permaculture

[kevin skvorak <k.skvorak@gmail.com>]

Towards a Regenerative Economy - Thoughts about Slow Money from a radical
farmer.

Kevin Skvorak
Regeneration CSA
August 31th 2010


I started my comments at the Hudson Valley
potluck<http://www.meetup.com/The-Greater-Hudson-Valley-Slow-Money-Alliance/calendar/14210507/>with
the observation that Slow Money is a radical organization, and how
grateful I was that a radical 'capitalist' movement that concerns itself
with food and farming has come on the scene. As you can imagine this is
exciting news for a radical farmer! And in case there is anyone that didn't
realize that you were affiliating with a radical organization in Slow Money,
I think you all needed to know at some point ....

Being "Radical" of course is nothing to be afraid or ashamed of, far from
it!  It is a great word- Radical: from late Latin- radicalis, radix, radic-
'root';  "of or going to the root or origin"; fundamental, essential.

I think this describes the analysis and principles of Slow Money pretty
well.

It is natural that farmers are radical, thinking about the roots of things
as much as they do. I made a comment at the potluck about all of the radical
farmers I have been inspired by, and been lucky enough to learn from in the
organic movement.  I alluded to the origin of the organic food movement,
created by radical farmers who saw clearly the roots of things, (the roots
of the converging problems of climate change, peak oil, and ecological
carrying capacity for instance) and devised a radical solution - farming
organically.  I also made a comment about how frustrating it is to watch as
this potentially transformative movement slips dangerously close to being
dominated by the paradigm of commodification, speculation, centralized power
and wealth, and corporate control etc. as it becomes just another purely
"profit" driven industry, with all of the attending unsustainable and
de-generative outcomes.

I said this as a warning i think, to remind us to keep our "eyes on the
prize" as we untangle this conundrum of centralized, monetized wealth and
power- with all it's own inherently destructive "principles' - and matters
of true wealth; the wealth held in our local relationships, local
ecologies, and our local communities.

This is the honest and radical understanding clearly embodied in the
principles of Slow Money.  The radical understanding that business-as-usual
is taking us all: wealthy, poor, and in between, down the same doomed path.
The radical understanding that strategies and actions that actually achieve
regenerative and transformative results are the only ones that matter now.

As a permaculture designer <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture>, as
well as a farmer, I (like many others in these fields) use the word
"regenerative" a lot. Our farm is called Regeneration
CSA<http://www.regenerationcsa.org/>.
 We use the term regenerative because it best clarifies our goals;
regenerating our natural and ecological systems while getting a yield for
ourselves (humans).  A simple, radical idea, and the foundation of 
Permaculture
Principles <http://permacultureprinciples.com/principles.php>, and 
Permaculture
Ethics. <http://liberationecology.org/?p=80>  An idea that I hope also helps
us keep our eyes on the prize of creating a truly "regenerative economy", an
economy that is the logical outcome of following the principles of Slow
Money.

Regenerative-design, regenerative-agriculture, regenerative-economies...
"regenerative" because it is already too late for "sustainable".

Too late to "sustain" a vibrant, living gulf of mexico already suffering an
enormous hypoxic dead zone <http://www.gulfhypoxia.net/>  long before the
latest oil spill.  Too late to sustain a viable arctic ecology, that is
already, it seems, beyond it's tipping point.  Too late to sustain fertile
agricultural soils worldwide, already depleted of natural fertility and
utterly dependent on fossil sunlight and fertility (aka oil) to produce any
food. Too late to sustain the crippling social inequality that is, in and of
itself, a major driver of environmental destruction. It is just too, damn,
late.

So, a regenerative society, and a regenerative economy *must* be our goals.
Anything less is just too little, and too late.

At the event I made a quip about being careful not to drive our Prius off
the same precipice of catastrophe as all the Hummer drivers are hell bent on
pushing us over, about being careful not to fall for false solutions to our
"predicament" <http://www.chrismartenson.com/> , not to believe (or most
critically, continue to emulate) false "green capitalist" hype and recognize
that such efficiencies are useful only insofar as they buy us some time to
make the transformative changes necessary, and to also understand that all
these wonderful gadgets of efficiency, filled with rare earth minerals like
lithium, silicon, coltan and the like, have enormous ecological costs of
their own, and are driving deadly wars and conflicts at this very moment.

All the economists and financial folks seem to understand that it is all
smoke and mirrors at this point; debt as money, a demand for exponential
growth from a system (the planet) at its limits, collateralized debt
obligations, the Federal Reserve, peak oil, all pointing to an impending
collapse on many levels.  ("The Tapeworm economy" as Catherine Austin
Fitts<http://solari.com/blog/>says,  aka "The Suicide economy", David
Korten's <http://www.davidkorten.org/> term for our current  insane path)

 As Slow money radicals we know that the current globalized financial system
is inherently de-generative. We see that it virtually demands, for the sake
of economic "growth", the extraction, depletion, and destruction of real
wealth, (living rivers, mountains, forests, oceans, soils, and human
cultures) piling these all up like so many dead pelts, scalps even, into
symbolic fungible "assets".

What do we feel after we recognize that under the current economic system
for virtually every new dollar of debt, every speculative financial
transaction, every hard-earned (or easily earned) dollar in our portfolio,
the living systems of the planet are diminished?  That there is not "more"
to go around, but less?      Vertigo and dread about sums it up I would
say....


So, what are the real solutions? What does a "regenerative economy" look
like?  How do we measure it? How do we actually create it? For every dollar
created, how much carbon ought to be sequestered instead of burned? How much
ecosystem resilience enhanced instead of diminished?  How much soil
fertility must be built instead of depleted?  How much social and economic
equality restored instead of further degraded?

These are the questions that I am most interested in talking about with
others, as I think  we already have answers and directions for most of them.
(as a regenerative farmer and permaculturalist in fact i *know *we have
answers)  Perhaps we can start with a few of the Slow Money Principles:

 "What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from
now?"

Ok, imho this is what one might call a "step in the right direction"   50%
more organic material in our existing depleted soils (running at 1
to1-1/2%)%) is a good start, but probably isn't enough to have a real
mitigating effect on climate warming if that is the goal. It is a start
though.  In any case, how do we do it? How do we measure it?   And how do we
market it?

Well, we do it by actually farming in a regenerative manner.
Rodale<http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/search/node/regenerative+agriculture>has
some perfectly useful methodology that can be adopted immediately. Wes
Jackson at the Land Institute <http://www.landinstitute.org/> has been doing
some promising work for yrs, and of course we have our own methodology
at Regeneration
CSA <http://www.regenerationcsa.org/how-we-farm.html> that we believe is
imminently practical, fully scalable, and that is particularly well suited
to regenerating and bringing back into production some of the compacted and
depleted heavy clay soils that are typical of much of the Hudson Valley. (We
are looking for a new home btw.)  And there are a lot of other folks doing
this work as well.

And we measure it by using real measures of soil carbon and soil fertility,
like Elaine Inghams work on the soil food web <http://www.soilfoodweb.com/>,
and the Real Food <http://www.nutrient-dense.info/gateway.htm> folks work on
brix testing and soil mineralization.

And we market it, well....I am not completely sure of this, but this is not
something that farmers can do alone. We need the shapers of the marketplace,
stakeholders with influence like those in Slow Money to get involved.  One
way might be a new certification. Here is a
letter<http://www.regenerationcsa.org/1/post/2010/06/thoughts-on-slow-money-towards-a-regenerative-economy.html>I
wrote to Ari and others at SM offering a proposal for just that.

Another Slow Money principle: "The 20th Century was the era of Buy Low/Sell
High and Wealth Now/Philanthropy Later—what one venture capitalist called
“the largest legal accumulation of wealth in history.” The 21st Century will
be the era of nurture capital, built around principles of carrying capacity,
care of the commons, sense of place and non-violence."

Ok, what Woody might have said, but didn't was not just the largest legal
accumulation of "wealth", but most importantly the largest centralization of
wealth. This is key as well. The logic of dog-eat-dog, row-your-own-boat
capitalism ( that too many even in Slow Money seem to accept as an
inviolable law of nature instead of a cultural construct) would seem to be
that personal accumulation is the key to freedom, happiness, security, and
the like.  But as Slow Money radicals, who have read the work of authors
like Bill Mckibben, ("Deep Economy"
<http://www.billmckibben.com/deep-economy.html>)  we know that personal
accumulation is a "dead end" in a diminishing world.  We may all make some
more dollars betting on the end of the world, (speculating on diminishing
resources etc) but if that is what we continue to do with our dollars, we
are absolutely guaranteeing that disastrous outcome.   So what is the
point?  Are we really "enjoying the ride" as we slide faster and faster
towards an ecological tipping point <http://www.resalliance.org/1.php>?
Really?

So, to get to the heart of this principle, some type of "redistribution" is
central to the realization of Slow Money goals.  Horror upon horrors you
might say!  If being a radical means "giving" my money away then forget
about it!  Ok, but I don't believe "giving" money away is going to help
either.

What we need to do with this surplus symbolic "wealth" is to put it back
into real wealth while we still have time.  Real wealth for our entire
communities, because that is the only way we have real security and quality
of life in the long run.  This real wealth is what some might call "soft
returns", but it the only return on investment that has any real value in
the long run.

Personally,  I am afraid that Slow Money may be a dead end if people don't
prioritize the so-called "soft" returns, instead of the hard ones. As a SM
investor you will not get back 5% 10% or 15% off of the top of local food
production profits.   In fact, even if you get 0% return in dollars, you get
all of the other returns that far outweigh the dollars in long term
benefit.  This I think needs to be paramount in the discussions, not
tertiary.  Otherwise Slow Money runs the risk of not only not being
effective, but in fact being a problem as it provides the "feel good" avenue
for further speculation and centralization of wealth in the local food
economy, just at the time we need diversity the most.

Be careful what you wish for my Slow Money friends.

In any case, this is where we need to prioritize "philanthropy"  (which we
should really call investing in true wealth).  As far as I am concerned the
key strategic need right now in the Hudson Valley, and much of the NE United
States, is true farmland (not just "open space") protection and affordable
farm access to new farmers.  To accomplish this we have been working for a
while on a non-profit with a mission to specifically protect farmland and
provide it to new farmers.  The Hudson Valley Community and Agricultural
Land 
Trust.<http://www.hvfoodnetwork.com/forum/topics/a-hudson-valley-foodshed>

There is not a better investment one can make than creating opportunities
for new farmers.  And there are a lot of other needed areas of "investment"
like this as well.  Educating ourselves about the strategic areas of
(so-called) philanthropy, and where they are intersecting with regenerative
food/farming goals could also be important work of Slow Money thinkers.

A lot of people pass the following Gaylord Nelson quote around:    "The
economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. All economic
activity is dependent upon that environment with it's underlying resource
base. When the environment is finally forced to file under Chapter 11
because it's resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated,
irretrievably compromised, then, the economy goes down into bankruptcy with
it because the economy is just a subset within the ecological system."

Not much more to say on that.


Best regards,
Kevin Skvorak

Regeneration CSA
www.RegenerationCSA.org <http://www.regenerationcsa.org/>

Hudson Valley Community and Agricultural Land Trust
www.HVCALT.org <http://www.hvcalt.org/>