|
Fed up
with the stock market? Sick of greedy megabanks and
Wall Street
bailouts? Then take your money and invest in what you
eat. That's the idea behind slow money, a movement
coming into its own at a time when interest in local
food is rising and exasperation over a global financial
system gone wild is high.
Slow
money is named after the slow food movement that
developed to counteract our fast food, eat-on-the-go
society. Championed by
Woody Tasch
, a venture capitalist, slow money is Tasch's antidote
to what he calls fast money — "money that is
disconnected from people and place and so is zooming
around the planet invested in very complicated,
large-scale, distant things," he explained. Slow
money "is the opposite, investing in things that
are close to home, that you understand, where you can
know what your money is doing."
Right
now, slow money is focused on investing in local food
enterprises — the organic farmer, the restaurant that
uses local ingredients, the neighborhood microbrewery.
But there's no reason why the slow money principles
couldn't be transferred to other local ventures — your
neighborhood news source, your independent retailers,
local energy sources, you name it.
Last
month, 450 people from 34 states and six countries met
in
New Mexico
to discuss the concept. The idea is so new that Tasch
and his followers are still trying to figure out how
slow money will work on a practical level.
Fred Haberman
, president of the
Minneapolis
public relations firm
Haberman and Associates
and a founding member of the
Slow Money Alliance
, can envision investors taking 5 or 10 percent of their
portfolios and investing in local food enterprises the
way you would consider investing in emerging markets or
precious metals. (Tasch is a Haberman client.)
And at
this early stage, who can say whether slow money
investments would beat the returns of your stocks or
bonds or perform more like a CD?
Steven Read
, a farmer and cheesemaker near
Nerstrand, Minn.
, hopes his
Farm Haven LLC
could be a model. The entity was created to offer
investment memberships in his family farm, called
Shepherd's Way. The exact terms of the investment would
be negotiated, but Read envisions memberships starting
at
$10,000
, with returns in the 4 to 6 percent range over a 10- or
20-year term. The farm has been struggling to survive
since an arsonist burned down the barn in 2005, killing
500 sheep. Last year, the farm's bank refused to
refinance during the mortgage crisis.
Read is
quick to point out that slow money isn't charity.
"It's a for-profit, but possibly a slower
profit," he said. On top of the financial return,
you are "also contributing to the community; you're
contributing to your value system; you're contributing
to local food, to a healthier world."
As good
as that sounds, I bet it won't be an easy sell. After
the losses investors have suffered this past year, most
want to make back as much as they can. Plus, the masses
are notorious performance chasers.
"When
you come right down to it, people want the same rates of
return, at the same speed as they do in every other kind
of investment," said
Nina Rothschild Utne
, founder of the
Utne Reader magazine
and a slow money supporter. "At some point we're
going to have to go, 'Well, OK, do you want the return
that I put in my pocket this quarter or do you want the
return that's going to be (there) for my children and
your children?' "
Suppose
you want the latter? What can you do?
Tasch
says to find a CSA — community supported agriculture
group — where you make a preseason payment to a farmer
for a weekly share of produce. CSAs are like an
investment because you share the farmer's bounty and the
risk that bad weather will wipe out a crop. Another idea
is to put some money in a community development
financial institution that promotes investments in
struggling local areas. Or, like
Edina, Minn.
, native
Shelly Roche
, practice slow money when you shop.
Every
time Roche buys something, she asks herself: "Is
this a company I want to support or is there a better
choice I can make that's more aligned with my
values?" Getting used to viewing our purchasing
decisions as "mini, micro-investments" will
make it easier for us to start investing larger sums in
slow money when the time comes, said Roche, 33, an
entrepreneur who now lives in
Maryland
.
———
THE SLOW
MONEY PRINCIPLES:
—We
must bring money back down to earth.
—There
is such a thing as money that's too fast, companies that
are too big, finance that is too complex. We must slow
enough of our money down to matter.
—The
21st century will usher in the era of nurture capital.
—We
must learn to invest as if food, farms and fertility
mattered.
—Let us
celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs, consumers
and investors who are showing the way from making a
killing to making a living.
—Let us
begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up.
As
Paul Newman
said, "I just happen to think that in life we need
to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the
soil what he takes out."
Read more
at http://www.slowmoneyalliance.org.
Friendsofslowmoney.com has information, too. And
Woody Tasch
has written a book: "Inquiries into the Nature of
Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility
mattered."
—Source:
Slow Money Alliance
|
