Financing Our Foodshed: Growing Local Food with Slow Money

by Carol Peppe Hewitt

Overview

“[Hewitt] paints an engaging portrait of a community learning how to take care of its own, and offers inspiration for others looking to do the same.” —Amy Cortese, author of Locavesting

In towns and cities across North America, a quiet revolution is underway. Fed up with sending their money off to make a fast buck in faraway markets, people are putting their money to work where they live, in markets they trust and understand—starting with food.

Financing Our Foodshed is a collection of real-life stories of these Slow Money pioneers and the local food entrepreneurs—sustainable farmers, bakers, restaurateurs, and more—they have chosen to support.

Fueled by their desire to do more than just eat local food, lenders of “nurture capital” are making low-interest, peer-to-peer loans to the people who produce, process, distribute and sell local food. Meet these passionate food entrepreneurs like:

• Abi, talented artist-turned-baker, who borrowed the funds to start a gluten-free bakery
• Angelina, owner of a Greek local foods restaurant, who refinanced exorbitant credit card debt incurred by renovations
• Chatham Marketplace, a much-loved grocery co-op whose monthly loan payments were reduced by a third, thanks to an ambitious collaboration between 16 investors

Financing Our Foodshed tells the compelling stories of ordinary people doing something extraordinary, and will appeal to anyone who understands the critical importance of sustainably grown local food and resilient local economies, and wants a blueprint to get us there.

“For anyone seriously interested in boosting his or her community’s economy—including politicians, policymakers, financiers, businesspeople, and activists—this book is essential reading.” —Michael H. Shuman, author of Put Your Money Where Your Life Is

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550925180
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	09/17/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	239
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Carol Peppe Hewitt is a business owner, social entrepreneur and life-long activist. Growing up in rural Northwest Connecticut, Carol watched as working farms disappeared one by one. She now works to change that trend, guiding patient capital to sustainable farmers and food businesses in North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Financing our Foodshed

Annotated Table of Contents
1. Why the Fuss about Finance?
If small and medium scale sustainable agriculture, and the food enterprises that rely on them, are to remain viable in the US we need to find new, creative ways to finance them. Which brings us to the Slow Money movement as well as a quick survey of like-minded endeavors.
2. Slow Money Comes to Town
Within hours of hearing Woody Tasch, author of Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money, make his pitch in NC, an inspired trio found a lender to make his first low-interest Slow Money loan to a local baker. They made history in the slow money movement, and launched a local initiative that would reverberate throughout NC and beyond.
3. The Sweet Side of Slow Money
We’re sweet on bakeries. Our first loan was to a baker, and our third, eighth and eleventh! We even funded the same commercial bread mixer twice. These are the stories of four daring women, who each took a crumb of an idea, and with the help of Slow Money, created successful businesses.
4. Making A Difference - One Loan At a Time
Angelina expanded her restaurant using credit card debt, until we came along and took her interest rate from 18% to 3%. Making delicious food bought from local farmers (like Patrick and Kelly who also got Slow Money loans) is her mission and why her Greek restaurant is so popular.
5. An Investment at only 2% Interest?
Finding folks who want to invest in local, sustainably grown food turned out to be relatively easy. In several cases, having made their first loan, they came back to loan again, and again. At only 2% return, the money was clearly not their only incentive.
6. Finding Borrowers – “Entrepreneurs”
On the flip side was the search for local food entrepreneurs. This was more challenging; requiring creative networking and marketing to get the message to potential borrowers that Slow Money might be able to help them access the capital they needed.
7. Bringin’ It Home – All 400K
We’d made ten loans for a total of 35K when we decided to go for a much bigger deal. It took 16 shares at 25K each to pull off a 400K refinance of our beloved local coop grocery stores’ bank loan. We brought their monthly payment down by a third and paved the way for more large loans.


8. Slow Money –From A Movement to An NGO
From the first day - we made loans - and we bragged about it one month later at the Slow Money National Gathering in VT. Since then Carol has been collaborating with the other dozen local group leaders throughout the US and the National office, trying to wrestle these folks into a coherent, vibrant NGO.
9. The Dog and Pony Show and a Million Dollar Challenge
Taking the story of our success on the road to enthusiastic crowds throughout NC - in Southern Pines, Tarrboro, Wilmington, Asheville, Durham, Charlotte – means more loans in more places. Our goal? A million dollars moved from private investors into our NC foodsheds within a year.
10. Riding the Seesaw
First we found money, then we found borrowers, then more money, then more borrowers. Keeping these matches going is like riding a seesaw. Vetting the loans and making that match is what keeps it so interesting.
11. Staying connected to our friends
You could say Slow Money NC was really born, or at least conceived, under the Shakori Hills Festival of Music and Dance Sustainability Tent, which is how our third co-founder Jordan Puryear, who runs the festival fits into the Slow Money picture.
12. Reaching Out to The Next Round of Eaters
My speaking gigs to graduating students of the Sustainable Agriculture program, to the Food, Inc class at UNC, and to the Real Food Challenge trainees (college students turned food activists from all over the South,) aim to inspire our next generation of Slow Money eaters.
13. Funds to Farms (or resource chapter)
Getting low-interest capital to small and medium scale farms is crucial to insuring the availability of good, healthy, tasty, local food. There are many programs out there wanting to help - here are all the ones we have found.
14. Inspire, Connect, Invest
Making a Slow Money loan is not for everybody. But it is viscerally rewarding for some. Hear their stories, who they are, why they lend, what happens next, and ask yourself – Do I fit into their shoes?
15. How to Get Slow Money Moving in Your Community
This need not be complicated, nor need it be difficult. If we wish, we can remove obstacles to access to capital for a select group of borrowers in local food businesses that we like the sound of, and do all we can to help them succeed. It’s easy to make Slow Money work anywhere. It just requires the desire, and the nerve to call me. With a bit of guidance you can be ready to go!
16. Money Matters – “Stewardship”
Everyone has money, some money. And maybe a car, a house, maybe even land. What does it mean to be thoughtful, altruistic stewards of our assets, whatever they may be? How do we increase that level of altruism in our local food economies?
17. My 2nd National Gathering – from the stage
We made our first loan in time for me to dash up to VT and brag about it at the 2nd Annual Slow Money National Gathering in June 2010. By the 3rd National Gathering I was on stage, taking part in a panel, then in a Town Hall meeting, inspiring others to replicate our success.

Epilogue – By the time this book comes out we will have made many more loans and created more stories and eaten many more pounds of delicious locally raised food. Some loans will have been paid off, and hopefully our borrowers (and lenders) will all be thriving in their various, brilliant local food endeavors.