Take Action to Protect Foraging in Minnesota
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Protect Access to Foraging in Minnesota
Chokecherries (Prunus virginiana) picked in Minneapolis.
A Place of Abundance
“Wow it’s like a whole chokecherry forest in here!” my friend exclaimed as we clambered up the hill to pick more fruits. Robins and catbirds hopped around in the branches above us and grey squirrels rustled through the dense growth.
“That’s a butternut up there!” I pointed to a large, spreading tree at the top of the hill. “I noticed it last time I was here after I saw a squirrel running around with a nut in his mouth.” We marveled at the fact that a tree listed as endangered in the state of Minnesota was seemingly thriving in a narrow green space amid a densely populated urban area. Due to their protected status they are not legal to forage in this state, but I always love to see them.
We left the butternuts for the squirrels and continued picking chokecherries. I had visited this location a couple weeks prior and picked a quart of chokecherries in only about 15 minutes. Two weeks later, the chokecherries still grew in amazing abundance. We each picked another quart, barely making a noticeable impact on the cherry supply. We hadn’t even touched the vast majority of the trees growing in a thriving colony along the hillside.
“Still plenty for the birds to enjoy!” my friend quipped as we packed our things to head home.
The Myth of Scarcity
Many people approach foraging with a scarcity mindset, assuming that wild foods lack in quantity and that our surrounding landscape is largely devoid of nourishment. As a forager of nearly 20 years, I know that this is not the case. Even in a small urban environment, wild foods abound around us.
Imagine my surprise when I learned about new foraging restrictions proposed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for state parks. Under this new developing rule, each forager would be limited to harvesting one gallon of fruit and mushrooms combined. (The current law states that foraging is legal for personal, non-commercial use—i.e., you can't harvest fruits and mushrooms in order to sell them.)
Ann Pierce (Director of Parks and Trails for state of Minnesota) says the DNR has concerns about foragers harvesting “too much.” She claims that picking wild foods takes food away from wildlife, who are then coerced into digging in dumpsters for sustenance. Pushing the blame for that onto foragers is ludicrous—wildlife is driven into contact with humans because of habitat destruction, which demolishes their home territory and forces them to find other means of survival. Furthermore, as long as there are ready receptacles full of calorie-rich food, wild animals are going to take advantage of that easy access. It is not always correlated to a lack of wild food; it’s simply a matter of consuming as many calories as possible with the least amount of effort.
Ed Quinn (Natural Resource Program Supervisor) was quoted as saying that nobody goes to the store and buys two gallons of blueberries. Clearly he has never done any preserving. Blueberries are an incredibly popular food for home canning, drying, and freezing. Many people pick several gallons at a time from you-pick farms or abundant wild sources and store them away for the rest of the year. Wild blueberries can be incredibly bountiful in pine barrens, especially a couple years after a fire. I can personally attest to witnessing hundreds of acres of lowbush blueberries teeming with fruit in the UP and northern Wisconsin. Picking a few gallons was a proverbial drop in the bucket.
Blueberries are an important source of food for many people.
Even in areas that don’t have prolific blueberry harvests, there are still many other abundant fruits and mast crops where you can easily pick several gallons. Acorns, black walnuts, chokecherries, juneberries, and hazelnuts are just a few examples. As for mushrooms, single specimens of chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, and giant puffballs often exceed a gallon in size. As Peter Martignacco, president of the Minnesota Mycological Society (MMS) explained, “mushrooms in the wild are short-lived and not easily discovered, it's not like they'll be there for someone else if you leave a portion of them.” So under this new rule you would likely cut off a portion of the mushroom and simply leave the rest to rot.
What’s in a Statute?
Another concern frequently cited by Pierce is that the current law is too vague and that the term “personal use” needs to be quantified. Personally, I don’t understand the reasoning here. If one person plans to preserve one gallon of berries and another person decides to preserve two, is that really a problem?
The real issue became more apparent after meetings between the MMS and the DNR. Rules governing state lands need to be in line with Minnesota State Statues, specifically Statute 86A.05. Though lengthy, it reads in part: “A state park shall be established to protect and perpetuate extensive areas of the state possessing those resources which illustrate and exemplify Minnesota's natural phenomena and to provide for the use, enjoyment, and understanding of such resources without impairment for the enjoyment and recreation of future generations.” DNR officials are under the impression that the current rule around foraging (which was developed about 30 years ago) was poorly written and that the intention was to only allow for incidental foraging—not subsistence-based harvesting.
Granted I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t see anything in the statutes that contradicts the current law. The only sentence that stands out to me as a possible red flag is “Park use shall be primarily for aesthetic, cultural, and educational purposes, and shall not be designed to accommodate all forms or unlimited volumes of recreational use. “ The DNR could point to this and argue that foraging is one of the recreational uses that state parks are not designed for, or that the current law allows for “unlimited volumes” of foraging. However, I would point out that foraging is indeed a culturally-relevant and educational pursuit, which the statute aims to protect. Furthermore, the volume of foraging is naturally limited by how much one person can reasonably harvest, process, and eat. If, despite this, the DNR insists on setting a bag limit, I would insist that one gallon is laughably low.
“A wealthy CEO might pick berries just for fun while a low-income cashier might pick berries for necessary sustenance. An equitable policy would allow the cashier to pick more berries, since they depend on the berries for food. Meanwhile, picking fewer berries doesn’t affect the food security of the CEO.”
An Issue of Equity?
During the meeting with the MMS, several DNR officials repeatedly brought up the issue of equity, saying that a foraging limit needs to be put in place so everyone can enjoy equitable access to wild foods. However, as pointed out above, this is not always practical—mushrooms often rot before they are found by another person. More importantly, setting the same bag limit for everyone is not an equitable policy. It’s equal—meaning that everyone falls under the same rule—but not equitable—meaning that it doesn’t recognize that people come from different backgrounds and folks in marginalized communities require additional support to reach an equal outcome. For example, a wealthy CEO might pick berries just for fun while a low-income cashier might pick berries for necessary sustenance. An equitable policy would allow the cashier to pick more berries, since they depend on the berries for food. Meanwhile, picking fewer berries doesn’t affect the food security of the CEO.
Equality and equity are not the same thing. Equitable policies are needed to achieve equality.
Another issue with the equity argument is that the proposed policy would favor people who can drive out to state parks multiple days in a row. This is because the developing policy would limit harvest of edible fruit and mushrooms to one gallon per person per day. In the meeting with the MMS, DNR officials repeatedly stated that people could return to the same location several days in a row if they wanted to collect more than one gallon. Again, this is not always practical due to the ephemeral nature of some wild foods. Furthermore, most people don’t have the luxury of spending several days in a row driving out to state parks. This policy would favor people who can take paid time off and who have consistent access to a reliable vehicle. It is therefore actually the opposite of equitable.
Whether or not it is practical or even possible to develop an equitable foraging policy for state lands is another issue entirely. But if that’s a stated goal of the DNR, they should at least try to accomplish it rather than just throwing the word “equity” around.
Foraging as Recreation/Nature as Museum
DNR officials frequently cite the increased interest in foraging since the start of the pandemic as a reason to institute a bag limit. It’s important to point out, however, that part of the reason people flocked to foraging at that time was due to food insecurity. Grocery stores routinely ran short on items and people lost their jobs, got sick, and died. The pandemic also saw a renewed interest in gardening, baking, canning, and other traditional foodways. We're currently seeing prices skyrocket at the supermarket while working people's wages are for the most part stagnant. For the DNR to act like foraging is only a matter of recreation is especially egregious in this context.
Maybe for some folks foraging is simply a pleasant way to pass the time. But anecdotally speaking, foraging has been and continues to be a necessary food source for myself and many people I know. Indeed, this study by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that “foraging can be a no-cost source of fresh, micro-nutrient dense food which may be particularly beneficial for low-income and/or food insecure households.” The study goes on to say that “foragers may engage in stewardship practices that minimize their harvests of certain species and reduce their impacts on these systems” and “these characteristics suggest foraging could contribute to healthy, diverse, and resilient urban food systems.”
Since the study above was conducted in Baltimore, the authors focused on means of procuring food in an urban environment. However, it goes without saying that foraging can contribute to “healthy, diverse, and resilient” food systems everywhere. This aspect is ignored by DNR officials, who assert that foraging is purely a recreational act. However, as discussed above, the DNR is bound by Minnesota State Statutes, which defines subsistence activities like hunting, fishing, trapping as recreation. Part of the statute states that these activities are conducted “primarily for the purposes of pleasure, rest, or relaxation.” I can’t speak for everybody’s intentions, but when I lived in rural Michigan I spent a lot of time engaged in these activities. While I definitely derived pleasure from them, my primary purpose in hunting, fishing, and trapping was to collect food. In my opinion, the statute is written from an upper class/upper middle class perspective, in which foraging, hunting, and similar activities are regarded as fun games and adventures rather than practical means to feed your family. The statute may have to be changed to better reflect the actual needs of most people.
This is the only legitimate way to procure food.
Policies such as this wouldn’t be in place if people in power regarded foraging as a legitimate practice to obtain food. Instead, foraging is seen as “unsustainable,” while buying monocropped food from the grocery store is totally fine. People who accuse foragers of stealing food from wildlife are ignoring where their own food comes from: by-and-large gigantic farms that displace animals, deplete topsoil and water resources, and spray toxic chemicals. Even small-scale organic farms necessarily displace wildlife—all farms are created for human use and lack the biodiversity of a healthy forest, prairie, or savannah. It is only considered harmful to gather food from wild areas due to a cultural bias that assumes a hard distinction between humans and nature. Buying food from the store is fine because that’s human infrastructure, whereas the forest is not. Modern humans are supposed to live in cities and spend money to obtain food and treat nature as a pretty museum, all the while ignoring the fact that our way of life is made possible by nature and necessarily affects the entire planet. Farms and stores and cities aren’t separate from nature—they are inherently intertwined. Viewing ourselves as separate from nature is part of the problem that contributes to our current ecological crisis.
“Even people who intentionally break the law often do so for legitimate reasons, such as pulling invasive plants or due to economic pressures. These people aren’t Captain Planet supervillains seeking to destroy the Earth. In truth, the people doing the most harm are fossil fuel executives and other people in positions of power—not folks poaching mushrooms to feed their families.”
Instead of banning or limiting foraging in an effort to reduce humans’ effect on our surrounding landscape, we should acknowledge that the actions of people always affect the Earth. In modern Western culture, it’s assumed that impact is always negative, but that doesn’t have to be the case! We can build a healthy, diverse, and resilient food system that includes foraging and works to restore habitat and biodiversity. Foragers build a deep connection with the land they forage from and act to steward that land. While it’s true that some people don’t harvest wild edibles in a sustainable way, this is generally due to a lack of education. Most people who overharvest wild edibles or break the law when foraging are well-meaning. Speaking from my experience of teaching foraging and other nature-related skills for over a decade and as an admin of a foraging Facebook group of over 18,000 members, I can say that by-and-large, people are simply confused about the law or sustainable foraging practices. Even people who intentionally break the law often do so for legitimate reasons, such as pulling invasive plants or due to economic pressures. These people aren’t Captain Planet supervillains seeking to destroy the Earth. In truth, the people doing the most harm are fossil fuel executives and other people in positions of power—not folks who poach mushrooms to feed their families.
How You Can Help
Foraging wild edibles builds a direct relationship with our surrounding landscape, connects us to our ancestors, and sustainably provides some of the most nutritionally-dense food on the planet.
From North Minneapolis to the North Woods, all Minnesotans deserve access to green spaces and healthy, culturally relevant foods. Foraging wild edibles builds a direct relationship with our surrounding landscape, connects us to our ancestors, and sustainably provides some of the most nutritionally-dense food on the planet. However, the Minnesota DNR is working to restrict foraging access by instituting an arbitrary bag limit on fruits and mushrooms harvested from state parks. We need to join together to educate those in power about the beneficial impact foraging has on the land and its people. Coming together, we can preserve this vital skill for future generations while instituting a more relational method of stewarding the land we love.
Join us in taking action!
Send a letter to your local Minnesota state legislators.
Email the DNR to add yourself to the contact list for the public hearings.
Fill out this Google Form from the Minnesota Mycological Society to join the conversation with fellow foragers regarding foraging laws on public land in Minnesota.
Thank you!