Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic field work, this paper presents examples of urban foraging initiatives in in Tucson, Arizona in the United States, and discusses what insights they offer on the transition to a degrowth and sustainable society.

Paper long abstract:

Tucson, Arizona was designated as the first UNESCO City of Gastronomy in the U.S.A. in December 2015. One unique feature of this desert city’s food system which has gained attention is its many novel means of providing easy and affordable public access to diverse food crops, wild and cultivated, that have persisted among many cultures over long periods of Tucson’s history. Community gleaning collectives, public-private partnerships, and training initiatives for recognition and usage of cultivated and wild “free” foods are here examined as examples of the present-day “returns to the land”. Participants do not only focus on free, culturally appropriate and nutritious food as a crucial element of "good life" but understand their practices in acquiring and redistributing free food as a transition to curbing the usage of the desert’s most precious resource – water, and also functioning outside market-based neoliberal system. The paper will present participants in such initiatives, including landowners, volunteers, beneficiaries of free food, NGOs and city officials, and how meanings of “back to land” and “good life” are formed through their daily practices and imaginings. We see that out of daily practices and imaginings of gleaners and foragers arise images of “good life” focusing on abundance versus scarcity, and cooperation and solidarity among and across groups which also extent do their relationship with the environment. However, all of these practices depend heavily on human labor, class differences as well as funding for nonprofits and the city, which in turn raise new questions about social justice and long-term sustainability.