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Slow Money – Investing As If Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered

From the web site of Slow Money Alliance (SMALL for short):

In a world in which there is no such thing as money that is too fast, a company that is too big, or intermediation that is too complex, we find ourselves asking:

Can investing in local food systems offer an authentic alternative?

If organic farming and small food enterprises are key to the health of the economy, society, and the soil, why do they receive so little funding from government, philanthropy, or capital markets?

Could a million American families get their food from CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture)?

This is a call to action, a call to design new capital markets built not around extraction and consumption, but around preservation and restoration. The vision: billions of dollars a year supporting tens of thousands of independent, local-first enterprises at the base of the restorative economy.

Slow Money’s mission is to support small food enterprises that preserve and restore soil fertility, appropriate-scale organic farming and local food communities;

To catalyze increases in foundation grant-making and mission-related investing in support of sustainable and local economies; and,

To incubate next-generation socially responsible investment strategies, integrating principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place, cultural and biological diversity, and non-violence.

Central to the mission is the building of regional stakeholder networks – consisting of food entrepreneurs, NGO leaders, farmers, and investors committed to financing local food systems.

Slow Money institutes bring together 50 to 100 of these individuals in each region to assess strategies for investing in local food systems in their communities.

The Slow Money Alliance is building the social capital that will enable the effective deployment of financial capital. This network of early-adopters — comprised of leaders in sustainable agriculture, organic food, social investing and philanthropy — is providing seed capital and strategic support for the core operations of Slow Money.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T28HuOcNNw[/youtube]

Over time, the Alliance will provide critical dealflow, coinvestment, and technical assistance relationships.

“I’ve been saying for years that we need to feed the soil, not the plant–Slow Money is about feeding the soil of the economy.”
–Eliot Coleman, farmer and author of The New Organic Gardener and Four Season Harvest

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My Daughter, The Adventurer

Who knew?

My daughter was such a girly-girl growing up. She could apply nail polish with ease, lipstick without a mirror, and went through so much hair spray in her middle school years that I made her start buying her own.

She is also very petite, and it’s so obvious she didn’t inherit all these qualities from her mother. If she didn’t look so much like my Mom, I might be suspicious that the hospital mixed up the babies.

I remember her calling me a few years back with a “guess what I did yesterday” query.

When she told me she had climbed Enchanted Rock, all I could think to answer was “What shoes did you wear?” (she has a “cute shoe” collection that is, well… very cute).

That may have been the beginning of her adventuring lifestyle.

After that, she took a road trip through Colorado and up the West Coast, and came back with loads of great photos. She was gone wa-a-ay too long for my comfort zone, but that was when I realized she definitely has travelin’ in her blood.

Last year, she did a semester in India, and spent several weeks backpacking afterwards (don’t waste that expensive airfare!!). Means of transport included wild taxi rides, motorcycle, train, bus, and camel.

Most recently, she went to Costa Rica. There she rappelled waterfalls, went snorkeling, (almost) learned to surf, watched lava pouring from a volcano, “ziplined” above the rain forest, and did tons of hiking. So she did get my “jock” genes after all.

And she bought her mom some amazing coffee. Good kid.