The first phase of the responsible investment movement has matured. We, at Domini, believe the way companies respect their relationships with people and the planet adds value to the investment decision-making process. Our stakeholders include the natural ecology, work forces, suppliers, customers, investors, taxpayers, and communities, both locally and in the global sense. (July/Aug. 2022)
GoSun has created a micro-grid of self-reliance that integrates nearly 30 products designed to work in unison, or as stand-alone portable energy solutions. These appliances are some of the most efficient appliances possible, so you only need a small amount of energy to get the job done in the first place. Indeed, a conventional oven needs up to 4000wh to cook a meal, the GoSun oven only needs 150wh.
Bowery Farming produce is now sold in more than 850 supermarkets across America including Whole Foods Markets, Walmart and Amazon Fresh. “There is a critical need for new solutions to our current agricultural system – as well as an enormous economic opportunity. This is just the beginning,” said Irving Fain, CEO and founder of Bowery Farming.
Our food and agriculture systems are fundamentally broken. It’s no exaggeration to say that the warming planet, social inequities, and health epidemics bear this out. However, there’s real hope. We can heal ourselves, our communities, and our planet when we begin to participate once again in the creation of healthier food systems through regenerative organic agriculture.
The future of food and farming may not be dependent solely on breakthroughs in science – celebrity investors may play a role in changing the way society thinks about food from farm to table. And as improvements in agriculture technology become more well-known, more investors look at agriculture through new eyes – and choose to invest in something that will benefit the world.
It was a fortuitous sharing of vision and willingness to take risks that drove Equal Exchange founders in 1986 to move forward with their vision of Fair Trade and a better world. The three were managers at a food cooperative in the NE who dreamed of a large and inclusive economy that lifted up the prosperity of growers in the Third World, growers whose poorly paid labor had long kept the wealthy in comfort and the growers in poverty.
Organic farming is both good for the environment and can generate attractive returns. Our first fund had a 69 percent financial gain in net asset value over seven years. Also, our largest CA farm showed we generated a 46 percent net gain for the ecosystem, including: carbon sequestered in the soil, harmful ag practices avoided, enhanced biodiversity, healthy pollinator habitats, and reduced use of water for crops.
Regenerative agriculture involves practices that equitably use land to address climate change, biodiversity, soil health, and the well-being of workers and local economies. In 2019, Domini launched its Forest Project, focusing on the systemic importance of forests to environmental systems, businesses, and investments. We recently drew more explicit connections between our forest work and our sustainable agriculture work.
Since the slow money movement’s first low interest loan to a local organic farm in 2010, more than $80 million has flowed to over 800 small farms and local food businesses. And now we’ve launched beetcoin.org as a platform for small donors to participate in building a grassroots source of capital as we also aim for more local 0% loan groups. Slow Money is fixing things from the ground up in ways that industrial food systems and industrial financial systems cannot.
“We are excited to be what we believe is the first pure-play ETF that invests in companies innovating with plants and producing animal free products. We believe that today’s investors want a more resource efficient, climate friendly, and cruelty-free food and materials supply system…and want to invest their dollars in the same,” said Elysabeth Alfano, CEO and CMO of VegTech Invest
