Urban foraging is the finding and harvesting of local edible plants, those which grow in non-agricultural environments such as city sidewalks or neighborhood parks. Foraging has gained popularity as a pandemic-era pastime. However, the practice has been central to many modern sustainability movements and conversations about food access and food apartheid since long before 2020. Beyond its value as a tool for understanding the the wonders of nature right outside our door, foraging is an act of local environmental knowledge production and distribution which has an activist dimension. Urban foraging is derived from, and rooted in, the historic foraging practices of indigenous and marginalized communities alike, and is a an act of land reclamation that works both as counterbalance and complement to the organic, local, and slow food movements.
