
Living Farms has been partnering with forest-dwelling ethnic communities toward reviving their agroforestry and deepening their communitarian ethos, strengthening their ethics of caring and sharing, and learning from their ecological consciousness which is reflected in their respectful symbiotic relationship with biodiversity. Living Farms also works on strategies to negotiate with the social and economic development processes and create narratives to uphold the cultural values of the ecosystem people.
The forest has always been an integral part of the cultures of forestdwelling people. It defines their being and becoming, a source of their livelihood and collective memory, a vital link between their past and present. In the words of Jagannath Majhi, a Kondh farmer, “We are as much part of the forest as the forest is part of us. We cultivate the land while the land cultivates us”.
The forest villagers collect a wide variety of foods from the forest; edible leaves, fruits, flowers, seeds, stems, roots and tubers, and mushrooms. Forest foods play a variety of roles in their food cultures, as famine foods, some as staple, some as snack foods for children, and some as delicacies. These foods are available round the year, equitably accessible to all, and encompass the forest people’s life – as a safety net, a source of vital minerals and rare delicacies, cultural relatedness, and social rootedness.
We conducted a previous study to explore the importance of forest foods in the life of forest-dwelling people, and brought out a report earlier in 2014, showing the substantial contribution of forest foods to the annual food consumption in the Adivasi households. We extended this study to explore the linkages of forest ecological status and management systems with the flow and availability of forest foods. Our mentor and friend Dr. Debal Deb designed this study, analysed the data, and interpreted the
findings. It is published jointly by Rosa-Luxemburg- Stiftung (RLS) and Living Farms.
We do hope the findings of this action research will contribute to enable policy makers as well as forest researchers to recognize the value of local food cultures that are intrinsically linked to forests to provide safe, diverse and nutritious foods throughout the year for the Adivasi and other forest communities; acknowledge the role of forest communities as custodians of our forest biodiversity; and thereby highlight the need
to implement Community Forest Rights as per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA); and to integrate the forest in the food and nutrition related policy decisions.
Debjeet
Content
Preface
1. Introduction
1.1 Food from the Forest: Considered Yet Undervalued
1.2 Carrying forward from Previous Work
1.3 Objectives and Plan of the Present Work
2. Study Sites
2.1 District Rayagada
2.2 District Balangir
2.3 Forest Types and Physiognomy
2.4 Forest Management Profiles
3. Study Design and Methods
3.1 Study Design
3.2 Forest Mensuration
3.3 Estimation of Species Diversity and Abundance
3.4 Quantification of Harvest of Wild Foods
3.5 Nutraceutical Analyses of Wild Food Samples
4. Major Findings: Forest Ecological Status and Food Biota
4.1 Forests of Rayagada District
4.2 Forests of Balangir District
5. Forest Food Availability and Influx into Villages
5.1 Wild Food from Forests in Rayagada District
5.2 Wild Food from Forests in Balangir District
5.3 Food Species and Their Edible Parts
6. The Relationship between Forest Ecological Status and Food Availability
7. Relationship of Food Cultures with Wild Food Harvest
8. The Nutritional Value of Wild Foods from the Forest
9. Summary and Overview
10. Limitation of the Study
Acknowledgements
References
More information on the Website of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung South Asia in New Delhi.