An 18-year-old Dolly Freed describes the philosophy of “possum living” as follows: “It’s easier to learn to do without some of the things that money can buy than to earn the money to buy them.” For five years in the late 1970’s, this teenager and her father lived off the land outside of Philadelphia, managing a small budget, eating from their garden and choosing to actively disengage from the commercial world surrounding them. Her 1978 manifesto, Possum Living, reflecting the back-to-the-land movement of that time, is now reissued.  Although she does not make an ideological case for a return to the land as others had proposed, her participation with homestead living nevertheless aligns herself with proponents of a sustainable movement. For this reason, Possum Living has new relevance and deserves a new audience.

Freed’s approach to possum living emphasizes ease and leisure. But advocates of our present food movement, who care about policy change to fight big agriculture, corporate monopoly of seed and crop production, genetically modified foods, CAFOs, and monocrop agriculture, may find in Freed’s work an authentic and usable model for personal lifestyle change. Freed recommends that her readers take responsibility for their individual actions: “If you cant go the whole route, at least go part way. If you can’t become a non-consumer, aim to be a mini-consumer.” Her intent of a life of leisure may be different from the mission of an eager food advocate of our time, but the result of a mindful existence equally affects the environment, land and our identity in comparable ways.

Freed’s authorial voice is feisty and impish—she is a girl whose witty and candid narration exposes the sprite naiveté of a child. Her chapter on nutrition begins with a recollection from “some years ago, when [she] was still a child,” and when her conscience often pesters her for “goofing off,” she simply ignores it. But more often than not, she authentically articulates the feasible possibility of returning to a life aligned with nature for the sake of ease—not for a spiritual, Waldenesque existence. Through humor and candor (“if your spouse gives you the fish-eye look when you mention rabbits in the cellar, forget it”), and directness (“kill your own meat—don’t hire someone to do it”), Freed skillfully presents a proposal for sustainable living.

Possum Living is a reflection complete with recipes, grocery lists, costs of living and personal testament. Her explorations are entirely applicable to the food movement of our time: don’t waste food, eat what’s in season, experiment with less popular food items, kill humanely, be an active producer, and become less of a mass-market consumer. She is mindful of yearly expenses, $268.80 spent on food and $101.24 on electricity, and she is learned on the topic of foraging for wild plants. Under the auspices of Euell Gibbons’ teachings, Freed demonstrates her own knowledge of edible weeds by praising yellow rocket and upland cress. She knows the tastes of cattail shoots and burdock stems and transplants wild ginger to her garden plot. Her active engagement with and curiosity about her chosen lifestyle shape this work into something more than a mere call for change. The Self is at the center of Freed’s work.

Her chapters range in topic from food, to heating, clothing, law, transportation and household chores. Three beliefs lie at the core of Freed’s teachings on eating simply, smartly and consciously: know your food philosophy, observe how nature works and engage cooperatively with it, and rely on reason and common sense to guide your decisions.  There is no attempt here to forge a romantic relationship with the land because her lifestyle is an active choice, not a privilege. Therefore, her food philosophy also depends on conviction and an educated opinion.

Many of Freed’s explanations for sustainable eating draw strength from the technicalities of active participation—how-to’s for building rabbit cages, lists for shopping, recipes and distilling manuals—and argue that others who wish to follow this lifestyle must be proactive as well. Gaining an education is important to Freed—“go to your library and read books on the subject,” “there are pamphlets at your local feed store” which explain hens’ laying cycles. Her ideas on consumption foreshadow current discussions centered on small-scale farming and livestock production: Kill your own meat. Don’t waste food. Don’t eat animals or fish that are being over-consumed. Experiment with foods less in demand. Choose action and engage with nature by learning its patterns and observable truths.

So while Possum Living encourages readers to take control of their lifestyle choices, it also reminds us that there is a level of observation needed to understand nature’s inherent cycles. She also coaches curious dwellers to examine nature within the larger food system they are rejecting. “Rabbits are often sterile in September and October,” “Fish, do, however, feed in a cyclical manner,” “try to lean toward nonhybrid types [of seeds] so you can produce your own seeds for future use,” “when you go to the grocery store, don’t forget to go out back and look for discarded greens for your rabbits. Do it even if you don’t have rabbits.”

Choosing the “possum” path of ease and simplicity—a relationship with nature that conforms to leisure and harmony with it—equips us with practical, self-reliant skill sets. It is not a spiritual movement. Perhaps it is her rejection of nostalgia that makes her belief in sustainable living so convincing. It simply makes sense. She promises her reader that “if you just want to easy-up your life somewhat, why then, you’re talking my language. We’ll get that Protestant Work Ethic monkey off your back.”

A present-day reader must select what to take from this detailed account. Certain chapters are more effective for their humor than applicability, and certain recipes seem entirely out of reach for an urbanite dweller like myself. Still, envisioning Freed making her recipe for pickled snapper—“the feet are the best. You much them up and spit out the toe bones”—makes one hopeful that we, too, could embrace possum living, should we choose to take that chance.

Pro Food is primarily focused on driving entrepreneurial interest in solving the complex food system challenges we face. By attracting such talent and energy to sustainable food, from farming through retail to home cooking, it is my belief that the money will follow to support their efforts (new post coming on this subject).

Pro Food is not about debating the current problems by taking one side or the other. There is plenty of that already happening, and is my belief that the valuable time and energy being spent in such debates can be put to far better use if it is directed toward finding innovative solutions to our food problems.

For 20 years, Slow Food has been successful in reestablishing links between food and terroir. The most successful event at each Terra Madre convention in Bra, Italy, the birthplace of the movement, has always been Salone del Gusto. This event features local foods from around the globe, prepared and presented by the artisans themselves. In Europe, where the movement was born, the emphasis has been on reviving the culinary expression of local cultures.

When Slow Food crossed the pond to America it took some time to find its feet as our unique food cultures have endured decades of pressure to homogenize, thanks in large part to the dominant industrial food system. Every region has its specific culinary traditions, dating back in some cases to before the founding of the nation. In addition, our immigrant newcomers brought their respective food traditions with them, but soon found the need to adapt to locally available food stuffs.

Slow Food USA Vision: Food is a common language and a universal right. Slow Food USA envisions a world in which all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the planet.

Slow Food USA Mission: To create dramatic and lasting change in the food system. We reconnect Americans with the people, traditions, plants, animals, fertile soils and waters that produce our food. We work to inspire a transformation in food policy, production practices and market forces so that they ensure equity, sustainability and pleasure in the food we eat.

Slow Food USA recently started addressing food policy issues in earnest, sparked by Slow Food Nation, its first national convention held last fall in San Francisco. Policy-making efforts have been spearheaded by other organizations, working just as diligently to remake our food system, including Food Democracy Now!, Roots of Change (specific to California), Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF), and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), to name a few.

Pro Food stands apart in its efforts to revitalize the entrepreneurial side of the American food system, with the express purpose of re-establishing the link between food and source, bringing together eaters and farmers in new, innovative ways. This specific focus will make it possible to re-inject business sense into the sustainable production, distribution, preparation, and consumption of local foods with entrepreneurial savvy, adapted to each level of the entire chain.

Further information on Pro Food and Slow Food:

• Huffington Post: Sustainable Food Ripe for Entrepreneurs to Drive Forward
• Huffington Post: Closing the Farm to Plate Knowledge Gap
• Slow Food USA: Good, Clean and Fair
• Slow Food USA: From Plate to Planet
• Slow Food International: What We Do

I look forward to your comments regarding these two important efforts dedicated to solving our food system problems, in what I believe are unique and complementary ways.

Do you agree?

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Eat Real will be a great party for the Bay Area, and Oakland in particular, to celebrate good food. We’re corralling the wagons with 30+ taco trucks, hot dog stands, and people on wheels selling every imaginable food – all made with at least a few locally-sourced sustainable ingredients. Our fabulous beer guy, Dave Maclean, is busy selecting around 40 local brews to have on tap; our partners at Buy Fresh, Buy Local have helped chose around 40 local craft food producers; and friends at People’s Grocery and La Cocina are helping build programming and more for the event.

This is the first annual edition of Eat Real, and we’re expecting 25,000+ attendees at the event. We are raising funds for a group of non-profits working locally in food in the Bay Area, and our model hopefully will be replicable by other groups around the country who are looking to raise funds for grassroots work and awareness of food issues via accessible and affordable events. Eat Real is free of charge (only the beer is ticketed), and we’re featuring street foods from over 15 countries – all made by artisans and chefs from around the Bay Area. Your taco secrets will help us spread the word about how to eat better every day. You can send your recipe in any format to info@eatrealfest.com. If you have any questions just send them along – we look forward to hearing from you!

In June of 2008, the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders (SAFSF) Annual Forum featured a closing plenary session: Cultivating Economic Sustainability. Almost every participant of this multi-day conference stayed after hours to continue the conversation sparked by this session, which explored the various economic tools — in addition to grant-making — that foundations can use to promote food systems healthy for people and the environment.

One tool that garnered quite a bit of excitement amongst the audience and panel was Program Related Investment (PRI), which several food system funders have already begun using to leverage their philanthropic dollars.

PRI is made out of the 5% minimum payout required by foundation law. Unlike grants, however, PRIs provide a return on foundations’ investments, either through repayment or return on equity, which means that the funds can be “recycled” and applied to additional PRI or grants. (Note that PRI is distinct from Mission Related Investing, or MRI, which refers to the investment of endowment funds.) While PRI has been available to foundations since the 70s, only in the last few years has it been gaining in popularity amongst food system funders; three top PRI makers according to the SAFSF report Trends in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funding, 2003-2006 are the William Penn Foundation, the Blue Moon Fund, and the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

Enter the financial crisis, which has affected foundations in many ways: not only are many grantees scrambling to meet operating costs due to losses in revenues from government and individual sources, foundations find themselves with ever-smaller endowments with which to generate the grant-making pool.

Now more than ever, PRI offers foundations a unique opportunity to respond to the challenge of using fewer resources to provide support to communities with greater needs. Organizations that were already promoting PRI as a means for foundations to support their missions are now upping the ante.

“As we know, the turn of 2008 to 2009 caught many foundations by surprise,” says Dana Lanza, Executive Director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association. “Within the environmental grantmaking community, assets are down by an average of 30%-40% in many cases. We are noting that in this climate, PRI is garnering significant interest from our members as a means to continue to support innovative efforts while essentially ‘recycling’ funds. I expect this to become a critical form of grantmaking as we pull ourselves through this rough period over the next few years.”

The PRI Makers Network, which provides a wealth of resources and data related to PRI, organized a call last month for funders to discuss the results of a recent member survey: PRI in Tough Economic Times.  The survey revealed what callers confirmed: while there are reasons to be cautious, there are even more reasons to seize the opportunities inherent in PRI. According to the survey summary, “last year, in many cases, PRIs constituted [foundations'] highest performing asset class – providing downside protection in the bear market.”

If your foundation is considering doing PRI directly, this Council on Foundations interview with Carol Lewis, president and CEO of Philanthropy Northwest, and Doug Stamm, CEO of the Meyer Memorial Trust and co-chair of PRI Makers Network, includes a list of things to consider before diving in. It’s a substantial list, and not every foundation will have the staff, expertise, or back-end support to find and evaluate appropriate recipients, draft term sheets, and administer the actual investments over time.

We decided to launch the RSF PRI Funds after hearing from several foundations that they want to participate in PRI to maximize their social impact, and would rather take advantage of RSF’s 25 years of experience in social enterprise lending rather than start the learning process from scratch. Meanwhile, we’ve been hearing from staff at foundations that would prefer to do PRI through an intermediary like RSF rather than continue doing it on their own, allowing them to stay engaged with PRI while focusing their staff’s energy on grantmaking and support of grantees.

The RSF PRI Funds will launch next week, giving foundations an intermediated PRI option for focusing charitable PRI impact within specific regions and/or focus areas: Food & Agriculture (eg, loans to projects supporting local food systems based on sustainable agriculture); Education & the Arts (eg, loans to charter schools with holistic approaches to education); and/or Ecological Stewardship (eg, loans to organizations creating green jobs in low-income areas).

Our pooled PRI model means that each foundation’s investment will work alongside other funds, re-invested into a portfolio of borrowers doing critical work on the ground. This approach maximizes the power of leveraged PRI impact while also mitigating risk. Already, three foundations have committed to investing in the RSF PRI Funds, and we’re in active conversations with interested staff at many more. We’re inspired by this opportunity to catalyze positive social impact, and look forward to connecting with other foundations who want to learn more about PRI.

An earlier version of this post appeared on RSF’s Reimagine Money blog, an online conversation about the nature of money.