Экоактивист Робин Гринфилд отправился в путешествие по США, питаясь исключительно дикорастущими растениями

Forage King brings gospel of gathering to Northwest Published 6:53 pm Sunday, July 5, 2026 Could you last a year if you had to forage 100% of your food? Even for the most audacious disciple of self-subsistence it’s an outrageous proposition. So why would Robin Greenfield, a 39-year-old environmental activist from Wisconsin, not only take on such a challenge, but then make it harder for himself? “No medicine will come from the store, farm or garden either,” promises Greenfield, who rolled through the Pacific Northwest last week on a promotional tour. “I will harvest dozens of wild plants for medicinal herbal teas from elderberry syrup to medicinal mushroom teas to sweet fern, goldenrod and echinacea. This will be the ultimate test of the philosophy, ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.’” Greenfield is telling his story on a tour for Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food, which includes a foreword by pioneering farm-to-table restaurateur Alice Waters. The “empowerment manual” recounts a year he spent exclusively eating foods he gardened and foraged himself. He’s now eight months into a 12-month cross-country journey during which he says he’ll eat only foraged foods. As a young man, Greenfield studied biology and aquatic science and worked in sales. In 2011, he says he woke up and realized how destructive his life of consumption had become to the planet. He’s now a spokesperson for intersectional environmentalism, “an inclusive version of environmentalism that advocates for both the protection of people and the planet.” We sat down in Portland to find out how the aptly named Greenfield has been getting along without grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants. Columbia Insight: Obvious opening question: Why full-time foraging? Robin Greenfield: I grew up with hippie parents who instilled a love for the earth in me, but from a young age I wanted to fit in. I was focused on money, a nice house and clothes. During summer vacations, I worked selling books door to door. That’s when I learned I could make a lot of money selling stuff. At age 25, I started a marketing company in San Diego with the goal of being a millionaire by 30. Everything was basically going according to plan. Then I started to watch documentaries and read books and learned that the way I was living was causing such destruction to the earth. I knew that I didn’t want to live that way anymore. I wanted to radically transform my life. CI: How did you begin the process? RG: I unraveled the web of consumerism in which I had so deeply woven my life. As I broke each strand, I created new strands of living simply, sustainably and in a community-type way. CI: Is there a guiding philosophy to your foraging lifestyle? RG: Our relationship with the earth is completely dependent on our relationship with ourselves and one another. A lot of my work is based around helping people love themselves because when we love ourselves, corporations can’t sell us stuff we don’t need. CI: How much foraging had you done before this year? RG: In 2018, I did a year of growing and foraging all my food in Orlando, Florida. During that year I learned a lot of foraging and saw that I could live without the grocery store. In 2022, I did a month of foraging for all my food without gardening. I foraged from July 1 to October 2025. I wasn’t majorly stockpiling. I was casually living my life, but I was harvesting a lot of the herbs that are only available during summertime. I had a freezer with a bunch of food in it. I didn’t have the ability to control the environment because I wasn’t gardening. CI: How is your year of foraging and traveling going? RG: Up to this point, more or less, it’s gone how I had planned for it to go. In a real sense, it has been fairly easy, but that’s because of my many years of experience going into it. Today, I ate serviceberries, thimbleberries and greens that I found while in Portland. CI: Have you done a lot of foraging in the Pacific Northwest? RG: I’ve only been in Oregon for a few days, but I have foraged here in the past. There’s a real abundance here. This is a special spot. So many people see the sense that if we’re gonna plant trees they should be producing food for people and animals. Two years ago, I walked from Canada to L.A., so I walked the Pacific Coast, and I spent a really nice summer in Oregon and, boy, is there a lot of abundance to be harvested. CI: What are some of your favorite plants to forage in the Northwest? RG: One plant that I learned about is the searocket. It’s a wild radish that grows on the beach, and it’s widespread in the coastal Pacific Northwest. Salal berries are native. It’s a nice, dark blueberry. Then, of course, huckleberries. My favorite thing to eat up here is Himalayan blackberries because I harvest them by the gallon. My greatest sadness is that I’m not here during blackberry season. CI: What’s the message behind Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food? RG: It’s the story of my year of growing and foraging all my food in 2018. The book is an experiment in the gift economy, so it’s not for sale. It’s available on a donation basis. One hundred percent of the profits are used to give the book freely to people who can’t afford it, and to indigenous and Black-led food sovereignty initiatives. That’s one of the most powerful ways that we can heal the earth and our relationships with one another. CI: So, you’re not doing this get rich? RG: I’ve always avoided involving money in my stuff, but one of the things we’re trying to do is plant a million fruit and nut trees over the next decade, and it takes resources to accomplish those sorts of things. We do some fundraising at the events through the book. CI: What sorts of events do you do when you come to a new city? RG: I introduce people to plants they may have seen before and never realized that they’re foods and medicines. I generally pick public parks where people are used to walking and being already. I focus on easy-to-identify beginner plants and keep things very simple. I walk through the basics of how to forage safely and sustainably in a way that doesn’t do any unnecessary harm to the ecosystem and the plants. CI: Is it fair to say you approach foraging as a spiritual quest? RG: Foraging for me is a gateway. I want to help people find the food and medicine that’s growing right outside their doors. Foraging is about finding a deep sense of belonging. When you walk out your door and you know the plants by name, and who they are, that enriches your life and it is a deep sense of belonging. We live in times where people are very lonely and separate. Through a relationship with the plants we can never be alone again. When we feel a connection to something, we are less likely to destroy it. So, foraging for me is definitely a gateway into critical thinking and into reconnecting with the earth.