[Lapg] Can 'Slow Investing' Remake America's Food Industry? By JUDITH D. SCHWARTZ Friday, Sep. 11, 2009 Time Magazine

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Can 'Slow Investing' Remake America's Food Industry?
By JUDITH D. SCHWARTZ Friday, Sep. 11, 2009
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1921889,00.html


Could the trouble with money be that it's...too fast? Sure, you may 
think, it leaves your pocket too fast. But Woody Tasch, a longtime 
investment professional and founder of the Slow Money Alliance 
(www.slowmoneyalliance.org)
  , is talking not about anyone's spending habits but money as a 
system: as money increasingly functions as electronic blips shuttling 
from screen to screen in speculative transfers, it becomes divorced 
from its effects in the real world and less reflective of actual 
wealth. The result, he says, has been bad for our economy, the planet 
and the individual investor. The antidote, according to Tasch, is 
expressed in the subtitle of his book, Inquiries Into the Nature of 
Slow Money: Investing as if Farms, Food, and Fertility Matter.


The Slow Money Alliance, set up as a nonprofit, brings the tenets of 
the Slow Food movement (buying local) to finance - exploring 
investment vehicles that re-circulate within the local economy, 
minimize environmental impact, stress diversity over monoculture, and 
earn decent returns. Tasch wants to give investors a stake in 
"restorative economy," building the food and ecological 
infrastructure on a community to community basis.

"The Slow Food movement has helped raise consciousness about where 
food comes from, down to the farmer," says Tasch. "We're doing the 
same thing with money - where does it come from, and, when you spend 
or invest, where does it go?" In Tasch's vision that covers 
everything from seed companies to farms to markets and restaurants.

Tasch has devoted much of his career to merging asset management and 
philanthropy. Most recently, for 10 years up to 2008 he was Chairman 
of Investors' Circle, a network of venture capitalists, angel 
investors, and foundations that uses private money to promote the 
shift to a sustainable economy. Here, Tasch incubated the ideas (and 
ideals) that became Slow Money.

This week, in Santa Fe, marks the official launch of this 
tortoise-beats-the-hare economic model. While Slow Money 
Institutes-forums for building regional stakeholder networks - have 
taken place in Grafton, Vt, Point Reyes, Calif., Bellingham, Wash., 
and Madison, Wis., this gathering brought together 300-plus 
participants representing at least four countries drawn from 
investment, philanthropic, academic and entrepreneurial circles.

The individual businesses he's zeroing in on may be small, but Tasch 
is thinking big: "We're setting out to build an organization of one 
million Americans to invest in food systems around the U.S." He 
envisions "catalyzing investments of $25 million a year or more as a 
first step." Though he is only now starting to raise money, Tasch 
says the response to his model has been "extremely heartening."

Slow Money differs from traditional socially responsible investing in 
that the partnerships are deeper, as the Alliance works to build not 
just a firm's profitability but also supportive structures. For 
example, rather than just lending money for, say, a farmer's barn, 
they would look at the farmer's other infrastructure needs, such as 
storage, retail outlets, transport to markets, etc. Also, inherent to 
the model is the notion that part of the "return" is the social and 
environmental benefit a company represents.

So what about the "slow" part? For the investor looking to realize 
returns, will you ever get there? Yes, says Mark A. Finser, 
Founder/General Partner of TBL Capital in Sausalito, CA. As a 
"snapshot of a short period of time" the conventional investment 
model may look good, but "I fundamentally believe that in the long 
run there will be better returns" with Slow Money type investments, 
he says. This is particularly true, he adds, when "we look at 
investing as an extension of our lives and values." He notes that RSF 
Social Finance, which invests in enterprises committed to improving 
society and the environment and where he served as President and CEO 
and is now Chairman of the Board, realized a steady 3%-4% average 
over 25 years and has continued to grow despite the current downturn.

The Slow Money investment model - with its local, hands-on 
orientation - gives business owners the means to stay true to their 
mission during critical growth periods, says Tom Stearns, President 
of High Mowing Organic Seeds, an organic seed company in Wolcott, 
Vermont, who participated in Vermont's Slow Money Institute in 
November, 2008. Traditionally, when a company takes investment money, 
that means setting itself up to sell, he says. "How else do investors 
make money? But if you're mission- or place-based, that's the first 
thing to go out the window," he says. "I think a new generation of 
investors also doesn't want that to happen. They're thinking, 'Hey, I 
don't want to invest in you if you're going to sell to Coca Cola in 
three years.'"
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