GRAFTON — Money is fast, nature is slow. That was the starting place for the 35 investors, foundation managers, and agricultural entrepreneurs who met at the Grafton Inn Sunday and Monday. Their goal was to find a way to decelerate the pace of finance and let it serve the needs of local food systems.
Slow Money, the group that organized the conference, was created in hopes of funding sustainable agricultural enterprises in Vermont and other regions in the U.S. Woody Tasch, the architect of Slow Money, said he was looking for a sense of whether capital is required to develop Vermont’s land-based businesses, and if so, what kinds of deals might be workable.
A quick survey of the entrepreneurs in the room suggested that early-stage food enterprises in Vermont might be able to use $15-million to $20-million in the next few years.
Vermont is only one of several areas Slow Money is interested in, Mr. Tasch said. Northern California, part of Kentucky and New Orleans are also likely sites for investment, he said. But the success of a small group of businessmen in and around Hardwick has attracted the attention of Mr. Tasch and his Slow Money associates.
They believe that the experiences of Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds, Mateo and Andy Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm, and Andrew Meyer of Vermont Soy could help to create a model for new kinds of business and financial structures.
Mr. Stearns is a member of the Slow Money Advisory Board, and helped Mr. Tasch moderate the gathering. He also took a lot of good-natured ribbing from the gathering because of his exuberant promotion of the Hardwick miracle.
There was only respectful attention, though, when he explained how High Mowing Seeds recently raised $800,000 from 13 investors. Mr. Stearns said the money was necessary to help High Mowing move out of the “gangly teenage” stage and onto more solid footing as a national supplier of organic seeds. Investors are promised a 6 percent return on the loans, which are due in five years. If the loans are still outstanding after that time, Mr. Stearns explained, the debt can be exchanged for up 26 percent of the business.
Several investors who participated in the offering spoke after Mr. Stearns to explain why they decided to invest in his company. Rian Fried of Clean Yield Asset Management in Greensboro said his clients are eager to invest in enterprises such as High Mowing. “My clients are not interested in 20 percent returns,” he said. “They want a 20 percent social return.”
Mr. Fried said that Security and Exchange Commission regulations require him to justify apparently risky investment to investigators who are more used to traditional deals.
The idea of traditional investments being less risky, many people at the meeting noted, is harder to defend than it once was.
Mr. Fried said he had spent 40 unpaid hours in research before he was sure he could justify a High Mowing investment. He said he can conduct research on publically traded stocks with one push of a computer button.
Others agreed that checking out deals like seed company loans takes a lot of work. If a Slow Money fund is established, its managers could spread the burden of that research.
Mr. Tasch seemed eager to start that fund, asking more than once whether he ought to go out and raise $50-million. The Slow Money schedule is a bit less abrupt, with at least one more regional meeting planned for this year. Directors in early 2009 will decide whether to move the project forward.
Inquiry Into The Nature of Slow Money: Investing As If Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered, by Woody Tasch, published by Chelsea Green Press in White River Junction, Vermont, in 2008, hardcover, 200 pages, $21.95
The idea of slow money is set out by Mr. Tasch in his recently published book, Inquiries into the nature of slow money: investing as if food, farms, and fertility mattered. In it Mr. Tasch suggests that traditional capitalism, which expects quick and large returns on investments, cannot take care of the soil, air and water on which life depends.
Mr. Tasch espouses the idea of devoting money to a social end without expectation of an fast cash payback. The successful slow money investor would get his money and a small premium back eventually, but would also see a larger return in the form of social goods such as increased soil fertility, sustainable jobs or a strong local food system.
In furtherance of these ideas Mr. Tasch organized the Slow Money Alliance, with 35 members. In June it hired Amy Dickie of California Environmental Associates to visit Vermont for a week.
Ms. Dickie interviewed 70 Vermont entrepreneurs and built a model that alliance members hope will serve as a blueprint for the application of slow money principles.
Ms. Dickie divided Vermont’s agricultural economy into sectors including dairy, meat, produce, tree fruit and forest products. Her analysis of each includes an overview of the market, an estimate of the sector’s need for capital, the possible opportunity for slow money investment, and the way deals might be put together.
Using the Vermont figures, Ms. Dickie calculated that a $100-million slow money fund divided into even thirds could balance high risk investments in farm and food enterprises with more reliable investments in farmland and forestland The proposed fund would have a 15-year life.
One idea proposed for the fund was to buy farmland and lease it to young farmers, giving them time to put together a successful enterprise before having to buy their land. With the sale of conservation easements to the Vermont Land Trust, the price could be brought to an affordable level.
Mr. Stearns estimated that about 500 people a year pass through farm internships in Vermont. About half of them, he said, find that farming is not for them. Most of the rest of them want to farm, but are barred from the field by the high cost of land.
Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm said that in the year they began dairying, five Greensboro farms went under. He said he thought that when people saw that he and his brother “could make $70,000 to $80,000 a year on a rocky hillside in Greensboro all our neighbors would sign up. It didn’t happen,” he said. “We found all our neighbors thought we were crazy because we were working so hard.”
The cheese caves at his farm are designed to help other farmers make a decent living in dairy farming. Jasper Hill will continue to offer to buy cheeses from the farmers and to age and market them.
He likened the operation to a cheese bank, where cheese makers make deposits. He said his caves have room for three million pounds of cheese — cheese that doesn’t exist yet. Mr. Kehler said he has ideas of how to change that.
He said Jasper Hill will be the core tenant in the food venture center scheduled to open in Hardwick. Mr. Kehler said he’ll work there with prospective cheese makers to help them develop their product, and then move them out to their farm to make way for the next cheese maker.
Mr. Kehler said he gets five or six calls a month from serious prospects, and expects to move one or two cheese makers through the venture center a year.
He said he doesn’t want to dictate what kinds of cheese are made, but he does care that all the products that come out of his caves are of high quality.
When Mr. Kehler was asked how he plans to keep these new cheese makers connected to Jasper Hill, the answer was swift and simple: “Pay them more money, faster.”
If Mr. Tasch gets the go-ahead from his board, some of that fast money might come, next year, from Slow Money.
Important Stories 
