Description: "The Slow Money Principles are the path to a new, healthy food system. Sign them and be counted!"  "I signed the Principles.  Hope you do, too.  Together, we are building a strong, new voice for the wisdom of bringing our money home to build sustainable communities. Judy Wicks, Chair/co-founder, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. In order to enhance food security, food safety and food access; improve nutrition and health; promote cultural, ecological and economic diversity; and accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration, we do hereby affirm the following Principles: I. We must bring money back down to earth. II. There is such a thing as money that is too fast, companies that are too big, finance that is too complex.  Therefore, we must slow our money down -- not all of it, of course, but enough to matter.   III. 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.  IV. We must learn to invest as if food, farms and fertility mattered.  We must connect investors to the places where they live, creating vital relationships and new sources of capital for small food enterprises. V. Let us celebrate the new generation of entrepreneurs, consumers and investors who are showing the way from Making A Killing to Making a Living. VI. Paul Newman said, "I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer who puts back into the soil what he takes out." Recognizing the wisdom of these words, let us begin rebuilding our economy from the ground up, asking:  What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?  What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?  What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now? Sign these Principles and be counted as part of the emerging network that's working to improve the health of local food systems and the economy. These Principles are a living document, a beginning, a reflection of the vision that is unfolding in communities around the country. Thank you. Please Pass The Principles On to your friends. And if you want to do more, consider becoming a member of the Slow Money Alliance. Join folks like George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley and Jim Cochran, the first organic strawberry grower in California, and Eliot Coleman, one of the nation's top organic farmers, and Joan Gussow, one of the pioneers of nutrition and ecology, working together to build support for this beautiful movement.