The nature of slow money and how to create a 'new' economy

The Nature Of Slow Money'

Filed under: Economic Scene

Dante Hesse, organic dairy farmer, needs to raise $700,000. NPR

A bunch of you have been asking about economic growth and sustainability. Today on All Things Considered, we hear from an organic dairy farmer who has turned to his customers for help financing a bottling plant in his barn.

In his way, Dante Hesse is part of the new Slow Money movement. It's the brainchild of venture capitalist Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money from Chelsea Green.

You can read an excerpt from his book with the story. Here's a nugget from Tasch:

Organized from "markets down" rather than from "the ground up," industrial finance is inherently limited in its ability to nurture the long-term health of community and bioregion. These limits are nowhere more apparent than in the food sector, where financial strategies optimizing the efficient use of capital have resulted in cheap chemical-laden food, depleted and eutrophied aquifers, millions of acres of GMO corn, trillions of food miles, widespread degradation of soil fertility, a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, and obesity epidemics side by side with persistent hunger.

Laura Conaway