Woody Tasch: Investing In Your Local Soil With Slow Money

Real Organic Podcast

#043: Founder and chairperson of the Slow Money Institute Woody Tasch talks us through investing in our local communities, farms, and soil with great intention and patience. Woody promotes a grassroots approach through the formation of community groups that offer zero-percent loans to organic farms and food businesses actively stewarding living soil.
Woody Tasch is the author of SOIL: Notes Towards the Theory and Practice of Nurture Capital, Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered (2008) and has most recently written AHA! Fake Trillions, Real Billions, Beetcoin, and the Great American Do-Over. Woody is the creator of Beetcoin, which is designed to give zero-percent loans to organic farms and local foos businesses. In 2010 UTNE Reader names him one of “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.”
To watch a video version of this podcast please visit:
https://www.realorganicproject.org/woody-tasch-investing-local-soil-slow-money-episode-forty-three
The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Dave Chapman and Linley Dixon, engineered by Brandon StCyr, and edited and produced by Jenny Prince.
The Real Organic Project is a farmer-led movement working towards certifying 1,000 farms across the United States this year. Our add-on food label distinguishes soil-grown fruits and vegetables from hydroponically-raised produce. It also identifies pasture-raised meat, milk, and eggs as compared to products harvested from animals in horrific confinement (CAFOs - confined animal feeding operations).
To find a Real Organic farm near you, please visit:
https://www.realorganicproject.org/farms
We believe that the organic standards, with their focus on soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare were written as they should be. But the current lack of enforcement of those standards is jeopardizing small farms that follow the law. The lack of enforcement is also jeopardizing the overall health of the customers who support the organic movement; customers who are not getting what they pay for at market but are still paying a premium price. The lack of enforcement is jeopardizing the very cycles (water, air, nutrients) that Earth relies upon to provide us all with a place to live, by pushing extractive, chemical agriculture to the forefront.
If you like what you hear and are feeling inspired, we would love for you to join our movement by becoming one of our 1,000 Real Friends!
https://www.realorganicproject.org/1000-real-fans/
To read our weekly newsletter (which might just be the most forwarded newsletter on the internet!) and get firsthand news about what's happening with organic food, farming and policy, please subscribe here:
https://www.realorganicproject.org/email/