([
30], p. 5). Similarly, environmental historians and geographers have found that “wilderness is not necessarily a fixed and objective concept” ([
32], p. 204). Rather it is one that is formed on the basis of individual perceptions, expectations and cultural values. The environments in which wilderness might be found have an “objective ecological reality, and usually one that largely excludes obvious human modification” [
32,
33]. What makes wilderness “wild” rests very much with the individual, and her or his emotions, values and experiences [
31,
34,
35]. From this, a series of “wildernesses” can be identified. These “multiple perceptions of wilderness”, that are peculiar to particular groups can be collected, organized and mapped ([
32], p. 204). Just like there are many types of “wildernesses”, there are many types of “wild”. Thus wilderness and wild have both an ecological and a human perceptual meaning.
For paleoanthropologists, ethno-botanists, and ecologists, the accumulation of plant-based knowledge follows from repeated observation of the effects certain plants have on the formation of human culture [
13,
36,
37]. The terms
wild,
cultivated, and
domesticated actually represent points on a continuum of increasing interference with the natural ecosystem that defines the human-plant relationship. At one end of the continuum are the “entirely wild” which grow outside the man-disturbed habitat [
38]. Thus the term
wild often applies when a plant’s habitat does not include secondary (human disturbed) habitats such as open areas, thickets, roadside, old fields, edges of fields
etc. [
39]. At the other end of the continuum is noticeable human intervention such as “selective harvesting, transplanting, and propagation by seed and graft” [
13,
39]. This explanatory framework has been around since the 1960s and “emphasizes the continuities between foragers’ reliance on wild species for “food procurement” and agriculturalists’ reliance on domesticated species for “food production” [
13,
38,
40]. However, in tropical forest “even disturbed secondary rainforest might first appear to be pristine” [
41,
42]. Darrell Posey, for example, working with the
Kayapo people of the Brazilian Amazon, has shown that certain “wild” plants along paths through “pristine” forest have been in fact planted by the
Kayapo as a source of food, medicine and other resources. It was not until biologists began talking to local people, that they found they had been misled by their own definitions [
43,
44].
Foraging and farming across the world are “overlapping, interdependent, contemporaneous, coequal and complementary” [
11,
38]. Within these systems there are no easy distinctions between “wild” and “cultivated” foods. While food research and policy tends to consider these types separately, many local communities rarely make distinctions between foods from the forest or the field [
5,
45,
46].
This complexity is the result of particular local knowledge that is then “encoded into norms, rules, institutions and stories, and this forms the basis for continued adaptive management” of food systems and environments over generations [
11,
46,
47,
48]. The continued availability of these plant foods depends on the maintenance of synergies between farming practices and wild biodiversity [
49,
50]. In turn, food agro-biodiversity is inextricably connected with cultural heritage [
45,
51,
52]. To focus on food and culture, as well as food and dishes always “reflect the regional identity of people, ethnic groups and communities, and the use of wild food plants is an example that exemplifies local knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge” [
5,
20,
53]. Ethnographic and empirical findings from the survey show that in southern Cameroon, these specific foods simply “come from the forest” or “come from the bush”. Cultivated foods “come from the fields.” Viewed in this way, it is the forest that provides the “wild foods” and these include edibles that are not only plants [
54].
The role and value of forests to food security is grossly underestimated [
1,
9,
55]. Some research suggests that forest-dependent people who live in or near forests tend to be politically weak and hold very little power in decision-making processes relating to the management of forests ([
55], p. 1388). This is reinforced by forest-dependent people’s geographic distance from urban centers where political alliances that might favor forest conservation tend to be formed and maintained [
56]. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that globally, over one billion people continue to rely on wild foods to meet their food needs [
57]. Pimental
et al. has found that “healthy forest ecosystems are essential to world food security because they (i) directly provide food to large numbers of people; (ii) produce products and employment that enable people to purchase food; (iii) [and] protect the environment [in ways] that help…the productivity of forestry and agriculture” ([
1], p. 111).
In research on Cameroon the distinctions are further complicated by the concept of non-timber forest product (NTFP) or non-wood forest products (NWFP). NTFPs are “all biological materials other than timber, which are extracted from forests for human use” ([
58], p. 161). This literature has tended to emphasize this definition, however this definition includes non-edibles. When NTFPs are mentioned in the literature on Cameroon, the focus is often on quantifying yields sold in local markets [
59,
60,
61,
62,
63] and measuring their economic importance through focusing on rural employment and income [
64,
65,
66,
67]. Making the distinction between all materials and edibles is important for an urban food security study as urbanites are purchasing these foods for home consumption in markets. The past and current research lacks a critical element of the NTFP trade in Cameroon: their use by urban residents, the ways they feature in urban diets, and their contributions to food security in urban areas.
The global food crisis has sparked renewed attention to wild or “hidden” foods for food security [
68,
69,
70]. These foods are being recognized for their contributions to dietary diversity and nutritional security [
69,
71]. It is encouraging to highlight international interest and renewed attention on biodiversity and the sustainable use of these significant crops across Africa [
68,
72,
73,
74]. It is well known that these forest foods make invaluable contributions to households’ food security [
11,
12,
14,
45,
75,
76,
77]. For example, turning back to the
CFSVA for Cameroon the report describes higher levels of food security in the forested region of the country than in the Sudano-Sahelian north [
78]. While this can also be attributed to changing weather and unrest in neighboring countries that border northern Cameroon, forested foods in the south help to compliment agricultural products and imported food. Similarly, findings from a study of the nutrient composition of “bush meals” from Cameroon’s northern regions stress the fundamental role of wild food for nutrition and their sustainable use for increased food security [
79].
2.2. Urbanization and the Availability, Accessibility and Adequacy of Wild Food
Increased urbanization (as a result of rural to urban migration) across the African continent is an important factor that expands the size of local, urban wild food markets [
21,
80]. This movement and the ensuing food trade creates a new type of consumer who, unlike rural inhabitants, has to buy wild products rather than gather them [
61]. Urban individuals (and households) are generally net food buyers who rely on their income for their food security, spend a large proportion of households’ budgets on food, and have little access to other safety nets like agriculture or land to ensure food access in times of crisis [
21,
81,
82]. Consequently, the buying and use of wild foods in this environment becomes more about food choices, personal preference and household budgets than the wild “famine foods” touted in the literature [
68]. Globally, people purchasing food to meet their daily needs dominate the urban scene [
21]. Poverty is no longer found only in rural areas but in urban areas as well. That being said, food insecurity is probably higher among the urban poor than among the rural poor and this was demonstrated during the food price crises in 2008 [
15,
16,
25].
More specifically, Cameroon is considered a highly urbanized country by sub-Saharan standards. A recent 2010 estimate from the United Nations World Urbanization Prospects suggests that Cameroon’s urban population is 58% of the total population [
83]. Despite strategies aimed toward reducing rural poverty, urban poverty is somewhat ignored [
21,
81]. Further, economic growth in Cameroon is not on target and the country is not on target for meeting the Millennium Development Goals [
84]. Urban poverty in Cameroon is best described as poor access to adequate infrastructure, a lack of social services and income poverty. In the literature on urban Africa, it is often explained that the high costs associated with “urban shelter, transport, health and education undermine the ability of the chronically poor to access sufficient food” ([
21], p. 536). All things considered, Toye predicts that the economic impact on development will be “hardest for low-income urban households in developing countries that are net importers of food” ([
85], p. 761). The literature on food in urban Africa highlights factors beyond actual production and
availability of food by drawing attention to the social and economic
access to food and the realities of balancing household budgets in a deteriorating urban environment [
86].
The knock-on effects of the 2007/2008 food crisis “drew attention to the vulnerability of the world’s poor, especially the urban poor” ([
87], p. 350). The perception that food will always be available in cities was altered for many in 2008, when the food prices peaked and reached levels not seen since the 1970s [
88]. The world’s poor suffered the greatest blow as food prices rose to unattainable levels, rations decreased or disappeared, and frustrated people took to the streets in protest [
89]. In particular, high global oil prices in 2008 sparked strikes and riots of taxi drivers in Douala and Yaoundé, Cameroon that halted the movement of food between cities [
90]. Not only was food more expensive, it was more expensive to move it around the country. In these cities, the strikes are remembered as a time of low stocks in the markets and food shortages at home. The budget of low-income households is disproportionately skewed so that 50%–60% of household income is spent on food. However, the literature on food price shocks and volatile prices suggests that the food price crisis should not be seen as changes in people’s income alone. Volatile food prices are a common feature of low to middle income economies where local markets are not regulated to protect the poor [
91]. Food prices remained volatile over the subsequent years and remained above 2009 prices. For example, the
CFSVA for Cameroon notes that food prices have remained higher than before the price crisis of 2008 [
78]
. Compared with the last five-year average, prices for “maize and cassava increased by 18%, rice by 33% and plantain by 39%” ([
78], p. 7). Governmental measures adopted after the food price crisis and subsequent food riots in major urban areas, “managed to bring food inflation down to an estimated 1.2% in 2010” ([
78], p. 7). While these measures assist with accessing staple foods, prices for local vegetables and wild foods remained high. The literature on food crises features the intersections of the availability of food and accessibility of that food. While it is assumed that food will always be
available in cities, the food riots made it clear that food will not always be
accessible.
The food price spikes of 2007–2008 and 2010–2011 have had far reaching effects on urban residents generally and especially on food choices within households in urban areas. Evidence from Swan
et al. suggest that vulnerability to high food prices is likely to be associated with the type of staple food consumed, the ability to substitute cheaper foods, trends in income and the degree to which households rely on the market for food [
92]. When food prices increased in 2008, Swan
et al. learned from the Central African Republic, that households adopted damaging coping strategies. People in their study were reported purchasing less expensive foods with limited nutritional value, eating less preferred foods and reducing the diversity of their diets. Their findings suggest that food price shocks increase the risk of micronutrient deficiencies ([
92], p. 111). Many urban poor people have little room to maneuver as coping mechanisms decrease food security. When food prices rise, households can: buy less food; buy lower quality food; reduce portion sizes; reduce meal frequency and buy less variety of food. These coping strategies affect nutrition and health. Generally, these strategies involve a shift in diets from sorghum, millet, maize and root crops to rice and wheat which are often highly processed, imported, subsidized and available cheaply [
22]. Cereals such as rice, wheat and maize are the basis of the urban diet and because they are internationally traded they can leave the urban poor even more exposed to global price fluctuations [
93]. A dietary transition most often occurs in cities where these “cheap” foods are most accessible and where high food prices exclude the poor from accessing healthier food options or traditional foods. The term “nutrition transition” was coined to describe the process that happened many decades ago in developed countries but is now occurring in developing countries [
94]. It marks a shift in diet from simple staples high in fiber to a greater intake of saturated fats, sugar and refined foods [
95,
96,
97]. The transition accelerates the incidence of diet-related non-communicable diseases [
98].
As global food prices rise, this transition is more pronounced. In their 2007 study, Sharma
et al. found that food composition data for Cameroon are severely limited [
98]. Their study provided, “for the first time, the calculated nutritional composition of composite dishes commonly consumed in the urban and rural areas of the Central Province of Cameroon” ([
98], p. 476). Their findings suggest that rural Cameroonians eat a more diverse diet and engage in more physical activity than their urban counterparts. The “rural diet is more or less based on the traditional staple foods, while the urban subjects incorporate more modern foods into their diet” ([
98], p. 153) These include pasta and rice and
beignets or deep fried balls of sweet dough made with wheat or cassava. The goal of these studies was to use these findings for “nutrition interventions aimed at modifying commonly consumed composite dishes to improve dietary intake” as nutritionists in Cameroon are noting alarming rates of obesity, diabetes and other diet related conditions [
98,
99,
100]. Findings such as these are important because they demonstrate at the micro-scale of bodies the ways that the broader political economy impacts food choices, households’ food security and ultimately public nutrition and health. The literature on coping strategies and nutrition transition relies on such dimensions as
accessibility and
adequacy. When the conditions are enabled that make food less accessible the adequacy of diets is compromised leaving households vulnerable to future dietary and health shocks [
100].What we can take from this body of literature is that “food security strategies of the urban poor, and how these are thwarted or enabled” are crucial for studies on urban food security ([
21], p. 528). By using the three dimensions of food security outlined by De Schutter particular aspects of the literature stand out and drive this analysis forward. In light of neglected consideration of nutrient-rich foods in an urban environment and with this brief history and review in mind the methodology and results follow.