There are so many edible city/urban forage projects mushrooming all over the place, as the latest fad for artists, environmentalists and culinary types, I notice a certain perpetual reinvention of the wheel. All that data on where to find edible foodstuffs is locked-up in different formats usable only for that specific project. There is no technical reason why local data collected in Utrecht (http://plukdestad.nl/) or Amsterdam (http://urbanedibles.blogspot.com/) can't be dropped on worldwide maps (http://www.foodspotting.com/ and http://forage.rs/) or why old/dead projects can be imported as an initial dataset for a new project. It makes sense for local communities to maintain their own applications limited to a few streets or a neighbourhood. In fact territories as large as Utrecht (a medium sized city) already seems much too big to faithfully map. Foraging takes time, knowledge and heightened awareness, it can't be done haphazardly. It makes sense to harvest local data and connect it with other data. A little active consideration on how to make this data shareable would do us all good. Perhaps, instead of kickstarting the same thing thousand times for a thousand little projects the edible city community could organize itself modularly.

What we need is a uniform way of storing data that could be easily translated to other formats (KML/google map applications especially). I hear people talk about recording where what species can be found, adding to this layers of information like the most likely time to harvest, what parts can be used and what parts not, recipes, medical uses, but also known problems with pollution and/or ownership in a given erea. Some of these things should be included, some of these things belong elsewhere.

what follows probably already exists elsewhere but, just thinking aloud for my own fun, here are some notes on a quasi-RSS for foraging: FML: Forage Mark-Up Language:

The first part (the channel tag in RSS) tells who is providing the data:

<name>libarynth cookery department</name> 
<link>http://libarynth.org/</link> 
<description>the plants in this list have been checked several times</description> 
<language>NL</language>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:33:42 GMT</pubDate> 

The second part is a list of elements like these, each containing for each sighting the basic information concerning a plant/tree that should really be included to be usefull.

<item>
<plant>
   <latin></latin>
   <lan:nl>walnoot</lan:nl>
   <lan:eng>walnut</lan:eng>
</plant>
  <location>
    <longitude>39.55375305703105</longitude>  
    <latitude>-118.9813220168456</latitude> 
    <altitude>1223</altitude> 
</location> 
<type>tree</type>
<use>
    <edible>yes</edible>
    <medicinal>not known<medicinal>
    <fruit>nut</fruit>
    <poisonous>no</poisonous>
    <other></other>
</use>
<picture></picture> 
<observation_date>Tue, 22 Jun 2010</observation_date> 
<observer>Little Chef</observer>
<description>old tree actively foraged by hungry, mandoline carrying, gypsies with bad temper and bad  breath</description>
</item>

The plant tag collects names for the plant, the latin is the botanical name, the others are 'normal' names. The location tag is lifted straight from KML. The use-tag collects properties about the plant/tree being tagged that might be useful for parsing. Some other relevant information like date of last observation ends it.

Just raving; there surely must be better ways to do it. IF AT LL: should newcomers/outsiders be allowed to plunder the limited resources of a local community? Or publicize the existence of such resources?