To promote the principles of nurture capital, to bring money back down to earth, to restore the soil, and to put the brakes on unsustainable, endless-growth capitalism: these are the goals of the Slow Money Alliance, co-founded by author Woody Tasch (Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered).
Now, the Slow Money Alliance is launching a national grassroots campaign. They’ve crystallized their positions into 18 Slow Money Principles. Sign up and make your support of sustainable farming and sustainable community investing known to the world.
The Slow Money Principles
In order to preserve and restore local food systems and local economies; in order to reconnect food producers and consumers and reconnect investors to that in which they are investing and to the places in which they live; in order to promote the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration; we do hereby affirm the following Principles.
I. As it circulates the globe with ever-accelerating speed, money is sucking oxygen out of the air, fertility out of the soil and culture out of local communities.
II.The problems we face with respect to soil fertility, biodiversity, food quality and nutrition are not primarily problems of technology. They are problems of finance.
III.In a system organized to optimize the efficient use of capital and the production of cheap commodities, we should not be surprised to end up with millions of acres of GMO corn, billions of food miles, dying Main Streets, kids who think food comes from supermarkets, obesity epidemics side by side with hunger, food deserts, depleted aquifers and chemical-laden food and farmland.
IV.The soil is not just a medium in which to hold plant roots so they can be force fed a chemical diet and a company is not just a medium into which to pour capital so that it can produce maximum profits.
V.Only .1% of U.S. foundation grants and negligible venture capital flows to sustainable agriculture. Existing concepts of fiduciary responsibility do not recognize the value of and cannot respond adequately to the needs of small food enterprises.
VI.Carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place, appropriate scale, cultural and ecological diversity, fertility, nonviolence—these are principles of meta-fiduciary responsibility for the 21st century.
VII.We must bring money back down to earth.
VIII.We must give investors the tools they need to invest in slow, small and local. We must support entrepreneurs who see business as a tool for improving the health of land, household, community and bioregion.
IX.We must build a nurture capital industry.
X.There is something beautiful about a diversified organic farm. There is something beautiful about a CSA. There is something beautiful about Terra Madre. There is nothing beautiful about bovine growth hormone or Red Dye #4 or high fructose corn syrup or most school lunch programs.
Watch Chelsea Green’s interview with Woody Tasch: