How To Respect Our Natural Food Resources - The Gloss Magazine

How To Respect Our Natural Food Resources

In Australia, Holly Hughes explores nature’s edibles

As I’ve travelled around Australia over the past few years, talking with First Nations people has reinforced the belief that underpins my climate action: that if we look after the land, it will look after us. In the Daintree, one of the planet’s oldest forests, an elder showed me how sarsaparilla, the sweet drink with healing properties we see in old-time Westerns, is also a natural disinfectant and soap – he demonstrated, creating a lather by rubbing the leaves right there in his hand.

In Australia’s Northern Territory, I learned how kangaroo – a rodent pest that destroys vulnerable vegetation – is a nutrient-dense meat that can be sustainably used to feed malnourished children in rural communities. And now, living on the land of the Noongar people in the Southwest, I am learning of the power of bush foods to act as potent medicines. For humans, sure, but also for other plants, animals and a land ravaged by the insatiable curiosity of humans.

Bush food refers to Australian native edibles (there are currently 6,500 identified species) and any food you can find and eat in the bush. Think kangaroo, emu, lemon myrtle, quandongs (a kind of wild peach), and bush tomatoes.

Dale Tilbrook is a Wardandi Bibbulmun woman who has dedicated her life’s work to gathering the bush food knowledge of her elders and sharing it with younger generations. Dale was good enough to share some of this knowledge with me when I met up with her at the Maalinup Aboriginal gallery and shop she runs with her brother, Lyall, in the Swan Valley, outside Perth. At this venue, Dale hosts a number of bush food experiences, offering bush walks, talks and tastings, where attendees can learn about and sample various native plants and medicines.

Dale’s knowledge is vast, and abundant with solutions to the problems of climate change. “Take wattle seeds,” she says. “Wattle seeds have been a staple food for First Nations people for at least 4,000 years. Eaten dried or green, they were ground into flour for bread or roasted and eaten as is. Incredibly nutritious and a veritable superfood, wattle seeds are full of iron, protein, and fibre.”

They also happen to be a highly regenerative and resilient crop, Dale explains. “Wattles are drought-resistant trees and therefore ideal for damaged or degraded land. There are so many varieties that have adapted to grow in almost any soil or climate. For this reason, wattles have been popularly exported to sub-Saharan Africa where they have thrived in drought-affected areas and provided communities with a food source, animal feed, and even community income through the trees’ timber.”

It seems to me, food can be something we protect, not only because it can be a medicinal gift to ourselves and the people we love, but also to the land and to its creatures.

But wattles do more than generate food or income, Dale tells me. They improve and protect the land because, as legumes, they’re nitrogen-fixers. They also act as a natural fertiliser which improves soil quality and stops soil erosion. “So,” as Dale points out, “when you plant wattleseed, you’ve got more than a food source; you’ve got this wonderfully regenerative plant for poor soil or damaged ecosystems. As the nitrogen is released, smaller grasses are drawn to the naturally fertilised soil. Then the bigger grasses come, bringing with them small animals and plants until eventually you have a thriving, symbiotic ecosystem created by this one, singular plant.”

In the spirit of symbiosis, no crop exists in isolation. “Saltbush is another indigenous ingredient which, in turn, protects wattle trees and other plants,” says Dale. Aside from being highly nutritious (farmers can use it as sheep feed and thereby improve the quality, flavour, and texture of their product, driving up the value of their stock), and possessing the incredible ability to remove salt from the soil (a crucial function in Australia where one third of the land cleared by settlers has been given over to salt), saltbush has another superpower.

“It’s fire-retardant,” Dale explains, “and can be used as a natural barrier. In a recent trial in South Australia, saltbush was planted all around an enclosed orchard of wattles in an area that experienced drought and bushfires. In the immensity of summer, they found that this combination – wattle trees regenerating the land, saltbush desalting the soil and protecting the wattles – both protected and improved the soil inside the orchard which remained 30 degrees lower than the ground outside of it.

These trials that test the cultivation of bush foods are essential when wild harvesting can’t be relied upon to deliver the bounty it once did. “The food is still out there but not in the same quantities it once was – we’ll never see a return to the days of enormous wild harvests. Nowadays, our main role has to be about preservation and education. Where food resources are still available, we have to show consideration and harvest very carefully.”

Dale explains how, in her culture, if you see a quandong tree, you don’t pick the entire tree for fruit. “You eat enough to satisfy, to fill your bucket, to give enough to your family – and leave the rest. The idea being that what you leave behind will feed the next person and also the animals who are dependent on that food source.”

In the case of quandongs, that animal is the emu. “The emus come along, eat their fill, and then wander off, spreading the quandong seeds in their poo. It’s from emu excrement – these little nutrient power packs! – that the next generation of quandong trees will grow.”

Again, I think of symbiosis. Leaving enough food for the emus in turn creates more food for Dale, for her family, for everyone. It seems so simple. I ask her if that can be replicated beyond First Nations culture, how these principles can fit among Ireland’s re-emerging interest in foraging.

“Well, foraging always sounds romantic but we have to ask: is it safe to allow anyone to go out and forage for that food? Are we putting that food resource at risk by doing so? We mainly have to be conservationists now. Just because people know about these foods, it doesn’t mean they can go out and pick them. Harvesting must be regulated and respectful because, regardless of where you’re from, we all have a shared responsibility to care for the land we live on.”

We often think of food as something we take to nourish ourselves. Talking to Dale it seems to me that food can be something we protect – not only because it can be a medicinal gift to ourselves and the people we love, but also to the land and to its creatures. @holly_hughes_words

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