Impact Investing and Deep Intention: A Call to Farms

by Woody Tasch of Slow Money

I begin with a question: Why, when it comes to our own money, do we keep acting as if global capital markets and institutional investment products are all there is? Why do keep thinking that fiscal prudence is synonymous with giving almost all our money to people we don’t know very well, for them to invest in things they often don’t understand very well, in places half-way around the world that are virtually invisible to us?

For the past 15 years, I’ve been steward of an unusual process of public experimentation, collaboration and shared learning. Under the loose banner of the 'slow money' movement, $100 million has flowed to over 1000 small, diversified organic farms and local food businesses via volunteer-led activities in dozens of communities. In this fertile field, seeds of a replicable, local 0% lending model have sprouted. There are now five “SOIL” groups (Slow Opportunities for Investing Locally) in the U.S. and one in Israel, using donated capital to make 0% loans, to the tune of over $4 million in aggregate to some 150 farms and food businesses.

The beauty of this model is that it not only solves a bunch of securities hurdles and enables grassroots participation, but also creates permanently recirculating, slowly growing pools of community-controlled capital. We are learning that social capital has real value. Collective intelligence, applied locally and directly, can be put to work in ways that are tangible and remarkably productive.

Read Woody's thought-provoking and practical Impact Investing article here - https://greenmoney.com/impact-investing-and-deep-intention

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