The Local Food Shift Meets Slow Money

Food.  Everybody eats it but we rarely question where it comes from and what impact our relationship to it has on our health and the well-being of our communities.  Same with money. We all need money to buy food and to otherwise sustain ourselves, but rarely do we think about how our money practices–exchanging, purchasing, saving and investing–impact the world around us.

Why do we tend not to think about these things?  This global society in which we live is fast-paced and complex and it keeps us busy.  We tell ourselves that we have other responsibilities, no time … it’s too difficult.  Besides, our current food and money systems are providing us with what we need so why change them?  If our individual and collective behaviors are any indicator, this is how most of us actually think.

Unfortunately, the evidence that our current food and money systems are not in fact providing us what we ultimately need is mounting.  A simple look at growth in national rates of food allergies, type-II diabetes, obesity, the national debt, average debt per American citizen, and wealth centralization reveals some rather serious, systemic problems that challenge the conventional view of how well our food and money systems are actually serving us as a whole.

It is in part because of these problems (and in part because of the draw of a saner and simpler way of living) that Transition, Slow Food, Slow Money, and other movements have gained such momentum in recent years.  It’s time that we all considered the real cost of being unwitting participants in global food and money systems run amok.  Plugging into local, community-based efforts to transform how we do food, how we do money, and how we combine the two, may be the most practical investment we average people can make in creating a better future.

The Slow Money approach is not just for investors and entrepreneurs, but for everyone who partakes of local food.  If you would like to learn more, join us at the Gardens on Wednesday, October 5th at 6:30 p.m. for The Local Food Shift Meets Slow Money–an insightful evening with Slow Money founder Woody Tasch, along with Transition Colorado’s Michael Brownlee and several local food system innovators.  Tickets ($20 non-members) available online or by calling 720-865-3580.

Featured Blogger: Chris Dwyer

Chris has been a fundraiser for alternative higher education for 15 years.  Last year, he joined the Transition Colorado team to strengthen its community outreach efforts and founded Local Motive, a community development incubator and re-localization consultancy.  Chris believes that the key to our future lies in every day people acting locally and with a global awareness. His goal is to ground and perpetuate social movements–Transition, Local Living Economies, Slow Food and Slow Money–in Colorado communities, and by so doing, illuminate a path for communities everywhere to evolve and flourish.