Abstract

One of the world’s biggest challenges in contemporary times is to secure sufficient, healthy, safe, and high quality food for all in an environmentally sustainable manner (Zeleke et al. in Forests 11(875):1, 2020). This challenge is especially noticed in Africa, a continent characterised by hunger, food insecurity and under nutrition (Fernandes et al. in Appl. Sci. 11, 4221:1–27, 2021). As a response to this problem, this chapter focuses on wild mushroom (howa) in indigenous Shona culture. However, the importance of mushrooms in Zimbabwean indigenous religious and agrarian culture has remained underexplored in religion studies. The chapter employed African environmental ethics to explore the emergence and endurance of alternative food systems like wild mushroom. In this chapter, an ethnomycological work was done using a phenomenological approach, interviews and observations in rural areas of Bikita and Buhera. It showed that mushrooms have a religious significance. The sacredness of mushrooms was unpacked based on the beliefs and values connected to the place where they sprout, their colour, shape, age, sex of the person who discovers them, how they are harvested and what drives human beings to preserve the environment with wild mushrooms. I contend that in the discourse on African agrarian thought, it is necessary to rethink indigenous African environmental values in the consumption of wild mushrooms and how this contributes to the sustainability of the country’s agricultural economy.