By Rachel Clark, Good Food Book Club Volunteer Coordinator
Join us in reading the January Co-op Good Food Book Club book, Financing Our Foodshed: Growing Local Food with Slow Money (2013) by Carol Peppe Hewitt. The Book Club will meet Sunday, January 25, from 6:00-7:30 at a member’s private residence to discuss Financing Our Foodshed. Email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for more information and directions.
The Palouse is rising to the challenge! I’m thrilled to report that this month’s book is an outstanding testament to empowering local communities to shift their food system to resilience, sustainability, and nurturance. And most exciting, that the book and author will be featured at the Palouse Clearwater Food Summit to take place on January 30, 2015 (and spotlighted in another article in this newsletter) at Moscow’s 1912 Center (cost is free).
Carol Peppe Hewitt is a pioneer and inspirational leader of the so-called “Slow Money” movement, which unites local investors with local food growers, with an incredible array of benefits for communities. Carol started out by financing a small loan to a local baker for an industrial mixer. Since then, she’s helped arrange financing for countless individuals and local farms totally well over 1 million dollars. Her work has inspired the emerging new “Slow Money” movement which helps bring local dollars to local growers and producers, with the outcome of “nurture capital, built around the principles of carrying capacity, care of the commons, sense of place, and non-violence.”
Financing Our Foodshed is an inspiring collection of stories about the real folks who are supported and who support one another via Slow Money—locally, sustainably, and with great care and intention for reclaiming a resilient food system. Of people who are learning to invest “as if food, farms, and fertility matters…connecting investors to the places where they live, creating vital relationships and new sources of capital for small food enterprises.”
Come challenge yourself to envision a transformed local Foodshed that is resilient, locally financed, and locally grown. Join us to read the book and consider registering for the Food Summit so you can hear Carol Peppe Hewitt talk about her experience in person. Register at: http://www.ruralroots.org/programs/foodsummit.asp
Please join us to discuss Financing Our Foodshed: Growing Local Food with Slow Money by Carol Peppe Hewitt (New Society Publishers) on Sunday, January 25 from 6:00-7:30 pm. Remember to email bookclub@moscowfood.coop for the meeting location and directions and/or to receive email reminders about the Good Food Book Club. Financing Our Foodshed by Carol Peppe Hewitt is available through your local library. If you are interested in buying the book, check out the area’s local used book stores or visit Book People of Moscow where Book Club members receive a discount. For more information about the Good Food Book Club, check out the Outreach section of the Moscow Food Co-op website at www.moscowfood.coop. Register for the January 30 Food Summit at: http://www.ruralroots.org/programs/foodsummit.asp