Slow Money: The CSA of Investing

1 / 3
A fiduciary focuses on growing portfolios; a foodishiary focuses on growing food. A fiduciary minimizes risk and maximizes return; a foodishiary minimizes chemical additives and maximizes taste.
A fiduciary focuses on growing portfolios; a foodishiary focuses on growing food. A fiduciary minimizes risk and maximizes return; a foodishiary minimizes chemical additives and maximizes taste.
2 / 3
Woody Tasch, the founder and chairman of Slow Money and author of “Staring the Pig in the Face.”
Woody Tasch, the founder and chairman of Slow Money and author of “Staring the Pig in the Face.”
3 / 3
“Staring the Pig in the Face,” by Slow Money founder Woody Tasch, offers the latest thinking on what it means to be an investor in the 21st century.
“Staring the Pig in the Face,” by Slow Money founder Woody Tasch, offers the latest thinking on what it means to be an investor in the 21st century.

Throughout the United States, thousands of citizens have begun to reconsider the direction and basis for our economy and have begun to ask if there might be a better way to run things. The non-profit Slow Money Alliance brings people together for a new conversation about money that is connected to people and place, and to imagine a way we can begin fixing our economy from the ground up, beginning with food. Woody Tasch is the founder and chairman of Slow Money and authorof Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money and the digital book, Staring the Pig in the Face, an address to the fourth Slow Money National Gathering, from which this excerpt is taken.

Our fate is in the hands of experts. Our fate is in the hands of technologists. Our fate is in the hands of fundamentalists, by which I mean not only religious fundamentalists, but free market fundamentalists as well. Surely our fate is in the hands of military industri­alists, even more than it was when President Eisenhower issued his prescient warning after World War II.

And, our fate is in the hands of fiduciaries.

But if it is true that our fate is in all those hands, it is also true that we hold the seeds of a different future in our own hands.

It’s a future toward which the phrases slow money and nurture capital point. It’s a future that will have fewer industrial farmers who only spend 45 minutes per year on each acre of their land. That’s right — the typical large-scale industrial corn and soybean farmer spends only 45 minutes per year on each acre of his land. What shall we call that? Efficient agriculture? Fast agriculture?

  • Published on May 13, 2014
Online Store Logo
Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368