Fertilizer Up 45%: The Case for Wild Edibles

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I ate a dandelion once. On purpose. The greens were bitter but edible, kind of like arugula's angry cousin. I also identified three other plants on the hike that are technically food. You may have been mowing over calories for years without knowing it.

Here's what I've got this week.

Wild Edibles Growing in Your Yard Right Now

Foraging sounds like something for wilderness survivalists or trendy chefs. But the truth is, edible wild plants grow in nearly every American yard, park, and roadside. Learning to identify even five or six common ones adds a free, renewable food source to your preparedness toolkit.

The golden rule of foraging is absolute: if you're not 100% certain of the identification, don't eat it. Some wild plants are nutritious. Some are toxic. A few are lethal. There is no universal test to determine safety. You need positive identification of each specific plant before you put it in your mouth.

Start with the easy ones. Dandelions are everywhere, and every part is edible: greens, flowers, and roots. Greens are best young (before flowering), and they're packed with vitamins A, C, and K. Clover, both white and red, is edible raw or brewed as tea. Plantain (the broadleaf weed, not the banana relative) grows in most lawns and has been used as a food and medicine for centuries.

Wood sorrel looks like clover but has heart-shaped leaves and a pleasant sour taste. Lamb's quarters (also called wild spinach) is a common garden weed that's more nutritious than cultivated spinach. Purslane, that creeping succulent weed in sidewalk cracks, is high in omega-3 fatty acids.

The next step is learning what not to touch. Poison hemlock looks similar to wild carrot. Pokeweed is dangerous raw though the young shoots can be prepared carefully. Mushrooms are a category best left to experts unless you've had in-person training. The margin for error with fungi is too small for a newsletter to cover safely.

Get a regional field guide. National guides are useful but regional ones show you exactly what grows in your area. Take it on a walk around your neighborhood. Identify three plants before you eat anything. Cross-reference with a second source. Bring samples home and compare them to photos and descriptions.

Foraging isn't a substitute for food storage. But it's a free skill that adds depth to your preparedness. And there's something satisfying about looking at your lawn and seeing food instead of just something to mow.

Identify one edible wild plant in your yard or neighborhood.

Two in five ocean shipments are currently disrupted

Forty percent of global ocean cargo shipments are experiencing disruptions — delays, rerouting, or non-delivery. The Strait of Hormuz closure is the primary driver, but insurance surcharges on conflict-zone routes, port congestion from diverted vessels, and reduced carrier capacity are compounding the problem. The disruptions extend to foods that seem unrelated to the Middle East: India’s 2026 cumin harvest is smaller following a 14% reduction in farm acreage, garlic supply is constrained due to a difficult growing season in China and southern Europe, and global olive oil production is forecast to fall 10% for 2025-26. Items you can’t find in late 2026 are the ones not shipping normally today.

Source: Supply Chain Dive, World Food Programme, Food Navigator USA

Cody Lundin has been teaching at his Aboriginal Living Skills School for over three decades. In When All Hell Breaks Loose, he devotes an entire chapter to supplemental food sources that most urbanites walk past daily. His core message: you don't need to be a botanist. You need to know five plants cold. Five reliable, common, easy-to-identify edibles that grow in your region.

Lundin's teaching method is deliberate. He has students learn one plant at a time, using all five senses, across multiple growth stages, until identification is reflexive. He warns against the "field guide binge," where people try to learn 50 plants from a book and end up confident about none. Depth beats breadth. Know your five better than anyone.

Spring planting begins as urea prices hit $650 per ton

Urea fertilizer prices jumped from roughly $450 per ton in February to more than $650 per ton this week — a 45% spike in under two months. One-third of globally traded urea ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which remains effectively closed, and Qatar’s QAFCO, the world’s largest urea producer, is currently offline. With spring planting underway across the northern hemisphere, American corn farmers face nitrogen costs of roughly $166 per acre. Many are pivoting to soybeans, which require far less nitrogen. Fewer corn acres planted this spring means a smaller fall harvest and higher prices for cornmeal, animal feed, and corn-based products through late 2026 and 2027. The planting decisions being made this week are setting the grocery prices consumers will pay in October.

Source: CME Group, CNBC, PBS NewsHour

Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants (Eastern/Central)

About $22 for the paperback.

This is the gold standard for foraging in the eastern half of North America. Lee Allen Peterson identifies 370+ edible plants with clear illustrations, organized by flower color and plant type so you can actually use it in the field. We keep a copy in the go-bag — not because we expect to be foraging in a crisis, but because knowing what's edible around you changes how you see the land you live on. That's worth something before anything goes wrong.

Overrated: Wild mushroom foraging for beginners. It sounds romantic, but the risk-to-reward ratio is terrible for novices. Several deadly species closely resemble edible ones. Save mushrooms for in-person training with an experienced forager.

Underrated: Dandelion root coffee. Roasted dandelion root makes a caffeine-free drink that tastes surprisingly close to coffee. Free, grows everywhere, and stores well when dried. Worth trying.

I've been cross-referencing it with a foraging app (PictureThis) for about three months. The book wins for accuracy. The app wins for convenience. Together, they cover most identification needs.

Budget alternative: Your local library plus iNaturalist (free app). The library likely has regional foraging guides, and iNaturalist can help confirm identifications using community input and AI recognition.

iNaturalist — Free app for plant identification with community verification. Excellent accuracy.

Eat the Weeds (eattheweeds.com) — Detailed foraging guides with videos by Green Deane.

Grokipedia: Foraging — Background on wild food gathering history and safety.

USDA Plants Database — Official plant identification resource with range maps.

Digital document backup. Your house burns down or you evacuate in a hurry. Can you access your insurance, IDs, medical records, and financial accounts from anywhere?

PS: If your neighbor sees you eating dandelion greens in your yard offer them one. Preparedness is contagious.