Heritage Farm
Earlier this month four of the Squash Blossoms attended the 36th annual conference and campout of the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.
This was our second pilgrimage to SSE’s Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, the primary seed source of our garden, and we stuffed ourselves not only with locally produced food and beverages but also with valuable information and new ideas.
One of the more compelling keynote speakers at the conference was Woody Tasch. Author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered, Tasch shared his vision for the potential of Slow Money, an organization he founded (and named after the Slow Food movement) that is bringing people together to talk about money that is too fast, finance that is disconnected from people and place, and methods that can fix the economy from the ground up—starting with food.
According to Tasch, a former venture capitalist, the trouble with today’s style of investing is that the flashing numbers on a stock ticker do not necessarily correlate to anything of tangible value in an investor’s local community. Billions of dollars zip through the world markets every day, bundled into intensely complex financial products, with the result that few investors really understand where their money goes or how it is used.
Speed is the issue, says Tasch. “There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex. We must slow our money down—not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.” And what matters, he says, is investing as if food, farms, and fertility were a means to restore the economy and our food systems.
Big companies, and particularly big agriculture, cannot keep growing exponentially forever. Such a construct is not sustainable because too many resources are required and diversity is lacking. What we need, he says, is to “promote real diversity for long-term wealth and health.”
How to do that? Foster a “nurture capital industry,” says Tasch. “There is a new generation of entrepreneurs starting to rebuild local food systems, and the capital available to them is insufficient.” Slow Money’s goal is to have 1 million people investing 1% of their money in local food enterprises within a decade.
“If we want the capital to start flowing today, this year, this decade, if we share the belief that we don’t have another generation to wait for ‘them’ to figure it out or be pushed in this direction by disruption or collapse,” he says, “then we have to roll up our sleeves, sink our hands into the soil, and start planting.”
One way to get going, says Tasch, is to read his book and then form a discussion group surrounding the movement’s six principles (he advocates that members sign them), which propose to “enhance food security, food safety, and food access; improve nutrition and health; promote cultural, ecological, and economic diversity; and accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration.”
If joining a book group or signing a list of principles does not appeal, you can also visit the Slow Money website to find opportunities for local investing. If you’re looking for professionally managed funds, Slow Money offers a list of intermediaries and investment products (though they are not necessarily geographically targeted or solely focused on food). For those who want to make a charitable contribution, Slow Money recommends giving to the Soil Trust, which will invest your money alongside other Slow Money investors nationwide, “leav[ing] the financial returns in the trust to be reinvested for the benefit of future generations.”
Although the concept of Slow Money is appealing to many, some argue it is one born of utopian ideas that don’t translate into a viable retirement fund—with returns averaging 3–6% as compared to a potential of 11% with traditional investments. Even some farmers themselves aren’t eager to jump on the Slow Money bandwagon, saying that they don’t want to be bothered by investors with deep pockets wanting special treatment or, worse yet, a say in management decisions. And then there’s historian James McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, who argues, “We have to be wary of thinking small scale is the answer.” According to McWilliams, movements like Slow Food and Slow Money romanticize the locavore lifestyle as a simple fix to a very complicated issue.
But Tasch’s take is that we’re headed for a biological collapse if we don’t switch tracks soon, positing that genetically modified plants and organisms (GMOs) are like financial derivatives: “GMOs are like finance scientists trying to trick the yield on a piece of land. Sure, people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about, that these new GMO varieties of plants are crossbred for less risk because every wheat stalk planted is exactly the same genetically. But I don’t know. I’m not alone when I say that we’re headed for a biological correction similar to the financial correction we just had. Why? You can’t trick risk. The only way to mitigate risk is with diversity. Biological, cultural and economic diversity is the only answer for risk—meaning lots of small-scale, diversified things of all kinds coexisting in a healthy relationship. We’re talking percolation versus circulation; diversity versus monocultures, fertility versus profitability, and relationships versus transactions.”
As Ari Derfel, the executive director of Slow Money, put it: “You have to ask yourself, what kind of world do I want to live in?”
Like this:
One blogger likes this post.
