Ari Derfel’s Speech at the 2010 Food and Finance Summit

Today was Cascade Harvest Coalition’s 2010 Food and Finance Summit.  Held in Port Townsend it was a great opportunity to network with producers, buyers, financers and people interested in local food systems. 

The keynote speaker was Ari Derfel, executive director of Slow Money, an organization pursuing the “fundamentals of nurture capital, a new financial sector supporting the emergence of a restorative economy”.   Here are several excerpts from his presentation.

Ari provided proof that his call for social change has been voiced for a long time with a stirring quote from Martin Luther King’s 4/4/67 speech. 

 ”I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Next he discussed the book Blessed Unrest, by Paul Hawken.  This book lays out the idea that there is a huge group of people working towards health, racial, gender and food justice through a decentralized revolution.

Once the issue was framed he set off to explain what his organization, Slow Money, is doing.  

“To create real wealth we need to bring money back to earth and root it in a real place over time.  True prosperity will then follow.  This is different from the zillions of anonymous transactions that go on every day.  We live in an age where 40%of wealth generated comes from transactions themselves and one in four kids are at risk for hunger.  This idea of grounding our investing is not necessarily a new idea but it is being captured in a new way… At Slow Money we are trying to provide leadership around this issue to make it a public conversation that happens in the public domain.  We want investment in local food systems. Food is an actual good that has actual value.  If we fix food economies we also address health and wellness, environmental and clean energy issues…In two years have 12,000 facebook fans, 15 chapters and over a million dollars have been donated.

He ended his portion with a story.

“An elderly Cherokee woman was teaching her grandchildren about life.  She told them there was a great fight going on between two wolves living inside of her.  The first wolf was anger, fear, regret and all the bad things and the other wolf was hope, love, cooperation and the beautiful things.  She said this same fight is going on in everyone.  One child asked which wolf will win?  The woman’s response was that the one you feed is the one who will win.  Who do we feed with our time, our money?”

In the next few days key points from several other aspects of this conference will be posted. 

Ari Derfel is the Executive Director of Slow Money.  He is a serial entrepreneur trained at Harvard and Cambridge who has been travelling all across the U.S talking with people about elevating food and finance.

Related posts:

1. Rejoice! State Food Policy Council Established by Washington State Governor
2. Food Fight with Richard Conlin
3. Seattle City Council Identifies Local Food As 2010 Priority

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