There are hundreds of millions of people in hunger around the world, and the number is getting worse thanks to climate change. The problem is particularly bad in Africa and Asia, where there is competition over the land for farming and conservation.
But villagers in the Himalayas have a two-birds-with-one-stone approach, a practice that won't cause deforestation, and can feed the hungry.
Researcher Jagannath Adhikari has investigated how people in those villages used their forests as a food source.
Mushrooms, as well as honey, roots and other edible plants are harvested by locals as an important food source. Photo: Jagannath Adhikari
He told Wallace Chapman it’s actually a traditional practice in the Himalayan region, where people have for generations planted trees and crops that can produce food in the forest, as well as harvesting what naturally grows.
“The forest is a part of people’s life – they interact with forests every day, they conjure it and at the same time bring foods from there. It’s not a main part of the food but it helps to supplement the deficit food that you grow in the farm.
“So the concept is a little different from like the western world, where forests are separated away from people, away from villages, and it’s kind of non-human.”
And the supplement has not only become a precious food source, but it even provides valuable nutrients that can help in times of food crisis like famine, Adhikari says.
“Many of these foods provide nutrients which you don’t get from farm produced food, like rice and wheat.”
From berries to root grass, the variety of foods that can be found in the forest is wide, he says. One farmer told him he was able to gather nuts, medicinal herbs, spices, roots and tubers, wild honey, bamboo shoots and mushroom.
“You need to have a lot of ecological knowledge of the forest and of all of these foods, when to gather, how to gather, how to cook, which are poisonous and which are not … and they gather a wide variety of foods.”
Adhikari says that knowledge has been sustained over the years among the communities involved in the harvesting and gathering, and passed on to children who go on to teach future generations.
He himself grew up in the villages and was able to gather some berries as a child.
“We [got the knowledge] from our mothers and fathers when we went to the forest with them, they would tell you ‘you can eat this, you can’t eat this one, for this one you have to cook or can eat raw’.”
Wild honey is also quite a special novelty for those in the villages, and while there’s potential for it to be commercialised, Adhikari says the villagers have rules so that people are not tempted to do things like that.
“Nowadays, you see the appeal of holding more money, demand for more cash income, that is pushing our people to an unsustainable cultivation ... There is temptation but at the same time, people are not that rationale, they have community norms and they watch each other and control it.
“Many people also still have a traditional religious mind, there’s moral economy, there’s some ethical feeling … which is preventing it, but among the young guys there’s some temptation.”
Although, sometimes the villagers do sell their collected foods, they do so in local markets rather than branding and globalising them as products.
Control of the ‘edible forest’
While Himalayan natives have often seen forests as an extension of themselves, there was a challenging time for them too.
Adhikari says in the 1960s and ‘70s there was huge deforestations after a centralised forest management from authorities was enforced – taking away the maintenance from the hands of villagers.
“They use to have their own traditional governing style - local communities - and so they would either rotate among the people to guard the forest if needed, or there was also a custom of gathering the food and give to someone who would watch the forest, so they had numerous ways of protecting the forest.
“Then the modern bureaucracy came, government came, the people in government trained under scientific forestry came, so they thought people can’t manage [the forest], so they have to manage it … And then [the government] couldn’t do it, so [they] started giving [control of the forest] back to communities.
“So communities now look after the forest … and they will assign the forest according to their needs, according to their traditional use.”
While the government still has regulations in place, now the villagers manage the forest in the region. And they hold a type of ‘election’ to determine who harvests and gathers, what the rules are, and how the food sources are given out and to whom.
The rapid deforestation was reversed in the early ‘90s, when community rights came to the forefront, Adhikari says. And not only has the forest returned to its prime but studies have shown there’s an increase in forestation in the area, he adds.
