Interview with Woody Tasch: Finance and Agriculture Innovator: Author of 'Slow Money'

You may have heard that 'water' is being discussed as the new 'gold'. After I finished reading Woody Tasch's new book and talked with him, perhaps 'Soil' should also be the new 'gold'.
Woody Tasch is author of Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money:Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered.  Per Tasch, several years of agricultural industrialization and financial policies have contributed to the degradation of our soils. “It takes roughly a millennium to build an inch or two of soil; it takes less than forty years, on average, to strip an inch of soil by farming in ways that are more focused on current yield than on sustaining fertility.  A third of America's topsoil has eroded since 1776. About a third of China's 130 million hectares of farmland is seriously eroded, and Chinese crop yields fell by more than 10 percent from 1999 to 2003, despite increasing application of synthetic fertilizers.”
His premise (of Slow Money) is: “The problems we face with respect to soil, fertility, biodiversity, food quality, and local economies are not primarily problems with technology.  They are problems of finance.  In a financial system organized to optimize the efficient use of capital, we should not be surprised to end up with cheapened food, millions of acres of GMO corn, billions of food miles, dying Main Streets, kids who think food comes from supermarkets, and obesity epidemics side by side with persistent hunger.”
Tasch is Chairman of Investors' Circle, a U.S group funding socially responsible companies, where $130 million has been placed in 200 businesses, i.e. ZipCar.
He is currently raising money for the Slow Money venture fund dedicated to investing in local, sustainable agriculture ventures. He also wants to help build a marketplace where farmers and financiers can find each other. He says: “Social Investors are starting to invest in entrepreneurs, and people are eager to discuss fundamental alternatives.” He is planning to include more attention on a grassroots investment strategy: a structure that will allow smaller investors to be involved, and the details are currently being worked.
I asked how the news of the UN Climate Change report stating that animal agriculture causes more greenhouse gases than transportation and Bon Appetit, a food service provider, cutting meat to cut carbon is impacting the Slow Money investment philosophy? He says the issue is scale and industrial farming is causing the problems. Sustainable farms are important.
Gratitude Gourmet would suggest that investing in plant-based companies be the goal.
Slow Money has already made its first investment in Vermont-based High Mowing Seeds, which supplies seeds to 75 percent of the organic farmers in the country, according to founder and CEO Tom Stearns. Investors will earn 6 percent interest on their money over the next five years, paid in a balloon payment in the fifth year, at which point they can opt to leave their money in and let it grow or term out the debt at ten years, according to Stearns. High Mowing Seeds currently has $1 million in sales, and Stearns projects $3 million in sales over the next two years.
The Slow Money Alliance was also established to run Slow Money Institutes, publish books and white papers, and members include food entrepreneurs, farmers, investors, and philanthropists.  It is looking to expand Alliance membership.

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