Active Wild Food Practices among Culturally Diverse Groups in the 21st Century across Latgale, Latvia

Abstract

Local ecological knowledge (LEK), including but not limited to the use of wild food plants, plays a large role in sustainable natural resource management schemes, primarily due to the synergy between plants and people. There are calls for the study of LEK in culturally diverse areas due to a loss of knowledge, the active practice of utilizing wild plants in various parts of the world, and a decline in biodiversity. An ethnobotanical study in a border region of Latvia, characterised by diverse natural landscapes and people with deep spiritual attachments to nature, provided an opportunity for such insight, as well as the context to analyse wild food plant usages among different sociocultural groups, allowing us to explore the differences among these groups. Semi-structured interviews were carried out as part of a wider ethnobotanical field study to obtain information about wild food plants and their uses. The list of wild food plant uses, derived from 72 interviews, revealed a high level of homogenisation (in regards to knowledge) among the study groups, and that many local uses of wild food plants are still actively practiced. People did not gather plants as a recreational activity but rather as a source of diet diversification. The results provide evidence of the importance of safeguarding ecological and cultural diversity due to high local community dependency on natural resources.

Foraging Practices and Sustainable Management of Wild Food Resources in Europe: A Systematic Review

“…This means that local communities are usually more interested in plants as an economic opportunity rather than in their preservation. The relationship between resource use and resource availability is not static and can lead to decreased abundance of certain species, and thus a reduction in biodiversity [134,152]. These are the main reasons why the heritagization of wild plants could imply the risk of their overexploitation, i.e., foraging mainly driven by economic reasons might result in less sustainable gathering practices [33,35,57,88,144].…”

The Nolan Index: A Quantitative Measure of List Similarities

“…This is the case in some of the previously cited ethnobiological studies which, to their credit, present disaggregated, elicited data in the form of relative frequencies of ‘mention’ by respondents for potential further analyses (e.g. Ludwinsky et al 2021, Figure 3; Prūse et al 2021, Table 2 and Stryamets et al 2021, Table 3). Looking ahead, now that NI is formulated, we hope it will serve to motivate the collection, analysis and/or search for more precise quantitative data in the future, which in so doing, may yield more precise results in future applications.…”

“…Amjad et al 2017; Kayani et al 2015; Liu et al 2020; Ludwinsky et al 2021; Porcher et al 2022; Sivasankari, Anandharaj and Gunasekaran 2014), wild food plant uses (e.g. Belichenko et al 2021; Prūse et al 2021), medicinal plant uses (e.g. Gonzalez-Tejero et al 2008; Malik et al 2018; Mattalia et al 2021, 17–19; Meireles, de Albuquerque and de Medeiros 2021; Pieroni et al 2014; Prakofjewa et al 2022; Sõukand, Kalle and Pieroni 2022) and other cultural practices (e.g.…”

Multigenerational differences in harvesting and use of wild edible fruits and nuts in the South Caucasus

“…colonialism, industrialisation, globalisation, etc.) (Lulekal et al, 2011; Pawera et al, 2017; Ulian et al, 2020; Sõukand et al, 2021; Aceituno‐Mata et al, 2021; Pieroni et al, 2021; Prūse et al, 2021; Nataliya Stryamets et al, 2022). Aside from an important food source, many edible plants also have other uses, such as fibre, medicines and pest control (Aceituno‐Mata et al, 2021; Ulian et al, 2020).…”