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Obligatory:
Face = palm
“‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.” - Leviticus 19:9, 10
I remember when I was young I got ticketed for trespassing on public property. I was so offended. Yet that’s the society we live in. Public resources aren’t for use by the public, they are for use by the small fraction of the public who control them.
I can’t recall the source, but I remember hearing that the Amazon, generations ago, was farmed. The trees aren’t distributed naturally, or something like that, we see signs of intentional crop management. However, it was done in a symbiotic way with nature so that it almost looks natural, until you look closer. With lots of fruit trees and food sources so that food was an abundant free resource.
Wish I could remember the source for this, sounds like heaven on earth, working with nature is all we need to rediscover freedom.
You’re thinking about indigenous groups that farmed parts of the Amazon. You want a rabbit hole? Google Terra preta. See you in a few years ;)
I’ve been told that this is a no-go for city planners because the sheer quantity of fallen fruit can be a walking hazard, and no one wants the legal liability. What it comes down to is that “free” fruit trees would require additional ongoing maintenance costs. Nothing nefarious, just logistical issues.
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How fucked is it that our first thoughts are about cars and sidewalks?
Cars, yeah it’s fucked. But I think keeping things walkable is good.
No doubt, but look at the black and white thinking in this thread. We can’t have fruit trees at all because they might interfere with sidewalks, or because city planners might get in a huff.
I’m not discounting the legitimate concerns of trafficability or zoning, but to write it off completely for these concerns is trash. If we can engineer a tailings dam and plan for 100 year floods that might ruin it, then we can figure out a way to permit fruit bearing trees in cities.
I think people are thinking more that if you want to feed people just give them food you buy is more cost effective.
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You’re coming on pretty strong and I haven’t even had my coffee.
There are other comments about the topics I am getting at. I’m not attacking you but agreeing with you.
Chill bruh.
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I’d say that’s a question for city planners.
“God created everything for billionaires to profit from!” Duh!
The town I grew up in had several public apple trees. I have fond memories of climbing the trees with my friends to get apples.
Maintenance is a thing, though. If not properly maintained, the apples will often grow too densely, yielding only small and sour apples. I would never consider the apples in my home town to be filling food - at best it would be a small snack. It would require a lot of labour to maintain a tree to the point where it would feed people in need.
I have an apple tree in my yard. It needs to be pruned and thinned at appropriate times. Sometimes pest control is required, but that’s pretty much it. If done properly, it is a couple of hours of work per year max
I’m guessing it’s an older apple tree? Because my two establishing plumb trees take a lot more work than a couple hours a year.
Most of the effort for fruit trees is spent getting them established and shaped the way you want. After 10-15 years of growth they mostly take care of themselves, but depending on your environment the first 5-10 can take a lot of time and effort just to keep them alive.
if that really is such a massive problem (i have never heard of that being a problem ever before, so what if they’re sour? just make cider then) just plant something else then, wild plums still taste great.
also like… you can just plant more trees, you don’t need one single tree to feed 500 people, there is a depressing amount of completely unused space in most urban areas which you can just fill with fruit-bearing plants.
I mean cmon though - in a capitalist country someone would take ALL the fruit and then sell it to people. “It was public but then it became MINE and if you want it you need to enrich MY wealth with a piece of YOUR value”
Then I say we enforce the social contract of “don’t be a fucking asshole”, with force if needed.
Somehow that simply doesn’t happen in any place with public fruit trees
that sounds like they’re doing work then, what’s the problem?
Hoarding and repackaging a free public good in order to sell it back to the people it was originally free for?
Do you work for Nestle?
you’d prefer not having fruits in the first place, just to prevent someone from harvesting and selling them?
Don’t sealion me, you know that’s not the argument I was making
My parents are happy when people pick fruits from the trees at the street. When they fall they rot no one except the wasps and insects have something from it.
No-good lazy workshy people stealing food from hardworking wasps 🤬🤬🤬🤬
Lol lmao. The right to the fruit of something is literally one of the kinds of Roman property law that informs European ideas of property rights.
Fruit trees are mostly just expensive to grow vs other kinds and can be unappealing if fruit spoils or attracts other animals. E.g. you probably wouldn’t want to play on the grass underneath an orange tree on all the little bits of orange after possums have at it.
Ginko Biloba would like to know your location
I don’t understand sorry
Yes I know what they are. I don’t see what this has to do with fruit.
These are the same people that run restaurants that will throw away perfectly good food instead of donating it and then keep their trash bins locked.
No legal advice, but I am pretty sure picking an apple from a tree in a public space (but can be privately owned) for direct consumption is legal in Germany. Weird but understandable that you need a law for that.
Laws regarding public access to nature are much better in Europe & the UK than in the US.
If I remember correctly, Trespassing isn’t a viable law in Finland.
You want to walk across the land? Go ahead.
In the US: CRIME
But what if you want to make moonshine or cook meth? How are you supposed to get some privacy with people traipsing all over the place?
invite them in for a taste test, and tell them that they get a discount if they bring you ingredients.
ironically i think this is technically not covered by nordic “right to roam” as that says you should avoid areas near housing, however if anyone tries to raise a stink about people picking fruits from public trees then everyone is going to tell them to shut up and stop being a miserable idiot.
There will be atleast 1 asshole trying to take all the aplles fer themselves. I guarantee it
And if you actually read the Wikipedia article you linked:
The work of Elinor Ostrom, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics is seen by some economists as having refuted Hardin’s claims.[1] Hardin’s views on over-population have been criticised as simplistic[2] and racist. [3]
…
Hardin’s work is criticised as historically inaccurate in failing to account for the demographic transition,[191] and for failing to distinguish between common property and open access resources.[192][193] Environmentalist Derrick Jensen claims the tragedy of the commons is used as propaganda for private ownership.[194][195] He says it has been used by the political right wing to hasten the final enclosure of the “common resources” of third world and indigenous people worldwide, as a part of the Washington Consensus.[196]
…
Other criticisms have focused on Hardin’s racist and eugenicist views, claiming that his arguments are directed towards forcible population control, particularly for people of color.[210][211]
The “tragedy of the commons” is one of those things that’s very Intuitive, but doesn’t actually hold up to much scrutiny.
So the BLM lied about the (Cliven and sons) Bundy cattle degrading US property? No, I don’t sympathize with them, just saying the answer may be somewhere between each extreme. Key word: “may,” because I’m not a conservation scientist and people are people.
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that just obviously doesn’t happen though, my city’s full of fruit trees all over and the absolute worst thing that happens is that dumb kids shake down some of the fruit because they’re dumb, and you can just… pick that up…
I actually really appreciate the rational response to this that people have had about waste fruit, the rotting, and the food chain that follows the fallen fruit.
I had wanted to plant a few fruit trees in my front yard and allow neighbors to just take fruit off of it. Lots of people walk up my 0.5mi dead-end road.
But then I remembered what every PYO farm is like…tons of rotting fruits sitting at the bottom of all of them. And any apple someone picks that isn’t 100% perfect gets tossed in the pile.
That’s a lot of maintenance. Totally doable for an individual or small group to maintain a small patch. Gets really difficult to scale up.
It’s worth keeping in mind though, if you want to feed people: we can just do that, we have the food and we have the infrastructure. Every person going hungry in a city with edible food in bins, produce discarded for not looking right and so on is going hungry because of policy decisions.
It is cheaper, healthier, and more successful to just distribute the food we already grow, make and transport than trying to turn everything into an orchid.
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I believe it happened I’ve had many insane conversations with people like this.
Like food banks and people will say well what if people that don’t need it go there. I’m like so what, if 1 in a 1000 abuses a system it doesn’t mean we should make the 999 suffer by removing it.
I only care when a single individual or group picks all of the fruit from the public trees just so that they can sell it down the road and profit from it.
Not sure about this particular conversation, but for extreme capitalists this is a thing. a Robert Heinlein novel is a place for them to start and misunderstand.
