Author: Martin Wright / Source: Positive News
Increasing demand for wild plants – as ingredients for food, cosmetics and wellbeing and medicinal products – can put species at risk, as well as the communities that depend on them. The FairWild standard promotes the sustainable use of wild-collected ingredients
Brands of Inspiration: this article has been created by Positive News and supported by Pukka
Around 6,000 years ago, the Neolithic revolution swept across Europe and into Britain. Farming transformed the landscape, and the lives of the population. The old way of the hunter-gatherer, which had been the way of humankind since the dawn of the species, faded away, along with the forests which had sustained it.
But not completely.
Some of that ancient way of life remains – and traces of it are here in our kitchens, on our herb and spice racks, and in our cups of herbal tea.
Whether it’s tropical forests, English hedgerows, or even waste ground in our cities, the fragments of the wild that still persist today form a natural store cupboard for some of the 60,000 or so plant species that communities across the world use for medicine. Around 20 per cent of the ingredients of Pukka Herbs’ teas are still wild-sourced. Sometimes this is because they are naturally abundant in the wild, so there’s no need to grow them. Sometimes it’s because they can’t easily be cultivated. And some believe that a plant from the wild, strong enough to resist all kinds of challenges, has more medicinal virtue than one that’s been cosseted by cultivation.
Some of that ancient way of life remains – and traces of it are here in our kitchens, on our herb and spice racks, and in our cups of herbal tea
So if you enjoy elderflower or liquorice, homely nettles or exotic Ayurvedic ingredients such as bibhitaki, you’re enjoying the fruits of modern day hunter-gathering.
Gathering herbs fresh from the wild sounds idyllic, but the reality can be anything but.
Many are being over-harvested, through ignorance or greed, or both. As writer and medical herbalist Su Bristow points out: “In traditional societies, it was understood that you always leave enough to ensure a supply in the future; you know the right time of year to harvest, the right parts of the plant, and so on. But the global society is a long way from there. When something hits the headlines, like Hoodia a few years ago [it’s an appetite suppressant, used by Kalahari bushmen], there’s a huge surge in demand and in price. In the gold rush that follows, both traditional use and the plant itself can become extinct.”
Meanwhile, some of the people employed to pick the wild herbs are themselves exploited, forced to work long hours in sometimes hazardous conditions for poor pay.
In an effort to tackle both these challenges, a range of conservation and development groups got together to establish FairWild – a new standard aimed at protecting both the wild plants and the…
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