• Philosophy
Apple, pear, plum - when did you last pick a fruit from a tree?
mundraub.org is an online platform for all who want to discover local fruits, nuts or wild herbs in public spaces and help shape the edible landscape worldwide. More than 60.000 users share POIs, start planting and harvesting events as well as local groups. We raise awareness for edible landscapes, locally grown and seasonal fruit and motivate people to make use of existing ressources.
Our mission: mundraub connects people with fruit trees.
Our vision: Germany is an edible landscape accessible to everyone. Here people can fulfill their deep archaic need for sharing as well as direct and independent acquisition of food. Everyone is able find plenty of fruits in the landscape and has sufficient knowledge about it, thus a feeling of „There is enough for everybody" can develop. This ideal of a self-evident basic fruit income for everyone shall serve as inspiration to implement the idea of the commons into other fields of life as well. This can help mankind to recover.
• How it all began
In september 2009 the idea of mundraub.org originated during a canoeing tour of friends on the river Unstrut in Saxony Anhalt. At the rest areas along the river, fruits from trees and bushes on public land were literally falling into their open mouths. As opposed to the fruity supplies they bought in the supermarket, these fresh plums, apples and pears didn’t need to travel around the globe to be then bought in a supermarket. An absurd situation for Kai Gildhorn and Katharina Frosch who, as a result began rethinking about local fruit resources and consumerism. mundraub was born only a week after. Securing the domain and creating a rudimental website, they began with putting first points of interests (POIs) on the map, thus laying the groundwork for the now existing community based platform.
In the course of a growing number of POIs and users, project partners and funds were acquired, hence successively allowing mundraub.org to get a more professional appearance. By now events and local groups offer space to exchange experiences, our blog provides regular information about everything fruit related and mundraub tours, teambuilding events as well as environmental education for children are transporting the mundraub philosophy from a digital platform into the real life.
• mundraub rules
mundraub.org depends on a responsible and considerate interaction with nature as well as current cultural and legal terms. Therefore we put together four simple rules that ought to be observed (short version):
1. Before you map a POI and/or harvest, be sure that no proprietary rights are being violated!
2. Be careful with trees, the surrounding nature and residing animals. Picking for personal need is alright, picking for commercial purposes is forbidden as it needs an official permission.
3. Share the fruits of your discoveries, give something back!
4. Get involved with fostering and replanting of fruit trees!