Wood*ing Wild Food Lab is a true scientific laboratory dedicated to cataloging wild food (wild herbs, fruits, mushrooms, algae, berries, and more), primarily plant-based, from around the planet from a chemical/nutritional perspective. We don't just work in Italy but also collaborate with many international entities, such as UC Davis University in California, which has a department specifically studying this subject.
We also promote wild food culture in various ways, starting with both amateur and professional training. Through consultations, we develop low environmental impact products, not only traditional but also edible, like the so-called food forests.
Additionally, we have many institutional projects that spread the culture of wild food and foraging—the art of gathering wild food—aiming to sometimes restore the synergistic relationship between humans and the forest, contextualizing it over time.
For instance, we have the "Thinking like a Forest" project, shared with ERSAF and located in certified Lombardy forests. Its goal is to reclaim abandoned former agricultural areas, often in mountainous regions (former pastures), while simultaneously training young people from those areas in foraging, passing on the value of the human-forest synergy. The abandonment of agricultural areas, such as pastures, causes significant cultural and ecological damage, leading to the loss of biodiversity in a semi-anthropized habitat due to the phenomenon of "forest encroachment."
In such cases, after cleaning up the pasture, we re-seed the same wild plants that once grew there before abandonment, helping biodiversity return to a state close to its original condition.
We also taught foraging six hours a week in an agricultural and hospitality school for a full year, and the results were astounding: a large portion of the students, who statistically would have left their territories, learned to see their surrounding environment as a resource, creating entrepreneurial activities that rekindled the socio-economic and tourism fabric of the area, all while fully respecting the environment.
In summary, what we want to communicate is that the forest is not just "wood" or "hiking," but an endless source of culture and resources. It is crucial for humans to reconnect synergistically with it, stopping the view that the "natural" and "human" spheres are separate.
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