Wild Foods - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 489

wild foods offer nutritious dietary supplements at low labor and financial costs. This is
important when considering the negative impact of a household's HIV/AIDS status on
income and food security (Kaschula 2008), together with the fact that deficiencies of
micronutrients (in which many wild foods are rich) critical to immune-system function
are “ commonly observed in people living with HIV in all settings” (Piwoz and Bentley
2005, 934). Food stress associated with HIV/AIDS can drive households to intensify
wild food use, putting unsustainable pressure on local resources, especially when com-
bined with deepening poverty or indeed conflict (Dudley et al. 2002). In South Africa,
Kaschula (2008) found that wild food use was significantly more likely in households
afflicted by HIV.
However, use of wild foods could also decline due to HIV/AIDS. For example, at one
site, it was found that “households suffering the loss of a head of household were actu-
ally less likely to gather from the bush” (Hunter et al. 2009, 29). Further relevant drivers
include the loss of ecological knowledge as adults die (Ansell et al. 2009), declines in
household labor (de Waal and Whiteside 2003; Kaschula 2008), and the stigma attached
to HIV/AIDS (Kaschula 2008).
Armed conflict and associated internal displacement are associated with heavy sub-
sistence use of wild foods by refugees, combatants, and resident noncombatants, and
with the sale or barter of wildlife for food (Loucks et al. 2009) or other goods. Conflict—
often positively correlated with areas of high biodiversity—is generally associated with
landscape degradation (Loucks et al. 2009). It is conceivable that this could lead to a
decline in the long-term use of wild food species. Climate change is also predicted to
increase armed conflict in some developing countries (Buhaug et al. 2008).
Loss of Local Ecological
Knowledge (LEK)
Local ecological knowledge is required for the identification, collection, and prepara-
tion of wild foods (Pilgrim et al. 2008). The distribution of LEK between individuals
in a community is usually differentiated by gender, age, or social role. Several studies
show women score higher on food-related knowledge (Price 1997; Somnasang 1998;
Styger et al. 1999). In one Nepalese site, women above thirty-five years of age were able
to describe the uses of 65 percent of all edible species, whereas young men could only
describe 23 percent (Shrestha and Dhillon 2006). Somnasang et al. (1998) found that
while men had more knowledge of hunting and fishing, women had more knowledge of
wild food plants, insects, and shrimp. In Ethiopia, children gather fruit for consumption
by the whole community, and unsurprisingly, those under thirty had the most knowl-
edge of wild fruits (Fentahun and Hager 2009).
Research has pointed to declines in LEK (Pilgrim et al. 2008) as communities rely
increasingly on store-bought foods and move away from land-based livelihoods.