Underlying Principles
In the world of wild food and ecological restoration (i.e., ecoculture), your success is my success and my success is your success, because we are increasing the abundance of Earth's gifts. Ecoculture requires nothing to continue. We achieve our goals by giving everything. The goal is to create and embody the next highest vision for human kind, by revealing a pathway, based on two underlying principles:
1) Everything is One, and
2) There is Enough
These principals relate to ecoculture in the recognition that humans are nature and humans can harvest from the natural world while simultaneously creating greater abundance.
While The Ecoculture Project LLC needs nothing to continue, we desire everything good. We are seeking funding in the form of donations, grants, recoverable grants, or rent free land for the purposes of leasing a plot of land to pilot our project. That project is to cultivate a biodiverse wild food paradise and to explore solutions for making the wild food we produce accessible to the public in a sustainable and affordable way given our modern economy and current societal level of ecological wisdom. We are seeking this not from a place of scarcity, but from a recognition of the abundance that surrounds us, which could be generating even greater abundance.
In the spirit of abundance, here’s a section from my capstone project, Creating Viable Ecoculture Business Models:
The Vision (idealized and practical)
When one is envisioning potential future scenarios, it is important to approach the topic from multiple angles. Namely, the idealized and the practical perspectives. I believe that the true solutions to the challenges we face are above and in between these two realities.
The idealized scenario involves a world in which humans become highly evolved beings, but that is the topic of a different book, many of which do exist. In this idealized world I can envision a culture which understands and values wild ecosystems in such a way that we can self-manage and harvest freely from the earth while generating abundance. In this utopic vision there is no need for any governing structure to impose a cost for harvesting from the land because no one abuses the land and everyone knows how to heal and cultivate it. In this structure, culture would enforce best practices among members of the community. Hunting, fishing, and gathering would be free in the same way that breathing air is free. No one takes more than they need because, much like breathing, we realize that there would be no benefit to doing so. This is the ideal we should be shooting for as a society, understanding that by aiming higher than the target, gravity will pull our arrow down towards the bullseye.
Moving in the direction of practicality I envision a system of public wild food preserves, which are actively managed for their production of culturally significant species. Since we are not a highly evolved culture at the moment, in practical terms this means some form of intentional management of the land and the creation and dissemination of harvest guidelines. This means that there needs to be some economic structure in order to fund the management of the land as well as the public interface. One method for both generating revenue and creating harvest guidelines is by issuing foraging permits. I’d like to point out here that we have two great examples of such a management structure in hunting and fishing. Both of these are overseen here by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Perhaps one day I can imagine there being a wild food wing of U.S. F&W, or a new agency for managing wild food resources, however, at the moment the static nature of plant and fungal species and the ways in which they are currently recognized as private property means that they can be managed and licensed by private entities as well.
Given that hunting and fishing regulations are enforced by specialized police who ensure that regulations are followed and prevent poaching, it is conceivable that a similar enforcement structure would need to exist for wild food. This can’t exist however until there is a wild food agency of some kind, but it is possible to envision a security system for private operations. This sounds expensive and unnecessary if proper steps are taken to educate and enculturate the community in the honorable harvest as described in the previous section. This might mean that workshops on proper harvest and cultivation of wild species are required in order to purchase a foraging license, which again is similar to our structure for hunting. It is also important to note that stealing from farmland is not considered a widespread issue. When stealing is a challenge, like cattle rustling, then law enforcement can be called upon for help.
Finally, in the most practical sense, given where we are economically with respect to the wild food culture and the funding structures that exist at the moment, I can envision there being some barriers to entry into the food market and funding market. This may need to be addressed by slowly building up from more established models (like Agroforestry and Permaculture) to apply for loans and grants, in addition to the use of marketing strategies to increase cultural appreciation for wild food. Wild food, and in particular the act of foraging, has much going for it that can create a powerful appeal for our communities, which are so starved of their connection to and interaction with the natural world.
Another funding solution might be found in the pursuit of nonprofit methodologies, such as raising philanthropic capital in support of a mission. In this instance, donors might support conserving and restoring land, increasing community engagement, access, connection, and understanding of the ecosystem, and providing access to affordable, healthy, and quality food.
Ecoculture can be applied equally towards increasing opportunities for hunting, fishing, and collecting (clams, oysters, mussels, etc.). Thus, in summary, this book is primarily focused on the possibilities for creating networks of public access, managed wild food farm-preserves, which might utilize a permit based “forage-your-own” system, where responsibility is placed on harvesters for meeting the educational standards for responsible harvest, and for maintaining an honorable harvest culture. This system might be managed by land managers (ecoculturists), ecologists (who create guidelines for harvest and measure ecosystem health), and potentially educators and/or rangers (who enforce guidelines and ensure harvesters meet the standards). These workers and their tools might be funded by a combination of revenue generated from the sales of foraging permits, workshops, market sales, and other for-profit activities, in addition to donations from philanthropists, or from grants, loans, and lines of credit.
One final aspect of this structure to consider here is the fact that not every species will need a permit system to harvest sustainably. There may be species which can be completely free for public access because of their natural abundance and, in the case of invasive species, the desirability for their removal from the ecosystem. These species can function much like the free air does. Maintaining the ability for the non-foraging public to access and utilize these preserves as public spaces might also help to increase the case for philanthropic or government support of ecoculture businesses.
Lastly, perhaps the greatest practical consideration for ecoculture practitioners is, where do you find and how do you access land? This is a complicated question with many different factors to consider, such as land suitability (i.e., ecological considerations), cost of land (i.e., leasing, purchasing, or some other means of access), and legal status/regulations that are already in effect (i.e., conservation easements and zoning ordinances). This topic, along with funding strategies and business models, is important and is covered in detail in the next section.
Before moving on though, I’d like to answer the following question:
Why do I like the “Forage-your-own” model?
Well one answer to this question is that I am from a region where direct to consumer (including pick-your-own) agriculture dominates, the suburbs of the Northeast. In this region, there is a very large urban and suburban population, which means that even if a tiny percentage of the population shows an interest in wild food, that may amount to large total numbers. In other more rural regions (unless there is tourism), it would be much harder to swing this, and instead the export market becomes crucial for selling products (unless you are aiming at living a subsistence lifestyle, i.e., homesteading and trading with members of your community).
The major reason I gravitate to the “forage-your-own” model though, is because it retains the essential spirit of foraging, and there are some great examples that we can look to for how this might work (i.e., hunting and fishing). The act of foraging and cultivating the abundance of the natural world is about so much more than a thrifty way of feeding yourself. It is about embracing what it truly means to be human.
Delving back into the world of the ideal for a moment, I’d like to discuss what I believe is the greatest potential benefit that the planet could experience if ecoculture became a mainstream land use practice. I believe that once the economic pathways are illuminated, and there are people who can show everybody what an awesome lifestyle is afforded to practitioners of ecoculture, then we’ll see the most rapid transformation in our landscape since colonization. It’s not crazy to imagine that once the economics click, then drastic shifts can occur. That is what happened with acid rain when the Environmental Defense Fund pioneered cap and trade policies in the 90’s. Conversely when ethanol subsidies went into effect in the 2010’s the almost 100-year trend of slow reforestation reversed and we saw an increase in the farm acreage. The same phenomenon could happen when ecoculture becomes an economic opportunity as opposed to an economic uncertainty.
