FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By Brook Le Van
IN SOIL WE TRUST
edibleASPEN
SPRING 2009
http://www.edibleaspen.com/content/pages/articles/spr09/foodForThought.pdf
“Awareness of the centrality of soil health is nothing new. The homo of
Homo sapiens is derived from the Latin, humus, for living soil.”
—Woody Tasch, author of “Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money”
Let’s face it, we need a new New Deal. In the last year we have bailed
out “free-market” economics, right? I mean, it had a good run, but
when push came to shove, we taxpayers threw it a line.
Our prevailing economic myth has us believing that unlimited economic
growth is not only possible, but desirable. This is all despite the
rapidly accumulating data to the contrary. Our emphasis on growth has
produced more inequality than prosperity, and more insecurity than
progress. Growth, at least the kind we have come to expect from our
efforts in the last 60 years or so, requires enormous amounts of energy.
And as the fundamentals of physics make clear, we do not have the energy
reserves left to continue to fuel the magic behind growth. Finally, and
increasingly important, is that growth no longer is making us happy.
The reason that free-market economics worked up to now is primarily
because it was able to enjoy enormous reserves of natural resources
and healthy ecosystems to absorb its waste (“externalities,” in economic
lingo), all essentially for free, and run on the wild idea that the sky was
the limit. Well, actually, the sky is the limit, as we are finding out with
climate change. Check out history. Every previous civilization has failed
due to growing beyond what its surrounding ecosystem could provide.
As we now have peaked into a global economy, this time around we are
playing with the collapse of entire planetary systems, not just, say, the
Nile Delta or the Fertile Crescent. In this regard, the returns on our
investments are way more than we bargained for.
The problems we face—degraded soil fertility, loss of biodiversity,
degraded nutritional value in our food and failing local economies— produced more inequality than prosperity, and more insecurity than
progress. Growth, at least the kind we have come to expect from our
efforts in the last 60 years or so, requires enormous amounts of energy.
And as the fundamentals of physics make clear, we do not have the energy
reserves left to continue to fuel the magic behind growth. Finally, and
increasingly important, is that growth no longer is making us happy.
The reason that free-market economics worked up to now is primarily
because it was able to enjoy enormous reserves of natural resources
and healthy ecosystems to absorb its waste (“externalities,” in economic
lingo), all essentially for free, and run on the wild idea that the sky was
the limit. Well, actually, the sky is the limit, as we are finding out with
climate change. Check out history. Every previous civilization has failed
due to growing beyond what its surrounding ecosystem could provide.
As we now have peaked into a global economy, this time around we are
playing with the collapse of entire planetary systems, not just, say, the
Nile Delta or the Fertile Crescent. In this regard, the returns on our
investments are way more than we bargained for.
The problems we face—degraded soil fertility, loss of biodiversity,
degraded nutritional value in our food and failing local economies—
are not problems of technology. They are problems of finance, as well
as evidence of how our poor choice of values drives our investments.
This gets down to the difference between emphasizing efficiency over
effectiveness. Our financial systems, and most of our agriculture today,
are organized to optimize efficiency of capital.
What I keep hearing is that we need more big ideas to get us out of
this mess. A much more effective track would be to get behind a lot of
small ideas that could lead to many small, elegant solutions. Future philanthropic
funding and venture capital must be directed by higher values
and long-term gains. It will be our investments now in soil fertility, sustainable
farming and a host of local and slower gaining, but steady and
secure assets that will build the fiber of communities that will carry us
into a reasonable future.
I suggest a reevaluation of capitalism as we
know it, and a big shift in values and in how we
use our investment dollars, in order to build the
kind of world we want for the long haul. One answer
to our economic woes lies right before us,
in the dirt.
As Woody Tasch, author of “Inquiries into the
Nature of Slow Money,” emphasizes, at the base
of our economy is soil and soil fertility. We have
been using money like synthetic fertilizer and, as
a result, we are getting synthetic, unsustainable
growth. We have to reorient capital away from
the endless cycles of consumption and relentless
focus on markets toward a new economy focused
on quality and human relationships, both our
relationship to one another and to the land. “It
falls on us to undertake a new project of system
design: The creation of new forms of intermediation
that catalyze the transition from a commerce
of extraction and consumption to a commerce of
preservation and restoration,” he writes.
This idea of “slow money” is not springing
forth from the head of some great school of economics.
It is coming instead from the numerous
small actions taken by farmers, consumers, entrepreneurs,
philanthropists and investors who are
choosing daily to regenerate health in their communities
with their purchasing power, donations
and investment dollars.
Just as Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food
International, is calling for us to slow down and
find some sanity in our food systems, so Tasch
and his venture capitalist partners are calling for
us to slow down money. Similar to Slow Food’s
premise, slow money is a redesign of the economy
based on regeneration and reverence, a different
set of values that will generate a durable and far
more equitable economy, one built on a smallscale
and local level. Slow money asks us to shift
our investment priorities toward how we live or
want to live, and where we live.
As long as we are throwing around billions of
dollars to fix our current economic dilemma–and
no one really knows what is being done or where
all of the money is going–why don’t we try slow
and local? Let’s invest in the wealth of our communities
and rebuild economic health from the
ground up. What would it be like to live in a
world supported by investment dollars with these
new values? What would our communities look
like and feel like if we invested in these long-term
ventures? What if we invested in local, sustainable
enterprises within 50 miles of where we live?
What if we bet on our local ranchers and farmers
to protect our open space and provide long-term
local food security? Imagine green venture capital
directed at establishing food cooperatives with
shared facilities that facilitate local processing
of meat and grains? How about a gristmill
to grind grain, a creamery, an abattoir?
How about a local butcher, sausage maker
and a community kitchen, and financing to
help sustain the few bakers we still have in
the Roaring Fork Valley? What if our investments
were to genuinely better our immediate
world, our own communities?
If we don’t invest in our local agricultural
infrastructure soon, there will be no
need to invest anywhere else. We will starve
long before we can figure out how to digest
quarterly earnings from our shares in distant
corporations. Only by directing venture and
philanthropic capital toward building local,
small-scale, sustainable systems will we find
food and energy security, and build communities
we want to live in that are resilient to future challenges.
So the new New Deal this time around
has to be different. We must remember that
every benefit has its cost. The existing system
has proven itself unworthy of further
investment. We have seen the shadow side
of unchecked technological innovation and
dramatic increases in standard of living,
partnered ironically with widespread unhappiness,
for a few billion Homo sapiens. It is
time to rewrite our story of progress. Our
new cultural myths must include the only recently
forgotten sacred trust–to care for the
Creation that cares for us. Look at the original
intent of any of the great religious traditions,
and you will find the tenets that will guide us
to the values we need to add back into our
story. By doing this, I believe, we can find a
unified mission that will lead us to a sustainable,
steady-state economy. It will have to be
slow, more comparable to nature’s metabolism,
and it must be based on the soil. Let’s
not kid ourselves, either; it will take courage
to slow money down.
Resources:
www.slowmoneyalliance.org
www.soulofmoney.org
Recommended Reading :
Woody Tasch, “Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food,
Farms and Fertility Mattered”
Naomi Klein, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”
James Gustave Speth, “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the
Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability”
David Schweickart, “After Capitalism”
Joel Kovel, “The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?”
Bill McKibben, “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future”
Lynne Twist, “The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with
Money and Life”
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins, “Natural Capitalism: Creating
the Next Industrial Revolution”
Amartya Sen, “Development as Freedom”
Jared M. Diamond, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”
Carlo Petrini, “Slow Food Revolution: A New Culture for Eating and Living”
How to:
For ideas on how to invest in the soil of our
economy, read “Inquiries into the Nature of
Slow Money,” by Woody Tasch, who asks;
• Could there ever be an alternative
stock exchange dedicated to businesses
that are slow, small and local?
• Could a million American families get
their food from Community Supported
Agricultures?
• What if you had to invest 50 percent
of your assets within 50 miles of
where you live?
Brook Le Van, driven in life predominantly
by flavor, is the co-founder and director of
Sustainable Settings, a nonprofit land-based
demonstration and research institute—a
Whole Systems Learning Center—near
Carbondale, Colorado. It is a place and
program devoted to building positive futures
by curing systems’ blindness in our culture
and reviving local, decentralized food and
energy production and distribution systems,
the bedrock of a new slower and steady-state
economy.