This post was authored by Anthony Nicalo, Chef. Importer of Farmstead Wines. Co-founder of nonprofit, FarmFed. Maker of sustainable chef coats, Dajoji. Working on a web platform for a transparent food system, ProvenanceID. Founding member of the Slow Money Alliance. Farmer at heart. You can find him on Twitter @farmstead Special thanks to @ecstaticist for amazing photos.

You may have already heard of Slow Money. Many of you have probably even read Woody Tasch’s fantastic book. I thought it was a pretty cool idea and an interesting way to take the underlying values of slow food and apply them in a practical way. I wanted to know more, so I went to the conference in Sante Fe, New Mexico. I returned convinced that Slow Money can improve our food system.

Many of the events’ 450 participants, from 34 states and six countries, felt the historic import of Slow Money’s approach to finance, activism and entrepreneurship. Near the end of the conference, 54 people were so moved to act that they collectively contributed $75,000 dollars to the Slow Money Alliance. Mardi Mellon, the Director of Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, noted, “For an event focused on the ground, the Slow Money gathering was surprisingly uplifting. The room was filled with positive energy and the sense that something important was going on. Woody’s idea of tackling the funding of sustainable agriculture directly and creatively couldn’t be more timely. Slow Money could kick sustainable agriculture to the next level…which for the sake of the soil and earth can’t happen fast enough.”

Truly inspiring, but where do we go from here? If we are going to gain control of our runaway food system we need to recognize the problems we are facing are complex and interconnected. Improving our food systems will have far ranging benefits: from the environment, to fair prices for farmers, to animal welfare. We are seeing signs of progress from the Know Your Farmer initiative at the USDA to a focus on food and nutrition in the East Wing, but, rest assured, that also means resistance will increase. As people interested in feeding the future, we have to work together. Perhaps choosing a single issue, like health, that will resonate with a larger audience would help, but this is a question to discuss with policy advocates and lobbyists. There is no need to wait for government to act or for voting with your fork to improve our runaway food system.

At Farm to Table, Zach has written recently about his ideas for bringing the local sustainable food community together. He says, “The local sustainable food world is a people powered bottom up community,” and this idea was on display at the Slow Money gathering. People from all walks of life were working together to invest in food, farms and soil fertility. While the policy battles continue over commodity crop subsidies, and nonprofits try to deal with the fallout, our local sustainable food community holds the power to change the world. Slow Money is an opportunity to support the efforts of entrepreneurs (farmers, grocers, CSAs, ProFood, and 1000s of other businesses) and bring financial backing to improving our food system.

A group called Friends of Slow Money knows that the time to improve our food system is today and has launched an effort to galvanize the Slow Money Alliance. To augment the Slow Money team’s campaign to grow membership in the Slow Money Alliance, which starts at $25 and which has more than 125 Founding Members of over $1,000 or more, many of us are participating in an immediate grassroots campaign to galvanize hundreds of thousands of $5 donations in the coming weeks. It is our opportunity, as a community, to put the seed back into seed capital.

The goal is to raise one million dollars in one week, beginning on October 6 to expand the Slow Money audience and support for local and healthy food systems. This would also surely demonstrate that the “slow” in Slow Money does not mean lack of urgency or entrepreneurial gumption. Working together, we can help grow nurture capital and bring investment to sustainable agriculture.

Become a Friend of Slow Money, pledging $5 to improve our food system.