Submission Date

7-29-2024

Document Type

Paper

Department

Environmental Studies

Faculty Mentor

Patrick Hurley

Comments

Presented during the 26th Annual Summer Fellows Symposium, July 19, 2024 at Ursinus College.

Project Description

Food forests are regenerative agricultural systems designed to support people and wildlife, with Indigenous knowledge and practices often guiding their stewardship. The Ursinus College Food Forest (UCFF) at the Whittaker Environmental Research Station is one such system. As a relatively young “living-learning laboratory”, the UCFF serves to connect student stewards, other students from the College, community visitors, and the Lenape people to many food and material-producing plants. The UCFF also functions to strengthen the College’s reconciliation with the Lenape people, upon whose unceded ancestral land our campus and the site are situated. Honoring Ursinus’s commitment to the Welcome Home Project, the UCFF seeks to enact the Honorable Harvest by recognizing and showing gratitude for the connection between people and the gifts provided by the species planted. As the UCFF continues to establish itself, the question of what to do with its harvests is pressing. To address this question, this research compiles a database of usages for plant species at the UCFF. Better understanding how these species benefit people, particularly the Lenape, and wildlife provides a starting point for determining how to more equitably distribute its yields across different stakeholder groups: food-insecure community members, indigenous peoples, and wildlife. In doing so, these distribution pathways must be balanced within a formal context that must consider A.) The agricultural conservation easement present; B.) Indigenous reconciliation efforts through the WHP; and C.) The growing need for the UCFF to generate revenue to support future programmatic directions and the Delaware Tribe itself.

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Available for download on Wednesday, July 30, 2025

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Available to all.

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