Foragers are a singular breed, they are saints and sinners both. For those concerned by the disconnect between what we eat and where it comes from, by factory farming, £2 chickens and sluicing the planet in pesticides, then foraging is food purism: principled and with a feather-light footprint.
But for those charged with recording and protecting our ancient habitats, foragers can seem more akin to biblical locusts – particularly so now ‘wild food’ has hopped aboard the on-trend bandwagon. There is money in mushrooms, with all the concomitant fears. Environmental Ethics was made for debates like this, so it was with interest/trepidation we invited a professional forager to March’s AGM. But Raoul van den Broucke is as much diplomat as scavenger, alive to sustainable picking – why beggar your own larder? – and disarmingly funny. If there was a moment here to discuss the need for a foraging golden mean we overlooked it, choosing greed over virtue – Aristotle we ain’t, but we do now know the source of the best cherry plums in the district…
Environmentalism is an evolving course, the helmsman’s classic steer-and-correct, and if at times this felt like venturing back into the profane it was no less fascinating for it. Skill is still skilful, even if you do not plan to exercise it. How to find truffles without using a pig? It’s all in the flies.
Earlier in the evening we heard from Jon Dunkelman of the Monmouthshire Meadows Group about the fungi of traditional grasslands, waxcaps, entolomas et al, in advance of the MMG’s planned publication on the subject. This work will plug a significant gap in our understanding of grassland ecology. To date mycologists know waxcaps to be a critical part of this ecology but the actual role they play remains a mystery. As an illustration of just how little we know: by current assessment metrics there are several meadows in the Wye Valley of international importance. Cause for celebration? No, cause for more research. So congratulations to the MMG and we eagerly await their book next year.