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3c hapter - Index of
3c hapter - Index of
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148 Locavesting<br />
Through Slow Money, a nonpr<strong>of</strong>i t organization, he aims to create<br />
new pathways for investing in local, sustainable food and agriculture<br />
enterprises, the kinds <strong>of</strong> businesses that are passed over by conventional<br />
fi nance. To bring fi nance back down to earth. Slow Money is the<br />
pragmatic cousin <strong>of</strong> Slow Food, which celebrates food diversity, taste,<br />
and tradition and from which Tasch liberally (and literally) borrows.<br />
Petrini has called attention to the question <strong>of</strong> where our food comes<br />
from. Now Tasch is urging us to ask, where does our money go?<br />
As Tasch tells it, it goes fl ying around the globe at a mindboggling<br />
pace in pursuit <strong>of</strong> pr<strong>of</strong>i t and usually ends up in a smokestack<br />
in China. Our voracious fi nancial system has enabled an<br />
industrial food system that consumes vast amounts <strong>of</strong> fossil fuels<br />
and water and spits out cheap, fast food. As we have seen, that system<br />
is taking a terrible toll on our health, our environment, our<br />
food security, our communities, and, especially, our small- scale<br />
farmers and food production.<br />
Slow Money<br />
Slow Money is a national organization made up <strong>of</strong> semi-autonomous<br />
local c<strong>hapter</strong>s dedicated to creating fi nancing solutions for smallscale<br />
food and agricultural producers.<br />
In the 1950s, there were 25 million farmers in the United<br />
States. Today there are fewer than 2 million. 1 We lose two acres<br />
<strong>of</strong> farmland per minute. 2 Industrial- scale megafarms farms supply<br />
the bulk <strong>of</strong> our food. Four companies control 85 percent <strong>of</strong><br />
the nation’s beef production, 70 percent <strong>of</strong> pork, and 60 percent<br />
<strong>of</strong> poultry, according to Slow Food. One company (Dean Foods)<br />
controls 40 percent <strong>of</strong> the milk supply. These concentrated animal<br />
feeding operations routinely feed antibiotics to their livestock,<br />
contributing to dangerous levels <strong>of</strong> resistance among pathogens.<br />
Industrial farming is also heavily dependent on chemical inputs.<br />
Each year, 80 million tons <strong>of</strong> nitrogen- rich fertilizer is spread onto<br />
fi elds, the vast amount <strong>of</strong> it washed away (along with topsoil) into<br />
rivers and waterways, creating algae blooms that snuff out life,