top | item 20650719

Food is free if you know where to look

161 points| eldfgl | 6 years ago |fallingfruit.org | reply

91 comments

order
[+] saboot|6 years ago|reply
I see it has listed a fruit tree in my yard... Is there a way to revoke that? I've given permission to my neighbors to pick as long as they knock, not to randoms.
[+] morganvachon|6 years ago|reply
Around 2000-2001 I rented a house in the small town where I grew up, and there was a plum tree in the yard. I mentioned to the landlord that I had been approached by the neighborhood kids asking if they could harvest from the tree, and the landlord said he had no problem with it if I didn't mind (that was his arrangement with the last renter).

Kudos to the kids for asking first, and at first I didn't mind, but they ended up climbing on my pickup truck parked near the tree (the only place to park it) and dented the hood and roof in several places. After I showed them the damage and asked them not to climb on my truck, I had a gaggle of neighborhood moms beating my door down to tell me how much of a prick I was to forbid their children from climbing my truck to get to the tree. I ended up having to call the cops to have them removed.

When the landlord found out I called the cops on them, he took their side and asked me to find another place to live (I wasn't under a lease, it was a month to month rental agreement).

I'm a homeowner now, in a house that is not in a neighborhood specifically so I can avoid incidents where people feel they have a right to invade my space and damage my property. Again, I'd have no problem if I had a fruit tree in my yard today and people walking past wanted to get a bite to eat as long as they are courteous about it, but mob mentality is not something I'm comfortable with.

[+] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
I wasn’t sure whether this was the group, but based in your comment I think it is.

I browsed through their Portland map at length and was disappointed to see how many listings there were in private property where the commenters were clearly not the owners.

This is trespassing, and theft. My landlord years back planted an Asian pear and I don’t think she ever got a single piece of fruit because someone cleared the whole tree two years running. It was by the porch, up a decent flight of steps, not on the sidewalk.

Don’t be an asshole. Don’t do this, and don’t put up with people inciting others to theft.

If you notice a neighbor isn’t picking their fruit at all, talk to City Fruit or a similar group, and they will approach them about getting permission to glean. Then everybody wins, including the local food bank.

[+] JTbane|6 years ago|reply
It's somewhat amusing when you rediscover the tragedy of the commons and the idea of scarcity by providing free access to your fruit tree.
[+] shakna|6 years ago|reply
You could try their feedback email [0], but it looks like most of the data is being sourced from other datasets, so your problem likely lies with one of them.

[0] [email protected]

[+] softwarelimits|6 years ago|reply
This seems to be a good website to advertise for trained dogs :)
[+] Dowwie|6 years ago|reply
Before you end up stealing someone's private property, introduce yourself to the property owner and ask for permission. If the property owner changes, you have to go through the process again. Rights aren't grandfathered in.

This seems to be beyond what many people are capable of. This app is going to be shut down.

[+] tasuki|6 years ago|reply
There's something about the concept of private property that gets people properly riled up. It's mine, my preciousss!

What if you live in a monarchy and all the land and all the trees belong to the king? Do you have moral/ethical right to steal fruit from the king's trees?

There are very few private trees around where I am. This app lists a lot of trees in public spaces around me - trees I never gave a second thought before. I'm grateful for it.

> This app is going to be shut down.

Pray tell more. By whom?

[+] aphextron|6 years ago|reply
Someone should do this for tech meetups with free pizza and beer. I practically lived on those my first year in the bay area. If you're smart you can eat for free every night of the week in exchange for listening to a few boring lightning talks and recruiter pitches.
[+] dfeojm-zlib|6 years ago|reply
Terrible nutrition though, most def not how to run your body optimally.

Freeganing can save you bank.

Hit up the nicer grocery stores: Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Lunardi's, Nob Hill. Find out their schedules for throwing away perfectly good food because the arbitrary/conservative date on it "expired." One of my friends frequently scores expensive cuts of filet mignon steaks that they just toss (I'm vegetarian when it would increase demand for animal ag).

You don't need to waste time pretending to be interested in Meetups.

Also, if you go in the back of Starbucks and other chains that serve food, maybe an hour before closing time, you can score healthy vittles. (The give my friend all the black bean burritos and chicken salads he can carry.)

Personally, I'd be worried about eating fruit from trees in dense urban areas or near highways due to pollution and also pollution from landscape management (i.e., pesticides).

[+] enz|6 years ago|reply
But, you have to pay the taxi/train/Uber to go to every event across the city, right?
[+] shireboy|6 years ago|reply
It lists a virginia creeper in my area. Which has poisonous berries and can cause skin irritation...
[+] spodek|6 years ago|reply
Check out Rob Greenfield if you haven't: https://www.youtube.com/user/RobJGreenfield.

He's living for a year on only food he planted or forages from naturally growing sources. He's in Orlando, Florida.

I find him inspirational. I'm now growing tomatoes, herbs, and salad greens in my windowsill and I've foraged several pounds of fruit and herbs from near my home -- and I live in Manhattan!

I can't believe how delicious and plentiful they are.

[+] vallismortis|6 years ago|reply
Sarnia, Ontario has an entry labeled "Dumpster (edible)". It sounds like something you'd encounter in Nethack.
[+] acak|6 years ago|reply
OMG I laid the groundwork for the Falling Fruit mobile app, but I had to step aside and it was all so long ago! It has come along leaps and bounds since then.

The browser app has always been way ahead and the programmers behind the whole idea are super competent.

https://github.com/falling-fruit/falling-fruit-mobile.git

[+] marble-drink|6 years ago|reply
I always wonder why projects like this don't use OpenStreetMap. Public (and private) fruit sources could actually be added to OSM itself.
[+] sct202|6 years ago|reply
Especially considering the API costs of using Google maps now. I'm assuming they're getting free credits, but the list price per 1k loads is $7 so hopefully they're getting a lot for free.
[+] zufallsheld|6 years ago|reply
There's also https://mundraub.org/map, a map that shows free fruits (mainly in Germany).
[+] softwarelimits|6 years ago|reply
Unfortunately they do not open source their code.

Also I found this one:

"Wir gendern nicht, weil wir bei der Umerziehung des Menschen durch Sprachmanipulation nicht mitmachen wollen und weil die Mehrheit von euch dies laut Umfrage auch so sieht."

[+] iserlohnmage|6 years ago|reply
Thank you. Would like pick up some Bärlauch.
[+] angarg12|6 years ago|reply
Today I've read an article about how Spanish farmers let fruit rot on the tree, since prices are so low that they can't cover the cost of labour.

Someone asked on the comments why they don't just let people go and grab as much fruit as they want, if it's going to waste anyway. The answer might be 'because regulations'. If you got a farm and people pick up fruit for free, does it count as unpaid labour? Could you get sued? People rather not take the risk. Not to mention the implications of allowing random people to freely roam your property, etc.

[+] lhorie|6 years ago|reply
On my side of the ocean, people will gladly _pay_ to pick their own fruit (and pay even more to the ice cream stand by the parking lot on their way out). Just google u-pick.
[+] ChrisSD|6 years ago|reply
In the UK there are farms that let you go round picking strawberries or other fruits. And people pay for the experience. I'm not sure that regulations come in to it.
[+] JetSpiegel|6 years ago|reply
Sue for what? It's not labour if the farmer doesn't get anything.

Plus, lawsuits for trivial stuff are not common outside the USA.

[+] JustSomeNobody|6 years ago|reply
I’m sure they have to worry about damage to the trees as well.
[+] eldfgl|6 years ago|reply
I think that 'street fruit' is a great resource. There are many fruit trees in neighborhoods that are under harvested, with piles of 'ground fruit.' I've always played by the rule that if I could reach it from the sidewalk, and it was overflowing, I would take some. For sure though, don't harm the fruit-producing plant, or any property surrounding it, because that's not considerate.
[+] 0xcafecafe|6 years ago|reply
There is a documentary I watched called "dive" a few years back which had a guy feeding his entire family with food he could get from the dumpsters of grocery stores. And it was not just unhealthy stuff. Fruits which were almost ripe like bananas are thrown out. The food wastage gives a good opportunity for free meals if we know where to look.
[+] baalimago|6 years ago|reply
Swedes will hate this app. Don't you dare take my secret mushroom spots!
[+] Alterlife|6 years ago|reply
Seriously though if somebody else posted your secret mushroom spot on the map, it wasn't a secret to start with.
[+] lerpoel|6 years ago|reply
In my city it is full of dumpster diving spots that seems to be imported from trashwiki(?).

Three of four fruit trees in a sea of trash compactors, electronic waste disposals and residential trash. I can filter on a specific category but I can't seem to filter "everything but a specific category" to get rid of the freegan stuff.

[+] EvRev|6 years ago|reply
Super cool project! I was interested in something similar!! Glad to see they open sourced the data as well!!!
[+] Talyen42|6 years ago|reply
Apparently not, I live in a metropolitan area of >1m people and there are just countless markers for "Dumpster (non-edible)" spanning the map.
[+] hollerith|6 years ago|reply
I'm going to be the cynic here and assign a high probability that eventually the insiders running the site will keep the really good spots to themselves, e.g., make it so that information about the really good spots is visible to the user id or IP address that uploaded the information and to the insiders, but not to the general public.

In the 1994, the last time I had information about them, the employees of the San Francisco Food Bank felt free to take any of the donations with the result that the clients of the Food Bank got whatever the employees did not want.

[+] sova|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's like "Facebook keeping all the good friends for itself." It's kinda hard to "hide a tree" when they live multiple decades and people can keep independent databases. Not really something worth trying to hide imo. Perhaps technologically feasible on a day-to-day level, but if it were ever discovered, the scandal that would ensue would be disastrous to the whole project. And the whole point is to connect more mouths to more fruits, hoarding is actually counterproductive. That's wild about the Food Bank -- similar things probably happen in general for the "people who keep score for the game tend to have a higher score" thing. I wonder sometimes about the creators of those dating apps, and if they are also skimming top applicants.
[+] camjohnson26|6 years ago|reply
Got to say this is an impressively dense map, there's plenty of options within 1 mile of my current location. Seems dangerous to use this info though, who knows what kinds of pesticides are sprayed on those fruit trees for example.
[+] rmason|6 years ago|reply
Who goes around spraying apple trees on public land? I'd be far more worried about finding a worm in my apple!

I do appreciate the efforts of the team behind this map. Found a strawberry patch only a couple of miles from my place.

[+] jobigoud|6 years ago|reply
I'm more concerned about contamination by heavy metals from car exhaust and other pollutants. The metals like nickel, cadmium and lead end up in the soil and then in the fruits and you can't wash it away. Not sure about fruit trees but I know it's a concern for tomatoes grown in urban context.

https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/topics/topic/metals-contaminan...

[+] shireboy|6 years ago|reply
We were foraging for blackberries along a popular walking trail once, and an older man gave me a bit of advice I'll never forget: don't pick the lower ones- thems the ones dogs pee on.