Bruce French from Tasmania points us to a vast range of edible food resources

We are grateful to Bruce French for an article about edible foods and his own journey. Did you know that there are about 20,000 edible plant species in the world? They represent a vast and largely untapped source of nourishment. Knowledge about these foods could help people in some of the poorest countries of the world.

Bruce French, founder of Food Plants International, was living in Papua New Guinea, and noticed that many villagers suffered disease and malnutrition, often while surrounded by nutritious food plants.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know anything about their local plants, but there were clearly a lot more edible plants than was readily recognised. Also, there was very little nutritional information available about the plants. Bruce observed that most of the information taught in agricultural colleges related to temperate plants commonly produced in Western agriculture.

From these humble beginnings, Bruce set out to document the food plants of Papua New Guinea, an effort that soon spread to include the entire world of food plants and became the Tasmania-based Food Plants International

Check out the FPI website to find out about your favourite edible plants. My guess is that there are many nourishing plants that could supplement the few that dominate our current diet.

The photo on this page shows a species of a species of Quinoa (Temuco) and a mixed grain amaranth growing on a UK allotment.

Bruce French offers us his own reflections on his life, and faith, in the article that follows:

Care for God’s Creation

Since Christians have stopped arguing about how God made the world and have
started to live in it and treat it as if it is God’s world, exciting prospects come to
the fore. It is a bit of a wake‐up surprise when we realise that God didn’t stop
being creative after the first “six days” of creation and the Bible goes on using the
creative word “Bara” throughout, to alert us to the fact that God is alive and
active in his world, continually doing new things that scientists continue to
explore and describe. These are truths that we should have known well, as Paul
reminds the Colossians that they are in danger of marginalising the Jesus who
made and runs the Universe and who does this for himself! (Col. 1:15‐17) Paul
was calling them to an active engagement with Jesus as he reconciles “all things”
to himself. Similarly the writer to Hebrews lays the profound foundation in the
first four verses as he reaffirms Jesus as heir of the Universe and also its
Sustainer. Naturally both passages continue with their call to all people to a
repentance and renewal to Jesus as Lord. Our “secular” society loudly rings the
alarm bells of a creation out of tune with its Creator as they speak of global
warming, loss of biodiversity, insect and pest resistance, declining yields and
lack of sustainability.

With warm childhood memories I recall how we were taught the Sermon on the
Mount (now endlessly repeated inside buildings) to ensure us that it is God who
feeds the birds and clothes the lilies. Somehow, this has often been relegated to a
past tense activity, in the same way that Charles Darwin did in his conclusion to
the first edition of “The Origin of Species”. Then we allow “Laws of Science” to do
what God alone can do – run the Universe. The Psalmist in his magnificent hymn
of praise in Psalm 104 takes us for a walk into the countryside to blow the
cobwebs out of our musty thoughts and to let us again experience God active in
His Creation. What still amazes me is the Psalmist’s affirmation that God enjoys
running his world (v 31).

For an agriculturist like myself, Isaiah 28:23‐29 is a gem. Not only does it
emphasise that each plant has its right place (called agro‐ecology, these days),
but also that we should make careful and insightful observations about minor
food plants such as caraway and cumin. One of my expensive books on herbs
featured the two plants as overlays on the one page then suggested that we treat
them both similarly!

In my international consultancies, the United Nations FAO have asked could they
call me an “agro‐ecologist” and then successively an “agro‐sociologist” as I have
sought to put these Biblical principles into practice. I am glad that they could see
my love for good ecology and my love for people being well fed, but I would have
been more inspired if they had simply called me “Christian” and had understood
these outcomes as an automatic outworking of my faith within my profession.
One of those elusive almost magical concepts and words that must be included in
every consultant’s report on feeding the world, is the word “sustainable”. It still
intrigues me that they give “Nature” a power that they indicate, while denying
there is anyone at home, but then they affirm and personify the word and world
itself. It has intrigued me that two of Australia’s top scientists have personally
objected to my dedication in a reference book on the edible plants of Solomon
Islands, where I affirm God as the one who creates this diversity for people’s
provision. What intrigues me more is the fundamentalist orthodoxy of their
atheist faith that they promote so vehemently. So I am glad that there is a global
re‐affirmation of the duty and role of Christians to enjoy God’s world and fulfil
God’s cultural and creational mandate, given at the genesis of human activities.
Somehow greed has meant that we have given more prominence to the “Subdue
and rule” of Genesis 1 than the “Serve and preserve” (2:15) of the second
chapter. It’s no wonder thorns and thistles are used as indicators of people out
of touch with their creator.

What has it meant for my life’s work? At this stage I probably have one of the
world’s largest databases of edible plants of the world. (Written in accessible
English!) Daily I become amazed at God’s astounding provision of suitable edible
food plants for every location on planet earth. This extends from 7 edible species
in Antarctica to plants able to survive in the hot arid Tanami desert in Australia
with fruit that have 100 times the Vitamin C of citrus. Meanwhile, one of the
greatest environmental disasters in Australia is pumping our mighty Murray
River dry growing Citrus for Vitamin C! Sir Ghillean Prance, a leading Christian
botanist bemoans the Amazon rainforest destroyed recently to grow a lone crop
of soybean to fatten beef cattle in Britain! (“When Enough is Enough”, 2007,
Apollos/IVP). Currently I have located about 20,000 edible plant species and am
seeking to highlight and promote these to ameliorate the criminal levels of
malnutrition that exist for half our world’s population in the 81 poorest
countries, all of which are in the tropics and subtropics. (It’s time for a G81
Conference!) A portion of this information is available free on the internet at
Food Plants International.
A more comprehensive, illustrated and referenced database is available free to anyone genuinely committed to doing
something about this crisis in the undernourished half of the world. For this they
would need to contact me and it would be appreciated
if they could copy and distribute this to others to save me the distraction in a
world where a child dies of malnutrition every 4‐5 seconds.

Belatedly, in a busy and distracted lifestyle pastoring a church and “Helping the
Hungry Feed Themselves”, our church leadership have decided we should make
better use of our extensive church grounds by establishing a demonstration
garden of the 190 indigenous edible plants of Tasmania. We have yet to practice
what we preach.

(you can leave messages for Bruce as a comment on this article or through the contact button)

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